At long last, just ten days ago an arrest was made in a “cold case,” indeed in one of the coldest cases there had
been—the June, 1964 murders, along a deserted rural road outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi, of three civil rights
workers: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
These three had been arrested and detained in the Neshoba County jail for “the crime” of trying to register black
voters. And after they were suddenly “released” from jail, at night, their blue Ford station wagon had been tailed
and overtaken by a group of “vigilantes,” who had then murdered them, and burned their car.
Yes, more than 40 years after those murders, the current sheriff of Neshoba County has finally arrested and charged
with murder one Edgar Ray Killen—a 79-year old preacher (if you can fathom that!), a man who had long been a leader of
the local Ku Klux Klan.
Now, this being Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend, I’m reminded of a march that Dr. King led on June 21, 1966, two
years to the day after the infamous murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. Because the Neshoba County law
enforcement officers had still not made any arrests in that case, he went that day to Neshoba to head up a protest
march of some 250 persons from the Mount Nebo Baptist Church to downtown Philadelphia.
[The following account is quoted from David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross (New York: William Morrow, 1986),
p. 483.] “Hostile white onlookers taunted the demonstrators, and two cars sped past the column, missing the protesters
by [just] inches. No state highway patrolmen were on the scene, and a truck made a pass at the marchers as a man with
a club repeatedly tried to strike the protesters from the passenger-side window. King … led a prayer service when the
head of the column reached the county jail, and then the marchers moved [on] one block [farther] to the Neshoba County
courthouse. When King tried to lead the group on to [its] lawn, Chief Deputy Sheriff Cecil Ray Price stepped forward
to block his path. ‘You’re the one who had Schwerner and those fellows in jail?’ King asked quietly. ‘Yes, sir,’
Price responded in a tone of sarcastic pride. With the courthouse lawn blocked, and an angry white mob of three
hundred growing more aggressive by the minute, King led the marchers in a short memorial service out in the street.
“Heckling from the whites almost drowned out King’s words, and newsmen looked on nervously as he spoke prayerfully
about the three young men’s sacrifice. ‘King appeared to be shaken’ as the whites’ shouts grew more vociferous, and
his voice quavered when he declared that ‘I believe in my heart that the murderers are somewhere around me at this
moment’ while Cecil Price smirked only a few steps behind him. ‘You’re damn right, they’re behind you right now,’
Price muttered.”
Dr. King would later recall that it was then and there—June 21, 1966, in Philadelphia, Mississippi—that his own
spirit had first yielded to the thought that he himself, in the face of such hatred from so many whites, would most
likely be murdered.
Now another recent event—the death last Monday of James Forman, who from 1961 to 1965 was the executive secretary
of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)—the recent death of Forman has reminded me that Dr. King faced
antagonism not only from whites but also from some blacks. For in that critical decade of the ’60s, Forman came to
view King as too egocentric, too middle-class, and much too unaggressive, and Forman did not hesitate to say so, even
though he chose to continue his role as an active leader, alongside King, in the Southern civil rights movement.
So, criticism of Dr. King from some blacks, and hatred from many whites—but then there rarely has been a true prophet
of God who was not the object of criticism, scorn, hatred, and, yes, even threatened violence. And why? Well,
principally because central to the message of every prophet is a call for “justice.” You see, the world as we know it
is unjust. So the call to share with God in building up a community of justice is inevitably a call to break up the
world as we know it and to create something alarmingly new. [See Letty Russell, in The Living Pulpit, January–March,
1993, p. 19, who also quotes James Baldwin.]
In today’s First Lesson, the anonymous prophet who is known to us only as “Second Isaiah” speaks in the voice of one
whom God has called to be a prophet. He speaks in the voice of a “servant of God” whose mouth has been made sharp as a
sword so that his words may cut to the heart of things—to the end that all nations may come to see the light and live
together in peace and justice.
And in our Second Lesson, this same “Second Isaiah,” speaks again, but this time in the voice of God. Through this
prophet, it is God who is proclaiming quite straightforwardly (Isaiah 42:1, 9):
“Here is my servant…; I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.…
See, the former things have come to pass,
and new things I now declare;
before they spring forth,
I tell you of them.”
This call, this prophetic vocation, to “bring forth justice” and to create something startlingly new—this call is one
that many contemporary Christians, including me, have identified with the prophetic actions and sword-sharp words of Dr.
King.
The Reverend William Sloane Coffin, whose own prophetic voice is clearly heard in his book Credo, published
just last year [Westminster John Knox]—William Sloane Coffin has said this about Dr. King (p. 43): “Martin Luther King
deserves a national holiday because he rescued the American people from the shallows and miseries where they had chosen
to live their lives.…It was Martin’s message that it is not enough to suffer with the poor; we must confront the people
and systems that cause poverty. It was Martin’s message that you cannot set the captive[s] free if you are not willing
to confront those who hold the keys [to their cell].”
It was following the riots in Watts in August, 1965, that Dr. King came to see that there was no point in having won
the right to eat at an integrated lunch counter if you didn’t have the money to buy the food. It was after those riots
that he came to discern that in this nation of ours the problems of class are even greater than the problems of race.
So Dr. King’s principal focus shifted from racial justice to economic justice, to the need to restructure
America so that people would have food and shelter for their bodies as well as dignity and self-respect for their spirits.
With that shift in focus, Dr. King came up against a limit to white liberals’ commitment to alleviating black persons’
plights. Giving blacks access to the voting booth was one thing, but giving them access to equal employment and income
was quite another. As King observed: “It’s much easier to integrate lunch counters than it is to eradicate slums. It’s
much easier to guarantee the right to vote than it is to guarantee an annual minimum income and to create jobs.” [as
quoted in James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), p. 233]
Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign of 1967 and 1968 received far less white support than his Voting Rights Campaign.
And King began to realize that the large majority of whites had no intention of integrating the vast masses of poor blacks
into the mainstream of this economy, and he proclaimed, “[I]f you do not begin to use your vast resources of wealth to
lift God’s children from the dungeons of despair and poverty, then you are writing your own obituary.” [as quoted in Cone,
p. 234]
In the face of the intense anger aroused within white communities both by the Poor People’s Campaign and by Dr.
King’s outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War, he said the following to one of his closest advisors, Stanley Levison,
who was himself white. King confided: “I feel so deep in my heart that we are so wrong in this country, and the time
has come for real prophecy. And I am willing to go that road.” [Cone, p. 242]
Within a year of having uttered those words, King was dead, felled on Thursday, April 4, 1968, by an assassin’s rifle
shot.
On this Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday in 2005, I’m sad to observe, as have many others, that the need to bring forth
justice in this land is no less great today than it was thirty-seven years ago. And so too is the need among us for
prophetic voices like Martin’s. For the plight of the poor is really no less today than it was back then. And our
government’s expenditures on this era’s immoral war, in Iraq, and the tax breaks recently given to the very richest
among us—these are leading us inevitably to decrease the proportion of federal moneys that provide food, shelter, and
health benefits for the poor, of federal moneys that maintain among us an effective economic safety net for those who
are most in need. And the worst is not behind us. Sadly, it lies still before us! For we are headed in quite the
wrong direction.
Take, for example, the current drive by the president and many leaders in Congress to gut the current Social Security
system, a system that has single-handedly kept countless millions of people from the ravages of poverty. Our current
system is one based on the wholly moral principle that the current working generation should provide for the well-being
of our parents’ generation, and this system is therefore well designed to help our society fulfill the Fifth of the Ten
Commandments that are central to both Judaism and Christianity—the commandment, “Honor your father and your mother.”
But there are among us certain wolves in sheep’s clothing who are busily raising the false specter that the present
system is bankrupt and will inevitably fail—and saying this in spite of the fact that the federal government’s own
actuaries are telling us quite the opposite. These actuaries are telling us that the present system is solid through
2042 and that it can be kept solid far beyond that date with just a few simple adjustments, like beginning to assess
social security taxes on that portion of a salary that is above the current ceiling of $90,000 per year. But since
the current agenda is pushing us in quite the wrong direction, it will prove a great challenge to preserve over the
years lying directly ahead a sound Social Security safety net for all Americans.
And still another example of the wrong direction in which Washington is headed is the gutting by Congress and the
administration of “ Section 8,” a very effective federal rent subsidy program that has prevented thousands of working
poor from becoming homeless.
One month ago, more than two dozen Jewish and Christian progressive faith leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., for
a two-day session whose purpose was to assess, in the aftermath of last November’s election, how best to speak out with
a prophetic voice, how best to confront the people and systems that cause poverty, how best to speak out words sharp as
a sword that can cut to the heart of things and inspire justice in our land.
Among those present were James Forbes, pastor of the Riverside Church here in New York City, and Robert Edgar, general
secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ.
It was agreed by the participants that the word “prophetic” would be a far better label for our moral agenda than the
word “progressive.” For “prophetic” conveys ever so much better the strong biblical and spiritual roots that lie at the
base of the moral values we espouse. “’Progressive,’” Dr. Forbes maintained, “sounds like it’s an ideological position
with [some] values attached, but ‘prophetic’ carries with it [the sense] that you’re willing to be [held] accountable by
the God you claim to serve.” [as reported in The Christian Century, January 11, 2005, p. 12]
So, we progressive Christians … No, strike that! We prophetic Christians do indeed have our work cut out for
us over the next four years, as we seek to hold up before our society what it means to stand in the tradition of Moses,
and Isaiah, and Jesus, what it means to stand in the tradition where God is calling on all people to “bring forth
justice”—to bring forth even economic justice—in our land.
Yes, there is a great need for prophetic voices to sound forth loudly throughout our nation, and it is therefore
incumbent upon us who are here today to begin working on increasing our numbers by enlisting many of those people of
good will who have long been sitting outside of our congregations—perhaps because they have found the voice of Christian
churches in the past to be irrelevant, or even antithetical, to the cause of justice.
You see, if we are to sustain our activism and stay focused on God’s concerns, we need to at least double the number
of people who organize as advocates for particular policy changes. And we need to at least double the number of people
who write, sign, sing, and march in fulfillment of the prophetic vocation to bring forth justice.
So, let me suggest one concrete thing we can do to get busy on all of this. And that’s to show up on Wednesday,
February 2, at City Hall for a rally calling for many more units of “affordable and low-income” housing in this city.
The start time for this rally is 4:30 pm. A group will be leaving from Rutgers Church. Call Cheryl if you can be part
of it.
And if by some chance you just can’t be there in person on February 2, you can still be there in name and spirit, for
Cheryl is making it possible for us all to affix our names to a large placard that will be held aloft during the rally.
You can sign it on your way out of church today or on any Sunday morning through January 30th.
Friends in Christ, we have so much to do. So let’s get going on bringing forth justice.
Please join me in prayer, and I'll be using words offered to God by Dr. King himself, in 1956, during the Montgomery
bus boycott:
“O God, we thank thee for thy Church, founded upon the Word, that challenges us to do more than sing and pray, but
[to] go out and work as though the very answer to our prayers depended on us and not upon thee. Amen.”