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"Salem.....Where a Warm Welcome Awaits You"
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REFORMATION REVISED
(The following sermon was preached by Pastor Barbara Melosh on October 30, 2005.)
“You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” These are stirring words, full of promise. But they are disturbing, too. When I hear them I find myself asking Pilate’s question: “What is truth?” For we live in a world full of distortion, from the conventional exaggeration of advertising to the bias, spin, and outright lies of political life. “The truth will make you free.” Those words appear on a government building in Washington, DC—do you know which one? It’s the FBI building, and “truth” in that place means information—information that is power, used to manipulate and control. Closer to home, we live with the history and present reality of hatred and violence perpetrated in the name of God. Beware the one who is certain that God is on his side. Holy war—how much blood has been shed under that banner over the centuries. In our own time, we have seen the grotesque inversion of Christ’s sacrificial love in the sacrificial hate of suicide bombers, Islamic jihad—those who give their lives to maim and kill in the name of God. In our own time, President Bush too has used the language of holy war—American jihad. “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” These are dangerous words. None of this would have surprised Martin Luther, who saw this distortion as fundamental to our human nature—distorted by sin, we cannot see clearly; we see what we want to see and what is in our interest to see. He knew that even the Bible could be distorted. He wrote wryly, “the bible has a wax nose”—that is, it can easily be twisted to say what you want it to say. This awareness of our human limits is an important legacy of the Reformation. And yet, it too has sometimes been distorted. As a denomination Lutherans have often been inactive in public life—hesitant to act, knowing, as we do, that we so often confuse our own will with God’s truth. Luther had no idea what he was getting into on October 31, 1517, when he circulated those fiery 95 Theses. They were very bold—sharp and direct criticisms of the church—but Luther thought he had written them under the protection of his appointment as professor at Wittenberg, which allowed more challenge to Rome. When he was charged with heresy, he was shocked and frightened, and for good reason—his very life was at stake. And yet, he faced the consequences boldly, compelled by what he believed was the truth of the gospel. At his trial he spoke the words we remember on this day. “My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise, here I stand, may God help me.” Thy Word is truth—as you read on this banner set next to the pulpit. Thy Word is truth. It is a truth that does not lend itself to the finality of doctrine. It is not found by using the bible as a weapon, throwing quotations back and forth at each other. The truth of the gospel is a living truth, encountered in the world, in unexpected places. One of those places was a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and an encounter that changed the lives of two people who made history there on Dec. 1, 1955--Rosa Parks and James Blake. Rosa Parks, who died this week, wouldn’t give up her seat to a white person, in defiance of the law of segregation. James Blake was the bus driver. Rosa Parks was a seamstress coming home from a long day’s work. She was an active member of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, an organization that was then considering how to challenge the racial segregation of the buses in Montgomery. She got on the bus that evening and sat behind the first four rows that were reserved for whites. Then those rows filled up with white people. The bus stopped and a white man got on. James Blake came to Rosa Parks’ row, where she and three other black people were sitting. He told them to “make it light on yourselves” and move. It was the law. The other three got up. Rosa Parks didn’t. Blake called the police. Parks was arrested, taken to the police station, charged with violation of the segregation laws. She called E. D. Nixon, the minister who was leading the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. The next night 50 leaders of the black community met and formed the Montgomery Improvement Association. For 13 months black people in Montgomery boycotted the buses, getting to work mostly on foot. Parks appealed her conviction. The case eventually went to the Supreme Court, which declared Montgomery’s law unconstitutional. December 1, 1955. It was a turning point in American history, and a turning point in the lives of Rosa Parks and James Blake. Rosa Parks would become known for the courage, dignity, and conviction of her action on the bus that day. James Blake would become known as the driver who had upheld the law of segregation. When Blake died in 2002, his wife Edna bitterly recalled this legacy. "All that mess got out on him -- I don't appreciate it at all," she said. "None of that mess they said was true. Everybody loved him. He was a good, true man and a churchgoer."
James Blake was a churchgoer. What did he hear there? Apparently nothing that caused him to question the segregation of his city or his own place in it. For Blake was a man who was known for his zealous enforcement of the law of segregation. He was known in Montgomery as a bus driver who often humiliated and harassed black passengers. Rosa Parks had encountered him before. In 1943—12 years before—he had put her off a bus he was driving, and she had taken pains to avoid him after that. On Dec. 1 one bus had already gone by and she wanted to get home, so she got on James Blake’s bus.
Commenting on the event afterwards, Blake stated, "I wasn't trying to do anything to that Parks woman except do my job. She was in violation of the city codes, so what was I supposed to do? That damn bus was full and she wouldn't move back. I had my orders.”
He was enforcing the law of Alabama. But hear the words of Jeremiah: …says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.
James Blake was a churchgoer, but on the job he enforced the laws of Alabama, not God’s law. Well, 1955 was a long time ago now, and it’s no secret that many churches in the south were not challenging racism. “Thy word is truth.” When we hear God’s truth here, does it make a difference in our lives outside these walls? Does the church as a community have anything to say about the burning questions of our own time? Yesterday after I thought I had finished this sermon I had an encounter with a man I met on the street here. We started talking and I told him I was the pastor at Salem. Turned out he had been to confirmation here, a while ago. He asked where I had come from. I told him I’d lived in Wilmington and in Washington, DC. And then he said, “Oh, you’ll like it here in this neighborhood—we’re all white people. Well, except for some of Them that comes into the park.” He knew only two things about me: that I was a Christian pastor, and that I was white. If he had stumbled on the sidewalk and let out a “damn it,” I’m pretty sure he would have been embarrassed and all apologies. I’m a pastor, after all, and everybody worries about not cussing when a pastor is around. But it didn’t occur to him that a Christian pastor might be offended by his casual racism. In fact he obviously assumed that I would agree with him. I’m white, after all. We have a lot to answer for, we who call ourselves “church”. Rosa Parks was a churchgoer too. She described her state of mind on that evening of December 1. "when that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night. I felt all the meanness of every white driver I'd seen who'd been ugly to me and other black people through the years I'd known on the buses in Montgomery. I felt a light suddenly shine through the darkness. "All I could think about, really and truly, was the Lord would help me through all of this.” After the SC decision, Rosa rode the bus in Montgomery and sat wherever she wanted to. But she couldn’t get a job in that city and she and her husband moved. James Blake stayed in Montgomery and continued to drive the buses for 19 years, until he retired. Both of them are dead now. And now Blake and Parks have met each other again, in a place where they are no longer remembered for what they did. They’re sitting next to each other on the bus now, both of them free. "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."
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