11th Sunday After Pentecost 07/30/1967

Transcription

11th after Pentecost July 30th 1967

Sunday after The Detroit Rebellion

Luke 19: 41-48

Introduction

Even as the gospel lesson for today spoke to us “where we are living”, so also these words from another day (slightly adapted).

The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to THE UNITED STATES THESE TERRIBLE REBELLIONS IN OUR CITIES as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of REBELLION may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the RIFLE, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for THOSE who shall have borne the battle and for his WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Abraham Lincoln second inaugural

March 4th 1865

We are in deep trouble as a nation. A moment of supreme crisis. The question is, will the US survive as a Democratic Society. “Will the U.S. liberate or will the U.S. exterminate? Democratize or ostracize?” The way we choose will determine not alone our future, but the Earth's future.

With all the seriousness that I can command, I want to lay upon your heart this morning for your meditation and for your action, the role of the church, Christians, and the body of Christ in the US. Each congregation, on each corner of each village, city and town of this land, the task which is assigned to us by the Lord of history in this moment of our nation's peril, in the hands of people like us, rests the shape of the future of this land.

As a device for easy remembering, hold to the task of the Christian community today in the US, as a task embracing the three R's.

Be the Reconciling Community

Define: a reconciler - one in the middle; mediator; listen to both parties; seeking to bring together

Those to be reconciled

The White and The Negro communities of our nation. The extremists on both sides. Those who will call for making concentration camps out of the ghettos, walling them up. And those like Rapp Brown in the Negro community, who yell that “we will burn America to the ground”. And then all the different shades on both sides

Reconciling

Helping each party to see that the good and the right are not wholly on either side. That all men err, whether black man or white man. That each man's common enemy is not the other, but the common enemy of us all is death. That self-righteousness defeats itself. Whereas God's grace always gives us the possibility for new beginnings, new starts, as forgiving and fallible persons.

Where the reconciling work is to be done.

In the churches.

In the world.

Have daily conversations with neighbors, at parties, in the laundromat or the supermarket (it will come up in every conversation these days).

One part of our orders from our God in this day then reads.

Be the reconciling community in the USA (expect no great rewards).

And another part reads.

Be the Restored Community

The history of each life, and history of man's life is a story of broken, or false community.

We are those creatures who have been made for community. For life together. Life with others.

More often than not, our history is that of broken relationships. In the family, in the club, in the school, in the nation, and in the world.

Or we cling to the national community, or the white community, or the black community as supreme. And from that kind of false allegiance, comes much that plagues human life.

The order to us from God reads, become the restored community. Become the church, the body of persons on Earth who show the rest of the world, what human relationships are supposed to be.

Where all are one in Christ. Where white and black and yellow, rich and poor, Republican and Democrat and socialist, young, middle ages and old, married and single, live together as one family. Because you know that the truest fact about every human life is.

That it is a sinful life.

That it is a forgiving life.

That it is a buried life In Christ.

That it is a raised life in Christ.

To be quite specific about what is meant by God's order to become the restored community. Congregations who take that seriously, will consider all available candidates, regardless of whether they are white or black for consideration in calling a new minister.

In this time of crisis become the restored community.

Be the Rejoicing Community

As we become the reconciling community, as we become the restored community, then it will follow as the night the day, that we will become the rejoicing community. That community on Earth which celebrates the fact that we are not alone in the universe. That there is one who not only watches over Israel, but who has the whole world in his hands.

The rejoicing community reminds the whole human family that there is nothing inevitable about one's personal history or the world's history. That there is always the possibility of a new turn, conversion, an about face, whereby we are released from captivity to our past errors, our former prejudices, our limited communities.

As the rejoicing community, we are being ordered by the Lord of history, to celebrate on behalf of all men, the presence of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose “judgments are true and righteous altogether”. But who also desires that men have life, and more life than they have ever had before.

None of us need be told how dry arid dull our worship is most of the time. God is dead for thousands of folk. God is hidden for most of us. But as has happened again and again in the past, he will make himself powerfully present again, among a people who are engaged in reconciling the Earth. Climbing over the barriers between persons which have been broken, through Christ’s Resurrection.

I offer as a supreme example, the way in which I daresay, the Bible came alive for us today in a way which it hasn't for a long time.

End of July 1967 A.D.

In the year of the turmoil in our cities.

The continuing sad adventure of the Vietnam War.

Hear the word of the Lord.

If you become the reconciling community

If you become the restored community

If you become the rejoicing community

Then it may be, that you and your children, and your children's children, and the children of the world, will have life!