Honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by Dissent
Thanks to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and the communion of saints for joining us in celebrating his life. He is with us, in us, and among us! “I believe in the communion of saints” – I do, yes, I do.
One word I believe allows us to truly honor Dr. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That word: DISSENT. I honor Dr. King by dissenting from the policies of our president, Donald Trump. His policies, like the food he consumes, are junk policies.
The only dissent worth a warm bucket of spit is dissent from the status quo, from the governing authorities, from the powers and the principalities. I’m a Baptist. Dissent is in my blood. I can’t speak for the Southern Baptists because they have outlawed dissent. And I’m worried that the Republican Party is going to ferret out all the dissenters and go with a dreary conformity. But I am a dissenter. It is in me.
Dissent matters now because in Minneapolis, Minnesota it is Montgomery, Alabama 1961 again. The powers and the principalities are trampling out the “wrath of their awful god” on the backs of the citizens. Bull Connor’s brutal police, with the dogs, the clubs, the fire hoses, the violent actions that left people bloody in the streets now meet us in the televised image from Minneapolis. Dissent is the only reasonable way to honor King. And may his spirit walk that streets of Minneapolis today.
Dissent was in Martin. Dissent against injustice. Dissent against racism. Dissent against war. Dissent against the rich and the powerful. Martin got into real trouble when he opposed the war in Vietnam. That sermon he preached at Riverside Church was as powerful as a sermon can be.
And we are honoring Martin here. I honor him for faithful gospel preaching, the gospel of dissent. I’m not asking anyone to change their political affiliation. I’m not seeking any votes. I’m asking people to make sure they are on the right side of history and the right side of justice. Senator Paul Rand, of Kentucky, late last year said the mayor of Denver was on the wrong side of history. I disagree. The mayor is on the wrong side of the law. But when has that been a reason to silence dissent? Martin was on the wrong side of the law. The law was unjust.
We have a history of harsh and unjust laws in this land. You can deny it or claim you don’t want to be made uncomfortable by our history, but you can’t rewrite the truth. Martin dissented from unjust laws and he did so nonviolently. And he paid the ultimate price. He was rejected by his own denomination – the Progressive Baptist Convention. But Martin had a charge to keep bigger than his denomination, bigger than his party, bigger than this nation. And so do you. You have a charge to keep.
I am convinced too many of us have taken up a charge that is too little for the challenges we face. If you think your charge is to keep a Republican majority in both houses and the White House, your charge may not be big enough. Same for the Democrats.
What is about to happen is known as agonism. It is a political theory that certain kinds of dispute, dissent, and conflict can have positive results for a democracy. Rhetorical theorist Robert L. Ivie says, “Dissent is a key word in the vocabulary of a democratic people.” And agonism is dissent. It is the opposite of antagonism. Our task is to turn antagonism into agonism. I don’t believe we have been willing to do the hard work of managing our adversarial relations well enough. When an opponent’s first response is “You are stupid, a moron, an idiot, or mentally ill,” there’s nothing but antagonism. When a winner’s first move is revenge, we are in trouble.
This nation needs prophetic awareness not political expediency. The church is called to be the bride of Christ not the whore of Babylon. You can’t declare allegiance to the Prince of Peace and have dinner with the Prince of Darkness. You cannot proclaim the gospel of reconciliation while practicing revenge.
We have competing visions of America. We have competing value systems and competing worldviews. One side is fighting injustice, the other something called “wokeness.” One side is fighting to stop global warming, the other abortion. One side is fighting for universal health care and an expanded social safety net; the other side trying to kill the Affordable Health Care Act and reduce food stamps. As President Lincoln put it both pray to the same God, but they can’t both be right. We have two America’s and two value systems.
Choose this night which dream you will serve. I choose Martin, America’s prophet, the man wounded for this nation’s transgressions, bruised for America’s iniquities, and the burdens of black people and white people and all people were upon his shoulders. And because he was a prophet, everybody here, and those who are not here can stand a little taller; walk the earth with a little more dignity. He gave teachers more to teach and preachers more to preach.
We now need a new generation of Martin Luther Kings. We don’t need a king in the White House, but we need some Kings and Queens in our pulpits.
My text II Kings 22 – 23. And my sermonic bearings: I plan to honor Dr. King by showing us how we can become Dr. King for our time.
This is the story of the good king Josiah. There was nothing in Josiah’s history suggesting he would be a godly ruler. His grandfather, Manasseh was an evil man. His father, Amon, was an evil man.
Sometimes a nation gets a run of bad luck and evil occupies the throne. And not ordinary garden variety evil, but the evil of the powers and the principalities. Sometimes a people are stuck with evil especially when the evil is backed, supported, and propped up by religious authorities.
Josiah becomes king at the age of eight. He had godly men and women who trained him in the ways of the Lord. Josiah seems to have been trained from the book of Proverbs. Did you know Proverbs was a textbook for teaching young men how to be successful in working for the government? “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
I would like to teach the Book of Proverbs to 535 men and women who now sit in the Congress of the United States, because I think Congress has lost sight of their responsibility to the people.
There’s another book in Josiah’s story – Deuteronomy. When Josiah heard the words of the book he tore his clothes – that’s a sign of repentance. Deuteronomy is the OT equivalent of liberation theology and the social gospel. Now, here’s some irony for you. Paula White, the evangelical preacher, uses quotes from Deuteronomy to support eliminating food stamps and welfare from the federal government. In her twisted logic, the care of the poor is exclusively the job of the local church.
Our text says that when Josiah heard the word of God, he removed the idols.
He burned them, deposed them, beat them into dust, broke them down, removed them. Josiah even got kid of King Solomon’s favorite gods (allegedly the smartest and wealthiest man in the world). At the end, Solomon didn’t know whether he had more wives or more gods.
Like Judah, America has a Temple filled with idols. It is in Washington DC and our Temple is Congress.
We need to tear down the idol of authoritarian power. If you think you have the right to lord it others, you worship the idol of power. If someone offers you power in exchange for your soul, your ethical responsibility for the truth, turn it down.
Cornel West rightly identifies three pernicious dogmas hard at work destroying democracy: market fundamentalism (Bible calls this god Mammon), escalating militarism (at home and abroad), and growing authoritarianism.
When you think about it, there’s something selfish about trying so hard to get power and lord it over others. Maybe the Chrisitan thing to be doing is to be handing over the power I already have.
I’m telling you that Brother Jesus is asking us to stop acting like hogs at the trough. We need to stop going whole hog for the hogs. He tells us to give up power, not get more. All those representatives and senators, they got power and some want more.
On both sides we are participating in the destruction of truth, decency, patriotism, national unity, racial progress, our own political parties, and U. S. democracy. And if we want to be ruled by an oligarchy – like the gang of cutthroats controlled by Putin of Russia – if that is really what we want, God have mercy on our soul. In that moment we will cease to be the fierce, independent, stubborn, resilient people Americans have always been.
We have gone from “I have a dream” to “Name it and claim it!”
West says our nation is threatened by the dogma of market fundamentalism. American historian Robert McElvaine says we worship the Market God. Kurt Vonnegut was right: Americans worship at the Money River where we take slurping lessons in getting all the money we can for as long as we can. “Slurp quietly or the poor will hear!”
American democracy is being overrun by the wealthy. And we have forgotten the rich are as crazy as the rest of us. I don’t trust billionaires with our future.
And there’s a bunch of little, household gods that need removing. Remember when Rebekah stole her father’s household goods because she wasn’t sure she could trust the God of Jacob? We need to rip out the idols of mistrust and animosity because they ravaging democratic norms and values, undermining civic culture, and inhibiting rational deliberation.
We need to burn the idols of resentment and vengeance. It is a sign of demagoguery which attempts to shut down democracy by scapegoating and oversimplifying complicated problems.
The politics of alienation and antagonism are not working out for democracy. When two Southern ladies, members of Congress, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Jasmine Crockett of Tennessee get into a fight, and Mace says, “If you want to take it outside, we can do that,” we are not far from Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina – a devout slavery supporter – using a walking stick to attack Senator Charles Sumner – a radical abolitionist on May 22, 1856 in the Senate.
Now, let’s talk about what should not be removed. This is where we find out if we have it in us to be like King. I believe Dr. King would be with the immigrants. One of my favorite songs is “Down by the Train” by Johnny Cash. One line says, “I saw Judas Iscariot carrying John Wilkes Booth.” I want to add a line to the message: Down by the train, I saw Martin Luther King, Jr. carrying Jonathan Ross.
If we allow this administration to deport 11,000,000 people, we face the judgment of God.” Don’t mess with God’s preferential ones: widows, orphans, immigrants, and the poor.
Jesus says to let your NO be NO, so my NO is a definite, poured-in-concrete NO to the hard-nosed way our government is treating women, minorities, immigrants, and transgenders. The best way to honor King is to imitate him and follow his lead – his “drum major” lead. Here’s our chance to be King. Tell the border czar, Tom Homan, “We have a charge to keep and you can’t do this.”
Leviticus 19 tells us plainly: “When an immigrant resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the immigrant. The immigrant who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the immigrant as yourself, for you were immigrants in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
Immigrants work in the USA at jobs most people would turn up their noses are contributing to our nation. They are paying taxes. They are putting roofs on houses, laying bricks. They are picking vegetables. Do you know a cheeseburger without immigrant labor will be nothing but bun and burger? No lettuce. It will have rotted in the fields. No tomatoes. No one will pick them. No pickles. No ketchup because you need tomatoes to make ketchup.
I don’t think the racists have thought this through. When white people get scared, they make dumb decisions. When the powerful and the wealthy get scared, they make awful decisions. I don’t know anyone who is sitting around at the barber shop saying, “Man, as soon as they get rid of those immigrants, I’m going to Georgia or Florida or California and get me one of those back-breaking, low-paying jobs with no benefits.”
When Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world, became afraid the slaves would outnumber the Egyptians, he issued the most irrational executive order: Kill all the male babies of the Hebrews. He is so insecure, so scared, he is determined to wipe out the next generation of free labor. Who does that? White people afraid of a multi-colored American majority.
It’s apocalyptic: Then ten will be putting a roof on a million dollar house in a gated community; six will be taken, and four will be left. A dozen women will be grinding meal; eight will be taken, and four will be left.
Deportation sounds too much like genocide. And the border czar says they will put the children in half-way houses. Half-way efforts on behalf of children is a weird calculus. If you have raised children, you know 100% is not always enough. You have moments where you want to put them on E-Bay for sale. I don’t trust conservative math.
I think of the positive impact of immigration with the trope of food. Each new culture brings a cuisine that enriches our food experiences. Why in God’s name would we want to deport the people who have given us tacos, burritos, nachos, fajitas, and margaritas?
The Christian meal, the Eucharist is the enactment of abundance. We cannot use Christ up. The more the body and blood of Christ are shared, the more there is to be shared.
This is a land of abundance, a land flowing with milk and honey. It is a land where people can be generous with one another and enact abundance. This is where we learn that generosity rather than greed must and can shape our political decisions.
America is not an 8-piece coconut pie; it’s an ever-expanding land of freedom, opportunity, diversity, openness, and generosity. America’s glory is not in our past but in our rich, international, interfaith, interracial future.
We can rebel against the powers with meals from every ethnic group in America. We can start our campaign in Springfield, Ohio. The Haitian immigrants will feed you soup joumou, the symbol of freedom for Haitians. Or, if you are in a hurry, they will feed you Fritays – small pieces of pork, marinated and then grilled and served with a hot sauce and fried plantains. It’s time for dinner now, preacher! Oh yeah!
Isaiah offers the benediction. Hit it Isaiah and take us home:
“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death for ever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.” Amen.