I (Still) Have a Dream January 20, 2019 Trillium United Church Caledon Psalm 36:5-10 1Corinthians 12:3-13

Psalm 36:5-10

Your steadfast love, O God, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.  Your righteousness is like mighty mountains, your judgments  are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O God. How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them  drink from the river of your delights.  For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light. O continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your salvation to the upright of heart!

 1 Corinthians 12:3-13

Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Let Jesus be cursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

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In December of 1955, Rose Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to move to the back of a city bus. Leaders in the African-American community organized a city-wide transportation boycott, and turned to the young black pastor, Martin Luther King, Jr. as the leader. King was just 26 years old, and was torn by issues of call - to ministry, to discipleship. God called him to a vastly different ministry - and the rest is history. He became President of a new organisation called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He organised the great civil rights marches. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. His call spelled the end of his life, figuratively and literally speaking

On this day in 1968, singer Eartha Kitt spoke at the White house luncheon, on juvenile delinquency and crime. She said that it was not an issue of delinquency, but one of anger. Young people are angry, she said, because their parents are angry….because there is a war going on that they don’t understand….you send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street.

The retaliation for this honest critique of the war in Viet Nam was so swift and strong that it was only a matter of hours before her career in the US was ruined for 10 years.  The CIA continually tried to undermine her. She commented that although she never regretted speaking out, she learned that “IF you tell the truth – in a country that says you’re entitled to tell the truth – you get your face slapped and you get put out of work.”

But even further back than these – Viola Desmond, a Canadian businesswoman of Black Nova Scotian descent, challenged racial discrimination at the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow by refusing to leave her seat in a whites-only area of the theatre.

Carrie Best, black Canadian journalist and social activist. Portia White, Canadian operatic soprano.

How many of us have heard of these people?  Why not?

Canada in fact had its slavery and segregation. Slavery was legal in this country until 1834 when slavery was declared illegal in all British colonies. Technically.  Africville, and Cole Harbour in Nova Scotia are two locations where so -called “freed” slaves were sent to live. Segregation was legal. In 1965 the last segregated black school was closed in Merlin, Ontario. We have a Canadian KKK.

Jesus often talked about time, but not chronos time, which gives us calendars, clocks, human aging. He  said  “The realm of God has come near.”  In today’s Gospel  from John, at the wedding in Cana, he says very cryptically “my time has not yet come”.  I believe he was talking about Kairos time, or God’s time.  I think he was astute enough to know something was coming, and that he would play a role. 

 Leaders in the civil rights movement, leaders in most civil rights movements, were suddenly in God’s time – everything came together in that one moment when they stepped beyond what they thought they were.  Martin Luther King Jr. commented that at root, he always thought of himself as a Baptist preacher.  I would be willing to bet Viola Desmond, Rosa Parks only thought of themselves as ordinary people.  But in ‘kairos’ time, God’s time – they were called into something else. And gifts they hadn’t ever thought they had emerged. The strength and courage to respond. The gifts of the Spirit given at the time of need.

I got to thinking about all the calls to follow, throughout the Bible. Moses, Abraham. Joshua, Esther, Miriam, Mary, Joseph, Jesus,  Peter, John, and all those through the years who have been confronted with a “God’s time” scenario. Maybe the fishermen recognised at some deep spiritual level that this was Kairos time. Mark records Jesus using the word "kairos”. God’s time. So when he says “Follow me” he is saying “turn from what you are now and embrace this good news, become something more." Kairos time means the right time, in which your whole life is caught up in a moment, when everything crystallizes, and everything hinges on whether you say yes or no.

And even if not on such a seemingly grand scale, there comes for all a time that is Kairos time - a time when we say yes and trust.  Martin Luther King recognised that beyond a call to ministry, God called him into an unknown future.   

So, are we ever going to face such moments? Ordinarily I would say no, but in today’s political and racial climate, I am not so sure.  We thought, with the civil rights movement and the changes in legislation, integration – that the world had changed for the better. We thought those issues had been addressed and would gradually cease to be issues at all. Yet we still have a disproportionate number of people of colour being stopped by police, being arrested for nothing, in Toronto and elsewhere. We see on the news young people from a Catholic school abusing a Native elder who is a Viet Nam veteran. We think maybe that’s the US, not us BUT in Manitoba the majority of children removed from their parents are still First Nations – even if there is no reason to remove them. 

If we saw a person of colour being abused, or discriminated against, would we say something? If we saw a young Muslim woman in a hijab being attacked or harassed on the street, would we do something? Because these situations call us into God’s time – where there is a call to follow the way of Jesus.Even sometimes at personal risk.

The Psalmist says  “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.” These are the words of an ordinary person, in some way gifted and called to write – poetry for all of us. Something offered which benefits more than just one. A call to use gifts we maybe don’t know we have till God’s time comes for us – and we are called to respond.

My colleague in Deep River, Connecticut, Rev. Tim Haut has written this poem - CALLED

We are called

to leave behind our solitary searching,
to put on that single garment of destiny -
the uniform of faithfulness -
worn by creatures great and small,
old and forgotten,
young and eager,
broken and bewildered,
spirited and set on fire:
sisters and brothers who share not race or tongue,
but whose hearts are claimed by love,
signed by a cross.
Our future is together, arm in arm,
finding healing as we heal,
knowing freedom in our forgiving.
We are the strangest travellers:
seeking no reward at trail's end,
As long as we know the joy of journeying with him.
We are called
Disciples.
We are called His.


Sources:
1. “Called and Named” January 18, 2009 Rev. Fran Ota
2. www.zinnedproject.org
3. Poem by Rev. Timothy Haut, Deep River, Connecticut. January 18, 2009.