“make known with boldness
the mystery of the gospel. . . .” Ephesians 6:19
The
Reverend Luther Zeigler
Christ Church
Cambridge
Sunday,
January 19, 2014
Across our
nation this weekend, millions of Americans will be celebrating, as we are this
morning, the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King’s name has become virtually synonymous
with the major achievements of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and
1960s, ranging from the Montgomery bus boycotts of 1955, which led to the
integration of that city’s public transportation system; to the dramatic
demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, which exposed to the world the
injustices of America’s most racially segregated city; to the March on
Washington in 1963, which galvanized a nation, and played a pivotal role in
leading to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights
Act. Indeed, during the less than 13 years that King
led the modern American Civil Rights Movement, from December 1955 until April
1968, Americans arguably achieved more genuine progress toward racial equality
in this country than the previous 350 years had produced.
It was King’s methods, of course, as much as his outcomes, that were his
real gift to us. While others advocated for freedom by “any means necessary,”
including violence, King resolutely refused the temptation to strike back with
force, using instead the power of words and the embodiment of nonviolent
resistance to achieve seemingly impossible goals. Drawing on Gandhi and the gospels in equal
measure, King demonstrated what today’s gospel teaching about loving one’s
enemies really looks like, and the power such love has to transform even the
darkest of hearts and the most pernicious forms of institutionalized hatred.
Yet, King
was so much more than just a civil rights leader. People tend to forget that in the last three
years of his life, the focus of his work shifted from racial injustice to
economic injustice more broadly considered. His work in
these years culminated in the “Poor Peoples Campaign,” an ambitious effort to
assemble a multiracial coalition of impoverished Americans to advocate for
economic change. In these years, too, he
became an outspoken critic of the Viet Nam war in particular, and of
our national obsession with military power and spending more generally. Indeed, King’s visit to this Church in 1967
was an important part of that anti-war message.
As
important as King’s legacy is in all of these areas – as a champion of racial
equality, in solidarity with the poor, and in opposition to war making – my
focus this morning lies somewhere else:
namely, King’s theology of the church and its role in society.
When I
served as a chaplain in elementary and secondary schools before I came to Harvard,
I was always struck by how few of my students knew what King’s vocation
was. They could quote his “I have a
dream” speech by heart, but only a handful of them would know that King’s first
and primary calling was as a minister of the gospel. As King puts it in his autobiography: “In the
quiet recess of my heart, I am fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist
preacher. This is my being and my
heritage, for I am also the son of a Baptist preacher, the grandson of a Baptist
preacher and the great-grandson of a Baptist preacher.” Even near the end of his all too short life,
with all the public exposure it brought, King would say that being a preacher
“was [his] first calling and greatest commitment.”
My students
can be forgiven perhaps for not knowing about King’s identity as a pastor
because, when you think about it, nearly all of the iconic moments in King’s
life story played out on a public stage rather than within the confines of Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church
or some other church sanctuary. The
images that we most remember are of King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
in August 1963, or sitting pensively in a Birmingham jail, or being arrested in
Montgomery during the bus boycotts, or marching with other freedom fighters in
Selma, or sitting at LBJ’s side in the White House as the President signed the
landmark civil rights legislation of 1964.
So few of the really memorable photographs of King are in the pulpit or
within the four walls of a church building.
This is no
accident, I think. For one of King’s
core teachings is that the church is not a building, or some event that takes
place on a Sunday morning. Rather, the church is you and me – the Body of
Christ at work in the world. King puts
it bluntly in his autobiography when he writes:
“It is my conviction that any religion that professes concern for the
souls of men [and women] and is not equally concerned about the slums that damn
them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions
that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day
to be buried.” (p. 18.)
King
reminds us that our vitality as Christ’s church depends upon our willingness to
engage meaningfully and consistently with the world and its problems. To be sure, we gather here on Sundays to
immerse ourselves in the Word that defines us and in the sacraments that feed
us; but the real work of the Church happens on the other six days of the
week. Pope Francis could well have been
quoting King when he wrote late last year: “I prefer a
Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the
streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from
clinging to its own security.”
Which is why it warms my heart to be able to share with you the news
that the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard is today one step closer to living
into King’s legacy and becoming a truly vibrant center for social justice on Harvard Square. This past Friday, seven young adults from our
diocesan Life Together program moved
into our house next door at Two
Garden Street.
No longer will we be known as home to the Hasty Pudding Club. Instead, young Christians committed to
important work in the community will be in residence there, living in an intentional
religious community, and sharing the house with our own Chaplaincy students. At
the same time, we are moving our chaplaincy offices from the basement up to the
main floor, and soon enough I hope you will see a steady stream of young people
going in and out of the house as it becomes a place known both for its
spiritual vitality and social engagement.
Give us a week or two to get settled, but then we welcome you to stop
by, say hello, and check out what’s happening in our house. Come meet Abigail
Strait, our own Micah Fellow and Wisconsin native, who works with me in overseeing our
Chaplaincy’s interfaith prisoner mentoring program at Norfolk Correctional
Facility. Or get to know Charlie Emple, a Bates College
alumnus, who is dedicating his internship year to supporting our diocesan anti-violence
“B-PEACE” project by nurturing school-church partnerships in low-income areas.
Or Greg Johnston, a recent Harvard graduate and alumnus of our Chaplaincy, who
is spending his year with Massachusetts Communities Action Network, working to
raise the state minimum wage. Or Joe Sheeran, a fellow Oberlin grad, who works
this year at Episcopal City Mission, helping with various urban ministry
initiatives. Or Kacey Minnick, a young woman from Tennessee who is placed at St. James, Porter Square,
working in that church’s young adult and food ministry programs. Or Laura Shatzer, a recent Harvard Divinity
School graduate, who is
doing important ecumenical work with the Massachusetts Council of
Churches. Or Seth Woody, a Texan who
last year interned over at the Monastery and now is working with Dorchester Bay
Youth Force helping to form and support teen leaders, particularly those who
live in economically disadvantaged areas.
These are the seven, extraordinary young adults who will be sharing
their lives with us this year. Most of
them could have gone on to careers with investment banks or law firms or in
other corporate contexts, but instead they chose to devote themselves to
serving the needs of the forgotten or marginalized or those most hurting in our
world. By housing these Life Together
interns under one roof with the Chaplaincy and our Harvard students, my hope is
to create myriad opportunities for fruitful mutual ministry between these two
communities, as students and interns begin to worship together, share meals and
conversation together, and learn what it means to integrate one’s spiritual
convictions with a life of service.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the great prophets of our age in part
because he had the imagination to dream and the courage to pursue that dream
against all the odds. On a much, much
smaller scale, we have been inspired by his example to dream too; and our
prayer this morning is that with the help of this great parish family and the
support of our diocese, we might be given the grace to make that dream a
reality. Our dream is that through this
exciting new partnership between a venerable campus ministry and a dynamic
young adult ministry, the house at Two Garden Street – your house at Two Garden Street – will become what it was
originally intended to be: a spiritually
alive, socially engaged, and profoundly welcoming center for Episcopal life at
Harvard. In the words of St. Paul
from today’s epistle reading, may God help us “to make known with boldness the
mystery of the gospel.” Amen.
