Sermon - Stand For Something  (ML King Sunday)

         I have long lived by the maxim that it’s always better to ask forgiveness than permission. Especially when it comes to telling Yogi Berra stories.

         One night, after a ball game, Yogi went out for pizza with his baseball buddies.  Each ballplayer ordered a pizza, Yogi ordered a large.  Looking at Yogi, the server said: “would you like that cut into four or eight slices.”   Yogi thought about it for a moment and said, “four. I don’t think I can eat eight.”

         Whether slicing pizza or a slice of life, the better part of reality is perception. After all, “We see life not as it is, but as we are.”   

           When I was eight years old my family moved from southern to northern California where my father had been called to a church in Menlo Park. But we couldn't afford to live in Menlo Park so we moved to nearby East Palo Alto.  East Palo Alto is not Palo Alto. Palo Alto reminds me of Evanston.  It is very pretty and of course, the home of Stanford University.

            But East Palo Alto is not so affluent, and it is not on the other side of the tracks, but on the other side of the Bay Shore Freeway.  We moved to East Palo Alto in 1956. It was then 85% African American. I was one of two white kids in my fourth grade classroom.

            During that time, newspaper headlines screamed stories about racism, segregation and civil rights. But I don’t recall being aware of the tumult.  And I don’t recall being particularly race conscious. Being a white kid in a black town didn’t make much of an impression. I had friends and we played together.  That was pretty much it.  I do remember being aware of being in a minority, which wasn’t unpleasant, just an obvious fact of life.  I do recall being envious of the beautiful, dark, chocolate skin of my friends.  After all, I wanted to be like everyone else.   

          Once my parents gathered enough resources we moved across the freeway into predominantly white Menlo Park.  But those few years in East Palo Alto gave me an invaluable perspective on race.  Later, my junior and senior high schools were predominantly white. Because of my experience in East Palo, I prided myself in understanding what Black students felt like in being in the minority.  When someone uttered a racist remark I always spoke up.  When someone made a bigoted statement I challenged them.   In that tumultuous time I was pretty proud of myself for being on the right side of things.               

           After graduating from high school, I went away to a Liberal Arts college in Kansas.  As an 18 year old freshman, I sat one day in the student union smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee, just like an adult.  The juke box was playing at its usual high volume.  The song was “Dancing in the Streets” by Martha and the Vandellas.  Through one of the doors came a group of a half dozen black students. Their presence was announced by their boisterous entry.  They were black, proud and loud. Dancing into the room, they yelled, whooped and sang along – they weren’t dancing in the streets.  They were dancing in the student union.  They were doing their thing.  They were raucous and obnoxious.  The white students ceased their conversations.  I remember sitting there feeling irritated and agitated.  They carried on as if to say, “look at us, we are so cool!”  I remember thinking to myself, “Who do these black people think they are? Why are they doing that? Who do they think they are?” In spite of my experience growing up in East Palo Alto, as a freshman in college, like most people, I suddenly saw the world in black and white terms.  

All of which taught me that racism is an air borne virus.  It’s contagious.  Supremacist assumptions are endemic to this culture—they seep into our lives even if we think we are above it.   As Cornell West put it, “the brute fact about the American past and present is that this society is a chronically racist, sexist, homophobic one.”   None of us are above it.  We are all tempted to see ourselves as better or superior to somebody else.  It’s easier to do this if you are in the majority. But none of us is exempt from the superiority impulse. 

      Even so, the superiority impulse is not limited to race, class or gender.  It can be triggered by practically anything.  Not long ago while driving down Sheridan Road, this white guy pulled up behind me and leaned on his horn, trying to get me to go faster.  For whatever reason he was in a hurry and I was observing the speed limit.  So I decided to get his goat. I put on my brakes, which set him off even more.  He pulled out to pass, yelled obscenities and flipped me off.  He couldn’t understand why this driver in front of him was such an ignoramus.  I couldn’t understand why he was such a dolt.  In a matter of a few seconds we were both sucked into the downward spiral of alienation.  To him I was the Other and he became the Other to me.   

          The Other can appear anytime, anywhere.  The Other may appear when someone cuts us off from traffic, when someone is loud and boisterous. The Other can appear while we are standing in line at the grocery store. Sometimes the Other shows who’s a part of our church community.  The Other can even show up in our homes.  The Other can appear anywhere and everywhere.    

         The presence of the Interfaith Peace Couriers today reminds us that over the past few years we have learned just how widespread government sanctioned torture is. Not only are people being tortured in the war on terror, but there have been recent public disclosures of the torture of inmates in US prisons.  It’s all well documented.  Torture gets carried out because the torturers are unable to see you in me, me in you.  When we are unable to see ourselves in one another—that person becomes the Other—a stranger, an alien, an outsider.  And it’s all a matter of perception.     

        Alienation is a perspective that reflects our deeper spiritual crisis. Why is it so easy to feel alienated? Why are we so easily set against one another? Allow me to offer analogy:  in geology, a fault line is the fracture that runs through a body of rock.  It is a weak spot; it’s the place where the rocks slip, where they separate.  It’s the place where the earth quakes.  Great spiritual teachers say there is a fault line in each and every human being.  The fault line is where the mind meets the soul. The mind sees itself as separate from the world.  The soul sees only unity in all things.  The mind compares, competes, retreats and defends.  The soul only sees you in me, me in you.    

            Living more at the level of the mind than the soul, we easily find fault with others. Living more at the level of mind than soul makes it not uncommon to feel separate and alienated from others.  ML King said “we are all interdependent and interrelated, what effects one directly, effects all indirectly.  For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.  And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.  This is the way God’s universe is made.  This is the way it is structured.”  The knowledge of our interdependence—to know that we are a part of each other, is soul knowledge. When something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us. 

         Everything is interdependent and interrelated, which suggests that the world will not change unless I also change.   

         There is the story about Nasrudin who, finding himself in old age, joins a group of friends in a tea shop. Looking back on his life he said, "When I was young I was fiery, I wanted to awaken everyone. I prayed to God to give me the strength to change the world. "In mid life I awoke one day and realized my life was half over and I had changed no one. So I prayed to God to give me the strength to change those close around me who so much needed it." Alas, now I am old and my prayer is simpler. 'God', I ask, 'please give me the strength to at least change myself.' “Of course, we would all prefer to change the world rather than to change ourselves.  But if you boil down the great themes articulated by Martin Luther King, there is a clear and consistent message.  The world will not change unless we, ourselves change.  As Gandhi put it, we must become the change we wish to see. 

          Today’s Gospel reading is taken from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.  Jesus says, if you will bring forth what it within you it will save you.” Only soul knowledge, only the deep knowledge of our profound and mysterious unity within us can create wholeness around us.  Where there is no unity consciousness there is torture and war.  Where there is no unity consciousness there is racism, sexism and homophobia.  Where there is no unity consciousness there is violence, animosity, alienation and arrogance.  But, if we work on ourselves, as we change, the world around us will change. 

          Martin Luther King Jr. had a particular name for unity consciousness.  He called it the beloved community.  For Dr. King the Beloved Community is not some lofty utopian goal.  The beloved community is not a peaceable kingdom where lions lie down with lambs. The idea of a lion lying down with a lamb is a quaint thought, but, the truth is, if you put a lion with a lamb, it won’t be long until the lamb becomes lunch.  The beloved community is not based on a fantasy. It’s based on the conviction that human problems are created by human beings and can be overcome by human solutions. .  We are collectively responsible for the human problems of poverty, hunger, racism and all forms of bigotry.  The beloved community is rooted in the belief that human beings can change.  The world will never be perfect but we can figure out how to live together in mutual respect as sisters and brothers.   The world will never be perfect but we can create a world of less violence and more dignity for every human being. In the beloved community, non-violence is not just a good idea, it’s the number one priority.  In 1956 Dr. King spoke of the Beloved Community as the end goal of nonviolent action.  He said, “The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community.  It is this type of understanding that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age.”  Learning to live in the beloved community doesn’t take months or even years but decades, lifetimes, perhaps centuries.  Our job is to help move it along, to make it more real today than yesterday. 

           Malcolm X once said, If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. Stand for something. Don’t fall for the lie that the world can be divided into Us and Them.  Stand for something. Stand for the beloved community. Because human unity is not something we must create – it’s already here. We have only to stand for it, together.

  Blessed be