Sermon:
January 14, 2001
Morning Services

Scripture:
Micah 4:1-5
Matthew 25:31-46

It could be said that this sermon began seven weeks ago at 11:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning, when Will Willimon stepped into God's pulpit in Duke Chapel and said:

Not long ago, I was involved in a meeting concerning racial problems here in Durham. The meeting was overly long and rather depressing. It was difficult to find a common theme other than that we had racial problems and no one knew exactly what to do about them. On the way out of the meeting, a man (who had been a life-long activist in the civil rights movement) said to me: "It kinda makes you long for the sixties, doesn't it?" So I asked him what he meant. Whereupon he continued: "Back in the sixties, we knew exactly what we needed to do. We had clear goals. We needed to open the lunch counters, integrate the buses, and pass a major act of civil rights legislation. We could organize accordingly and proceed toward our goals. Upon achieving them, we could celebrate and feel good. But today, the problems are more subtle ... the conflicts far deeper ... and we have no clear picture of what we need to do or where we need to start. We just feel overwhelmed."

Or perhaps this sermon began, not seven weeks ago, but 33 years ago, on an October Monday evening that had nothing whatsoever to do with civil rights or sermon writing, but baseball. Indulge me as I tell you a story that is almost as long as it is personal.

I was then, as I remain now, a baseball fan. But I was a relatively poor baseball fan, lacking money or connections to buy tickets. World Series tickets, I mean. For we won the pennant in '68 ... were preparing to play the Cardinals in '68 ... .and I desperately wanted to see at least one of the games to be played in Detroit.

The cheap seats (to the degree that there were going to be any cheap seats) were set to go on sale at 9:00 Tuesday morning at the Tiger Stadium ticket window ... the same Tuesday that the Series was to open in St. Louis. But I knew that if I appeared at 9:00 on Tuesday morning, I wouldn't have a snowball's chance in a barbecue pit of buying any tickets. So even though I equate waiting in lines with inserting bamboo shoots under my fingernails, I asked Kris to drive me down to the corner of Michigan and Trumbull the night before (after assuring myself that she would make no comments, snide or otherwise, about my sanity).

So drive me, she did ... even making me a sandwich (in case I got hungry) and suggesting I take a lawn chair (in case I got sleepy). Then she ditched me along about 10:30 p.m. The line was already three blocks long. So I hiked (dragging my chair behind me) south on Trumbull toward Fort Street, just past where the old Holiday Inn used to be.

For most of the night, I had a wonderful time. People were in a festive mood. I talked with strangers of all ages, sizes, colors and occupations. We swapped stories. We talked baseball. We even spun a bit of philosophy. Everybody honored everybody else's place in line, enabling us to range a block or two in either direction and meet others. We even took turns walking to the restaurant, carrying back as many cups of coffee as two hands and a cardboard container could balance. It was wonderful camaraderie and comfortable community.

About 3:00 in the morning, as it began to get quite chilly, a couple of policemen suggested building a fire. So we gathered some orange crates from an adjacent alley, and darned if the policemen didn't bring over some of those yellow wooden street barricades and say: "Here, let's burn these." So we did. And we managed to keep the fire going for a couple of hours.

As it turned out, the fire attracted other folks who were also looking to get warm. Among them were several young fellows who, when they weren't standing at Tiger Stadium, were studying to be priests at Sacred Heart Seminary. And wouldn't you know it, one of them had a guitar. So he began to play. And we began to sing. All of us. Me and the priests ... the policemen ... and the Polish grandmothers ... along with the long hairs and the short hairs ... the black folk and the white folk ... the computer programmers and the fork lift operators. I found myself saying over and over again: "How sweet this is. Why, it doesn't get any better than this. We are living out a small scale slice of the Kingdom, here."

Until 6:00 in the morning, that is. That's when it all came crashing down. In an instant, the best of nights became the beast of nights. What happened? Well, I'll tell you what happened. With the dawn's early light, new arrivals on the scene looked at the crowd and quickly ascertained that if they took their place at the back of the line, there wouldn't be any tickets by the time they got to the front of the line. So they began cutting in. Suddenly everybody in line became suspicious ... then anxious. Whereupon anxiety quickly turned to self-preservation ("me ... mine ... and to hell with everybody else"). Forward we surged ... .en masse ... three and a half blocks toward the stadium gates. Pushing and shoving. Shouting and cursing. Until we were so wedged together that we could barely move.

To this day, I don't know what became of my lawn chair. But I remember thinking: "This is going to be the longest three hours of my life." Which it was. But I stayed. And I got my tickets. Given my solid frame, I managed to avoid being crushed in body. But given my fragile idealism, there was no way to avoid being crushed in spirit.

* * * * *

There are a lot of things you could do with a story like that. But few of them interest me here. Administratively, you could use it as the starting point for a discussion on urban crowd control. And philosophically, you could use it to differentiate between "community' when there is plenty to go around, and "community" when there isn't.

But I used a strange little phrase a few moments ago when I talked about "a slice of the Kingdom" ... suggesting that such was what I experienced in the wee, small hours of that morning before we became individually anxious and collectively ugly.

And if I want to call those predawn moments a "slice of the Kingdom," I am entitled. Because many of the biblical writers ... who don't know that much more about the "when" and "where" of the Kingdom than I do ... also use slice-of-life Kingdom images drawn out of their experiences. Many of which are ordinary ... like banquets ... wedding receptions ... baking bread in the kitchen and throwing in little yeast ... plowing furrows in the field and happening on a precious pearl. I mean, if the Kingdom can be described in that kind of terminology, who is to say I can't associate it with standing in line to buy World Series tickets in the city of Detroit? For what is the bottom line of any "Kingdom image," if not a description of how things are going to look when they are as God intends them, as opposed to how they look when we take them into our own hands and screw them up royally?

Moments ago, I read you one of my favorite Kingdom images ... although you won't find it labeled as such (seeing as how it comes from the Old Testament). I am talking about Micah's vision of the Lord's temple as a high mountain ... up which all kinds of people are streaming ... from all kinds of directions....wearing all kinds of clothes ... speaking all kinds of languages ... singing all kinds of songs ... because they want to, not because they are forced to. And to the degree that they are taking counsel from the Lord, they are learning how to co-exist with one another ... .no longer finding a need to kill one another ... even discovering fresh reasons to dismantle the weapons they had previously used against one another.

It's a beautiful image. I suppose it speaks to me because it recalls the days in which I walked for this or marched for that. Because I believed it was both goodly and godly, don't you see. But that was before things got ugly, of course ... when bullhorns (followed by bullets) replaced ballads ... which was (for some of us) the day the music died. And when I hear snatches of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, that's what I recall. For it was a time when I was so clear about what needed to be done and so certain about my willingness to do it. "Civil rights" was a cause we believed in. It was also a cause we worked for.

Did we do any good? Well, it depends on who you talk to. Progress (in the arena of race relations) tends to be measured anecdotally rather than sociologically. Which means that you can point to all kinds of victories. But if they always turn out to be someone else's victories rather than your victories, you either end up not seeing them, or only half believing them. It would appear to me that more people have more rights than they had in the sixties. But it also occurs to me that Dr. King's speech was not solely about rights, but also about relationships. And I would be hard pressed to say that relationships between the races are all that much closer than they used to be.

To be sure, the "big issues" keep changing. People tell me that it's not about buses and lunch counters ... or even voting rights ... anymore (although you may have a hard time convincing some folk in south Florida that it's not about voting rights anymore). And in a strange way, it may still be about buses ... at least in an area like metropolitan Detroit. I am not talking about who sits where on the bus, but whether anyone can get a bus. Because unless there are buses that go to the locales where the jobs are, what does it matter if you can sit in all the seats (rather than just the back seats)? Because if the buses aren't going anywhere, chances are that you aren't going anywhere either. Which is why people whose opinions I trust keep telling me that urban mass transportation may well be Detroit's number one civil rights issue.

None of this is my arena, of course. The church is my arena. And some very good things have happened in the 30-plus years since the death of Dr. King. Of my last seven superintendents (since Dr. King died), four have been African-Americans. The same is true for two of my last four bishops. What's more, I have many more black ministerial colleagues than ever before. But 30 years ago, when there were fewer, I knew them better. Which brings me full circle to the "relationship thing," don't you see. Over the last 30 years, it has been a whole lot easier to open doors than close ranks.

But I have come to realize that my life is diminished by the relationships I do not have. And I have also come to realize that the relationships I want are going to ask a lot more of me than simply being open to the idea of entertaining them. Meaning that I need to put myself out a little more. There is a bestseller I haven't read, but its title screams at me every time I enter the bookstore. I think it's called Getting the Love You Want. Which I assume is a strategy for marriages, families and romantic relationships that are filled with unmet needs and unanswered questions. And I further assume that the book suggests that you get aggressive about your needs, telling people exactly what it is that you are wanting but not getting. I would be incredibly surprised if the book counseled anyone to suffer in silence. I am willing to bet it advances the premise: "You want it? Go get it."

Well, I have come to realize that, in the arena of race relations, I have some unmet needs.

• I need a few more friends who do not look like me.
• I need conversations with people who do not necessarily think like me.
• I need to invest myself in an occasional project, the results of which will not necessarily benefit me.
• I need to join and financially support at least one organization where civil rights is still the primary (and perhaps, only) agenda ... and could benefit by some help from me.
• I need to study the Bible with some folks whose racial and cultural background is sufficiently different from mine, so that I will experience the text differently as a result of the stories they tell me.
• I need to cultivate leaders of color for this congregation so that you will grow an awareness alongside of me.
• And I need to figure out why so many of the younger clergy in our denomination care so little about this agenda, so that the dreams of the sixties will not die with me.

I do not know what a similar agenda might look like for you. But I urge you to consider one. Selfishly so. Let it grow out of your own calling ... in response to your own conscience ... in order to address your own impoverishment.

Which brings me to my other text. You never thought I'd get there, did you? For the fourth time in the eight years I've been with you, we're back in Matthew 25. Yes, it's the "sheep and goats thing." There's a lot not to like here. I'm talking about the judgment thing ... the separation thing (sheep - right, goats - left) ... .and especially the eternal damnation thing ("Bye-bye goats. Sorry we won't be seeing you around anymore"). Don't much like it. Can't quite square it with the rest of the gospel. But I don't dodge it. And I do wrestle with it.

But I would point out two things about the text. First, it isn't "right doctrine" that gets you in the right line. Nobody's in the "sheep line" because they can explain the trinity, pick the right atonement theory out of the five that have passed down since the Middle Ages, or can defend the virginity (or, harder yet, the perpetual virginity) of Mary to would-be cultured despisers. No, the people in the right line ... the sheep line ... the quick and easy, 12 items or less, no paperwork required, step right up and pass right through line ... are there because of positive actions taken vis-à-vis the neighbor. That's the only reason they're there.

And the second thing? The most surprising thing? The people in the "sheep line" don't have a clue as to what they did right (so as to enable them to go right). In fact, they ask: "When did we do all that wonderful stuff, Lord?" They don't have a clue.

So why do you think that is ... that they don't have a clue, I mean?

Is it because they are stupid?

No.

Is it because they are humble?

No.

I think it's something else. They don't have a clue as to when they did all those wonderful, loving, compassionate and neighborly things for Jesus, because (over the last several years of their lives) doing them had pretty much become second nature.

Note: The image of various nations streaming up the mountain of the Lord is not only found in the fourth chapter of Micah, but the second chapter of Isaiah. The language is virtually identical. To both writers, it has been passed down as an "oracle," meaning that it may not originate with either of them. Whatever be the case, both Micah and Isaiah see the oracle as a harbinger of hope and a paradigm of great promise.

As concerns the utter rejection of the goats in Matthew 25 ("and they will go away into eternal punishment"), I have dealt with this issue in other sermons and did not feel the need to return to it here.