It's July 7th and I am still Thinking About the 4th

photo by John / flickr
"If my people who are called by my name..." 

Maybe I should have preached a July 4th sermon last Sunday. But sometimes we preachers get mixed up on the calendar and so even though our 243rd birthday as a country is over—I think it is time for all of us to look at where we are and where we ought to go. The prophet Micah helps me here.

Micah lived at a tough time in his nation’s history. He looked out and he really wanted to turn away. But his people were confused and scared and bumping into each other and not knowing exactly what was a happening and where they ought to go. 

Last week we had two nights when across the stage stood all the Democratic candidates for President. How many—I forget over twenty. But they were all asked what to do to make this country strong and sure. Their list was long and varied. Good and weird.

 I’m not going to choose sides one way or the other folks. This is not why you came to church. And I’m not supposed to stand up here and tell you who to vote for. That’s left up to you. But I will say that we are in a mess. We are a divided people. We find it hard to talk to the other side. Reading between the lines I think Micah must have had the same concerns a lot of us do. 

So—are we just supposed to think about our little half-acre and make sure our kids don’t fall off the cliff and maybe take care of our grandparents and go fishing or shopping once in a while. Or maybe here talk about how to pray and how to get along with our neighbors next door and not kill each other off in church. Or better yet—just crucify some preacher. Maybe our job is to just figure out how to fill these empty seats.

Can we simply talk about the personal and the private when the house is on fire?  And Micah says: No. No. No. And then he says what if we just come to church faithfully and bring some burnt offerings and a year-old calf. If not that, he said, maybe we’ll corral in a thousand rams or ten thousand rivers of oil. He was being sarcastic of course.

Our homework is the same as Micah’s: Do justice love mercy and walk humbly with our God. This is how we get through a hard time. This what real community is all about. This is what it means to help and enable everyone and not just the chosen few. 

Our homework: Do justice. This word flows out of the character of God. God is just. God is fair. God is judge—which means he will set right what is wrong. Justice is a practical word. It concerns our daily life. How we treat our friends and enemies alike. Remember the words of our Constitution: Justice for all. Whatever happened to that dream?

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The only time I heard the great Martin Luther King speak he ended his sermon with: “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”And when I stood up to leave that day—I wanted to do something.

But I didn’t realize that day that to do justice was a hard thing. It means more than personal morality. It means to speak to systems. Systems? Yes. Justice touches homelessness and poverty and hunger and inadequate medical care and brown-skinned men and women and little children behind cages. Most of them only wanted to flee poverty and find a job that pays enough money to live on,  raise their kids in safety maybe send a little back home. 

Justice means child labor laws. A woman that lived up the street from us where I grew up could not read or write. She started working in the mill when she was ten years old. We changed that finally. Justice means minimum wages at least and breakfast for kids who come to school hungry every single day. And to do justice maybe means giving every child in a title one school at Christmas a new coat and a new pair of shoes. One church around here does that every year.

Several years ago I spent a year as Interim in a big fat Baptist church. And there was a men’s Sunday School class that decided to give about fifty or more children who would have no Christmas a hundred dollars to spend on themselves. One old arch conservative man in the class thought that was the dumbest thing he ever heard.  But one Saturday morning they fed the kids breakfast and gave each one a hundred dollars and got the local Wal Mart to open early and let nobody in but these children and members of the Sunday School class. I went with a little black girl and she came up to me and said, “Could I take some of this money and buy my Daddy a coat.” And that old man who muttered about this project was there following a little girl around. And he kept tabs on that little girl after that Saturday morning and got to know her needed and her family and he followed her through school—and guess what this crotchety old man who did not believe in hand-outs did? He sent this same little girl all the way through college. 

Now Providence you may not be able to do that but what would it mean for you here to do justice in this community?

A second part of our homework is: to love mercy. Some of the meanest people I have ever met were church people who never heard of mercy. One translation says the word mercy means kindness. 

photo by Niez Ain Latif / flickr 

This word, too flows out of the heart of God. And if we could ever get our hearts around this word mercy or kindness it would mean that God really does love all the little children  of the world. Red, yellow, black and white—reckon it means immigrants too?

In the last church I served there was a  woman who had a son with AIDS and she dragged him to church. It was a  time when we were all scared of AIDS and thought we could catch it. Some of our people would look at him and you could tell how they felt. Well, the young man died and we had his funeral. And there was no judgment in that service. And there was couple of little blue-haired ladies that were there crying with the mother. And sitting our there in that funeral home were some gay men that came to the funeral. And some of them said: “This is a Baptist church?” And a few of them started coming to church. Some of them even joined. And our biggest givers—two doctors—came into my office and said’ “We’re leaving this is going to become a gay church.”  And I told them we were just going to continue to be a church—a church that welcomed everybody. But of course this sent ripples through the church. And some Sundays I got scared and wondered if maybe we would become a gay church. It didn’t happen. I just said we’ll open these doors and we are not going to turn anybody away. And some of those gay people changed me. I heard their stories. Of having parents that would not let them go back home. Of parents who said ”You can come home Christmas but you can’t bring your partner.” Some told me that all their li es they thought the church hated them and would never accept them. But that church did. And I left in 2000—and you know what they have gays—quite a few but it never did become a gay church. 

And some days I would remember what Dr. King had said years before: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” And when I heard that I felt like I had to leave there and do something. And I am anything but a saint—I mean that. But I have tried with whomever I meet—I have tried to do justice. And folks, that is everybody’s homework.

But there is one more thing. We have to walk humbly with our God. 

And I believe to walk humbly with our God means we have to follow his steps. We have to

photo by emmistitch / flickr

do something. Our job is to teach the children. Help people learn to pray. Help them understand the Bible means that we can can become part of the story. Like that story of the Good Samaritan. Like the parable of the talents. Like that story of the prodigal son. What are we gonna do?

Dean Snyder told the story of working in an emergency shelter in an inner city church. He said one day Nora came and stayed with them several days. Her family had kicked her out. She was covered in tattoos. She walked around in too tight pants and kept wearing a see-through blouse. She wasn’t a day over sixteen. And she chain-smoked and talked too loud and flirted with the men and was street-smart and foul mouthed. 

One afternoon Snyder said he was a alone in the kitchen and she came in and sat down. She was quiet for a long time and then she said. “I been meaning to ask you something. I heard a priest say one time that Jesus loves everybody. Even prostitutes. Is that so?” He said he was tempted to tell her that God loves the sinner but not the sin. But he didn’t say that. He just answered her question: “Does God love everybody? Even prostitutes?” and he nodded and said: “Yes.” And then the dam broke and Nora cried and cried and cried. And he said finally he knew she was crying happy tears not sad tears.

We are to love mercy and do justice and walk humbly with our God. And it hardly matters if we are Democrats or Republicans or Independents. We have to walk the walk and we have to talk the talk after that. Reckon that would make this a better country for everybody? I hope so. I know it will make us better Christians.

photo by Adam Skowronski / flickr

(This sermon was preached at the Providence Presbyterian Church, Powdersville, SC, July 7, 2019)

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com