NOTE: this sermon should be connected with the previous sermon, "How to love your city . . ., which honored Trinity's long time member and Civil Right's Activist, Willie Richardson. They were both written back to back and together form a better whole for those who are activists or caregivers.
What’s the difference between a violin and a fiddle? The answer: Nothing. It’s all in how you play it. It’s the same with activist and caregivers.
A worshipful activism and caregiving prayerfully seeks the good.
It might be motivating to focus on evil or pain or distress. Our politics show that negativity, doom and gloom are better ways of getting people angry and willing to take your side but that’s not God’s kingdom way of doing things. Look for the good. And to look for the good is to practice a tricky detachment that only prayer can give.
The shadow side of activist is that they can focus on issues and disregard individuals. Their hatred of evil easily translates to hatred of people. The shadow side of caregivers is that, in their focus on pain, they can also miss the ways that pain can be a healing agent. Their desire to stop the pain easily translates to enabling. To seek the good is always to focus on people both corporately and individually and to remember that God is the one we follow. These are dangerous temperaments because it’s hard to see what’s good without the vision of prayer.
It may seem odd in a sermon about activism and caregiving to focus on prayer but I’ve met too many activists and caregivers who are not the answer. Their head is largely correct but the energy, the style, and the soul are not because they have not spent time dealing with their own sickness in prayer. So if they bring about the so-called revolution or care they are working for, I don’t want to be a part of it. They might have the answer, but they are not themselves the answer. In fact, they are often part of the problem. Overly zealous reforms tend to corrupt the reformers, while they remain incapable of seeing themselves as unreformed. We need less reformation and more transformation. We need our goal to be so that everyone “lives.”
You don’t need to push the river
We should pay particular attention to the words of Amos in vs. 24. We are not the river, not its source, not it’s guide. The God of justice is flowing out over the landscape of our world, the river is roaring, the Spirit is churning. It’s a process that we don’t have to change, coerce or improve. In faith we don’t need to push the river precisely because we are able to trust that there is a river, a stream that makes glad the city of God. All of this is precisely what Martin Luther King, Jr,. meant when he said, “The universe bends toward justice.” If we don’t remember this, we will be motivated by fear, by scarcity, by worry. Friends, listen to God – justice is “never-failing stream.”
But if justice is a river who source, direction, and force are intimately associated with God – that rolls – we must also become aware of that dangerous little word, “let.” We are not the source of the river, yes, but we can become a dam. We can create lakes us justice which bring water to us and not to others. How do we dam up the river of justice?
1. When we think God wants something for us that he doesn’t want for others.
2. When we teach people how to live successfully in a sick system.
3. When we imagine that family is our only concern.
4. When we assume that following God means the absence of conflict and discomfort.
We must dismantle these so that the world can be filled. Because friends, dams break. Let justice roll – the aim is not to be right but to allow for friendships to form that honor people’s own stories as image bearers.
Who are your pathway companions?
Activists, stand up and wave to one another and get to know: Father Greg Boyle, founder of Home Boy Industries – read Tattoos on the Heart, Shane Claiborne, founder of Red Letter Christians – read The Irresistible Revolution, and Dorothy Day
Caregivers, stand up and wave to one another and get to know: Richard Beck, Psychologist and author at Abilene Christian and Padraig O’Touma, theologian, poet and podcaster, In the Shelter.
Gentle Warning:
Be wary about your measure of success. The Activist and Catholic priest, Father Greg Boyle, will remind us that Jesus will always ask, “Where do you stand?” Jesus defied all the categories the world considered important: good-evil, success-failure, pure-impure. The right wing would stare at him and question where he chose to stand. They hated that he aligned himself with the unclean, those who were outside – for good reason. He hobnobbed with lepers, shared table fellowship with the sinner, and rendered himself impure in the process. They found it offensive that Jesus had no regard for their pet issues and their culture wars.
The left was equally annoyed. They wanted to see the ten-point plan, the revolution in high gear, the toppling of sinful structures. They were impatient with his brand of solidarity. They wanted to see him take the right stand on issues and certainly weren’t interested in his friendships with the enemy, or collaborators.
The Left screamed: Don’t just stand there , do something. And the Right yelled: Don’t stand with those folks at all. What changes the world, according to Jesus? It’s not evidence based outcomes. It’s a prayerful fidelity to stand with others – even when it means a cross. Jesus’ way is always standing with people in solidarity even when it hurts.
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