Martin Luther King

Repair and Restore

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Repair and Restore” Isaiah 58:1-12

On December 4, 1967, Martin Luther King was in Atlanta for a press conference. Dr. King had come to Georgia to announce his newest initiative in the pursuit of American social justice, The Poor People’s Campaign. In recent years, his activism had taken him north to tackle the problems of racism and poverty endemic in our cities. He chose to live in solidarity with the poor, moving Coretta and their four children to a tiny walk-up apartment in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West-side of Chicago, a community better known by its local nickname “Slumdale.”  The entryway of the building where the Kings lived was used as a public toilet, and a hastily applied coat of paint couldn’t hide years of neglect that are the hallmark of low income, substandard housing. In Chicago, while peacefully demonstrating with an interracial group in Marquette Park, Dr. King was hit by a stone, hurled by an anonymous hate-filled hand. He had fewer friends in those days. Malcolm X had rejected his non-violent ethic as too soft and slow to wrest change from white oppressors. One-time white political allies, like LBJ, had come to see King’s radical commitment to the poor and his call for economic change as dangerous. When he stepped up to the microphone that night in Ebenezer Baptist Church, Dr. King looked tired and in need of a friend as he called the nation to “the total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty.”

Dr. King, in his justice work across the United States, had come to understand that the problem of inequality and injustice is not just about race. It’s about economics. Even as visible lines of color were being crossed and overcome, invisible lines of hopelessness and want kept generations of Americans of all races bound in poverty and need. King saw neighbors “locked inside ghettos of material privation and spiritual debilitation” in urban ghettos, in southern shanties, in rural small towns. Everywhere there was a yawning chasm between prosperity’s children and those for whom the American Dream was unfulfilled, whose lives were defined by hunger, low wages, and substandard housing. 

With his Poor People’s Campaign, King resolved to bring Americans together across dividing lines of race to change the plight of the poor. He envisioned a massive, widespread campaign of civil disobedience aimed at the federal government. The poor and disenfranchised of our nation, and those who stood in solidarity with them, would march on Washington, DC, beginning in ten key cities and five rural areas. They would make a cross-country pilgrimage to the very seat of national power.  Once there, poor folk would peacefully demonstrate for economic reform by day and camp out in a massive tent city by night.  They would stay, as a visible witness to the breach in America’s social fabric, until change was enacted and the promise of dignity was made real for all. Dr. King saw this movement as a direct response to God’s challenge to care for poor and vulnerable neighbors. “It must not be just black people,” King told the press in December 1967, “it must be all poor people.  We must include American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and even poor whites.”

The plight of the poor and oppressed is nothing new. In our reading from the Hebrew Bible, God through the prophet Isaiah took Israel to task for their neglect of the poor.  “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

Isaiah’s bold words were addressed to good church folks, Israelites who had returned from exile in Babylon. God the great liberator, who had long ago freed the people from Pharaoh’s yoke and led them through the Sinai wilderness into a land flowing with milk and honey, God had again been at work to free Israel from captivity. God had raised up Cyrus of Persia to topple the Babylonian empire and release Israel from bondage. A hurting people had crossed desert sands and through the Jordan’s muddy waters, returning home to their Promised Land. There, they began to repair the walls and repave the streets. Their rebuilding efforts were only outmatched by their piety. They worshipped and fasted, in penance and thanksgiving, seeking to be holy as God is holy. 

Yet as God looked at our Israelite ancestors, God saw something terribly wrong with the community. While some in Israel returned from exile to find prosperity and a promising future, others had found only want and privation. God brought liberation to Israel, yet there in the very land meant to be a blessing for all its citizens there was hunger, poverty, and oppression. Children went to bed hungry. Widows had no place to call home. People with disabilities begged in the streets. Despite their fasting and outward signs of piety, the Israelites had missed the point of what it really means to be a faithful people. They could not love God with worship and fasting if they did not love their neighbors, especially their hurting and at-risk neighbors.

Isaiah teaches us that it is only when we choose the fast of righteous living that we can be healed. It is only through care, compassion, and justice that a nation may mend the gaping holes in the fabric of society.  It is only by knowing that our well-being is inseparably bound to the well-being of all our neighbors that we begin to understand God’s vision for our world. As long as Israel endured as a land where want co-existed with plenty, the promise of the land would remain unfulfilled.  Sabbath day piety must be matched by week day action that feeds the hungry, houses the homeless, clothes the naked, and welcomes all God’s children into the bounty of the Promised Land. It is only then that we become repairers of the breach and restorers of the streets to live in. It is only then that our light shines.

58 years after Dr. King’s insistence that the breach in American society be healed, the chasm between rich and poor gapes wider than ever in our nation.  Nowhere is that more apparent than right here in the North Country where multi-million-dollar camps coexist with rusted out trailers, dirt-floored cabins, and substandard, tumble-down housing. In Franklin County, 23% of our children and 13% of our seniors live in poverty.  9,870 people in Franklin County live with food insecurity.  That means 9,870 people don’t have the economic resources to put enough food on the table each month to meet their basic nutritional needs. Those numbers do not include the recent cuts to SNAP benefits. Even families who live above the poverty line struggle. 80% of our children are eligible for federal nutrition programs.

We know the two Americas that Dr. King described, and we are challenged today to be repairers of the breach and restorers of the streets to live in. We are needed to stand in solidarity with the poor and oppressed and to share the time, talents, and wealth entrusted to us for the benefit of all God’s children. We may worship God on Sunday, but we also worship God on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and more when we reach out to care and make a helping difference in the lives of our at-risk neighbors. We are called to join God’s work of healing and transformation for our community, our nation, and our world.

We will never know how Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign would have changed of our nation. One month before the campaign was to be unleashed, five months after that press conference in Atlanta, an assassin’s bullet found Dr. King on the balcony of a Memphis motel, ending his life and cutting the Poor People’s Movement off at the knees.  Under the leadership of King’s old friend Ralph Abernethy, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference orchestrated a Poor People’s demonstration in Washington, DC. A tent city, Resurrection City, sprang up on the green lawn of the Lincoln Memorial. But after 40 days and 40 nights of non-violent direct action against a recalcitrant government, the movement crumbled, and the poor returned to their slums and tumble-down cabins, hopeless, silenced, and rejected. Dr. King’s great second phase in the Civil Rights Movement remained unfulfilled. The gap between rich and poor stood as a seemingly irreparable breach.

But the story doesn’t have to end there. Does it? Help and healing are more needed now than perhaps any time since Dr. King stood at the microphone in the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Over the last three and a half decades, the richest 1% of households in the United States have accumulated almost 1,000 times more wealth than the poorest 20% of Americans, and economic inequality is getting worse at a rapid pace. Our nation needs people of faith that love God and stand in solidarity with those who still wait for a seat at prosperity’s table. Are we with Dr. King? Are you with me? May we go forth to be repairers of the breach and restorers of the streets to live in.

Resources

Jonathan Alther, “King’s Final Years,” in Newsweek, Jan. 9, 2006

Josie Cox. “Income Inequality Is Surging In The U.S., New Oxfam Report Shows” in Forbes, Nov. 3, 2025. Accessed online at https://www.forbes.com/sites/josiecox/2025/11/03/income-inequality-is-surging-in-the-us-new-oxfam-report-shows/

Kevin Thurun, “On the Shoulders of King,” an editorial, in The Other Side, Jan-Feb 2003.

Martin Luther King, Jr.  The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., “Press Conference Announcing the Poor People’s Campaign,” Atlanta, GA, Dec. 4, 1967.

Statistics for Franklin County were obtained from Census Reporter and Feeding America online at https://censusreporter.org/profiles/05000US36033-franklin-county-ny/ and https://map.feedingamerica.org/county/2019/overall/new-york/county/franklin

Amy G. Oden. “Commentary on Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12)” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 9, 2014. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-isaiah-581-9-10-12

Gregory Cuellar. “Commentary on Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12)” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 9, 2014. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-isaiah-581-9a-9b-12-2

Photo by Flavia Jacquier on Pexels.com

Extraordinary Love

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Extraordinary Love” Luke 6:27-38

On June 17, 2015, twenty-one-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof entered the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and made his way to a basement classroom where Reverend Clementa Pinckney was leading the Wednesday night Bible Study. Dylann was warmly welcomed. He took a seat next to Rev. Pinckney and listened silently for forty-five minutes. As Bible Study participants rose to hold hands for a closing prayer, Dylann Roof pulled out a hand gun and opened fire, killing nine church members and wounding three others.

Dylann had been radicalized in a classroom of his own making, doom scrolling daily through white nationalist websites. He penned a manifesto that stated his belief that the white race was in danger and “no one [was] doing anything but talking on the internet.” In Dylann Roof’s mind, someone needed to take action, and he was the man to do it. When asked about his motive for the attack, Dylann Roof said that he had hoped to ignite a race war. He has never apologized or repented for his actions.

“Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful… Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Plain are among his most challenging and uncomfortable teachings. In the first century world, members of a community looked to their leaders to set the moral standard for their conduct—a synagogue leader, a wise rabbi, the family patriarch or matriarch, perhaps even Herod or the emperor set the moral tone for those who followed. But Jesus told his followers that they must look to God as their ethical guide and seek to release people from the retribution that they may deserve.

In November of 1957, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reflected on Jesus’ words in his sermon, “Love Your Enemies,” he emphasized that love is the ethical choice that Christians must make in a world where we may not like our experience. King reminded his congregation that Christian love is agape, the selfless love of God working in the lives of men. Instead of retaliating when we are mistreated, we can choose to extend to others the love that God has for us. That divine love can live in us and enable us to reach out to others. Indeed, King wrote, you can love the enemy, even when you do not like what he is doing to you. You can love your enemy who denies your right to vote. You can love your enemy who refuses to pay you a living wage. You can love your enemy who threatens you with lynching. King believed that when we dare to put the selfless love of God to work in dealing with our opponents, we can wear out the hater, break down barriers, and redeem the enemy.

Long before June 17, 2015, the Mother Emanuel Church contended with hate. The church was founded in 1816 by free and enslaved Black people of Charleston who wished to worship together as a community of color. Six years later, church member Denmark Vesey, a freed slave who worked as a carpenter, planned and organized an uprising of city and plantation Blacks. Inspired by the successful revolt of Haitian slaves in 1790, Vesey called for rebels to attack guardhouses and arsenals, seize arms, and free the enslaved people. Authorities were tipped off on the eve of the insurrection, and Vesey with thirty-five of his conspirators, many of them members of Mother Emanuel Church, were hanged. The church was burned to the ground and Black houses of worship were banned. The congregation of Mother Emanuel met in secret from 1822 until 1865, after the Civil War. Later, in the 20th century, Mother Emanuel faced threats of violence for hosting prominent Black leaders, like Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King Jr., and organizing significant civil rights events, like Coretta Scott King’s march for local hospital workers in 1966. Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed by Dylann Roof, taught that despite a history of suffering, Mother Emanuel was a place that sought to continue to “work on the hearts, minds, and spirits of all people.”

“Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful… Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Our world today works in transactional and reciprocal ways. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. We don’t get mad; we just get even. Payback time is gonna’ come. What we experience dictates how we will respond. It’s an escalating pattern of retribution that seems to never end. We find it hard to make different choices. And if we were to look to national leaders to set the moral tone for our conduct, then we would hate our opponents, and we wouldn’t want the best for them.

Truly, the only way to step out of the spiral of vengeance and hate is to consider the mercy of God to us. Though we are sinners, deserving of judgment, God chose to become flesh and enter the world’s darkness. In Jesus, God chose to live for us and show to us the way of agape. In the ultimate act of self-giving love, on a merciless cross, flanked by common criminals, Jesus revealed that God loves us enough to die for us. In the enormity of God’s costly love for us, we begin to see another way. We begin to see that only love can heal hearts, transform an enemy into a friend, and make a changed future possible.

48 hours after having lost mothers, sisters, sons, husbands, and wives, members of the Mother Emanuel Church appeared in court for Dylann Roof’s bond hearing. It was the first time any of them would come face to face with the perpetrator of the hate crime that had robbed them of their beloved ones. The judge presiding over the hearing invited them to make a statement, should they wish. First to speak was Nadine Collier, who lost her mother Ethel Lance. Fighting back tears, Nadine said, “I forgive you … You took something really precious from me. I will never talk to her ever again, I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you and have mercy on your soul.” Other church members followed suit and said that they, too, forgave the gunman.

Chris Singleton, an eighteen-year-old who lost his Mom in the mass shooting, wasn’t in the courtroom on that day. He was playing minor league baseball for the Chicago Cubs. He wasn’t following the news and had no idea that the families had decided to issue statements of forgiveness at the hearing, but half a country away, Chris came to the same conclusion. He needed to forgive. Chris says he hopes that the choice for mercy has made a difference. Chris says, “After seeing what happened [at the church] and the reason why it happened, and after seeing how people could forgive, I truly hope that people will see that it wasn’t just us saying words. I know, for a fact, that it was something greater than us, using us to bring our city together.”

Ronald J. Allen, who taught preaching and New Testament at the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis for many years, taught that putting Jesus’ ethical teaching into action can have powerful consequences for our oppressor, ourselves, and our world. In extending love and mercy to those who have wronged us, we open the door to their repentance. As Rev. Pinckney said, our mercy “works on the heart, mind, and spirit” of the other and awakens the possibility for change. In extending God’s love and mercy to others, our personal experience of God’s mercy deepens. We understand that no matter how misdirected or lost we may become, there is always a way back for us, a second chance, a new beginning. Thank you, Lord. Beyond working out reconciliation between two people, when we put Jesus’ ethics into action, we embody the promise of the Kingdom of God. The world begins to imagine God’s realm where we “wear out the hater, break down barriers, and redeem the enemy.” What a wonderful world it will be.

This June marked the tenth anniversary of Dylann Roof’s assault on Mother Emanuel Church. Rev. Pinckney’s widow Jennifer says this was a tough year. Her oldest daughter graduated from college and her 16-year-old went to her first prom without her dad to see her off. The church is in the process of building a memorial to her husband and the other eight victims. They have also purchased a nearby house to serve as a museum for the outpouring of love that Mother Emanuel received from people all around the world in the wake of the shooting: quilts, prayer shawls, artwork, a hand embroidered chair, crosses, banners, music, and more. Asked what the world should take away from this tenth anniversary of Dylann Roof’s hateful act, Jennifer Pinckney said, “The world needs to remember, to come together. We got to love one another. We got to move forward and work together.” She sounded a lot like Jesus.

“Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful… Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

Resources

US Justice Department. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V. DYLANN STORM ROOF in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, Charleston Division. July 20, 2015

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Denmark Vesey”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Jun. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Denmark-Vesey. Accessed 4 October 2025

Cory Collins. “The Miseducation of Dylann Roof” in Learning for Justice, Issue 57, Fall 2017. Southern Poverty Law Center. Accessed online at The Miseducation of Dylann Roof | Learning for Justice

Rasha Ali. “Five years after Charleston church massacre: How ‘Emanuel’ reveals the power of forgiveness” in USA Today, June 17, 2019. Charleston church attack and the power of forgiveness in ‘Emanuel’

Claude Atcho. “Mother Emanuel and the Witness of Black Christian Faith” in Christianity Today, June 5, 2025. Accessed online at Mother Emanuel and the Witness of Black Christian Faith – Christianity Today

Billie Jean Shaw. “‘Stronger than hate’: How the son of a Mother Emanuel victim chose to embrace forgiveness” on WIS10 TV, June 16, 2025. Accessed online at ‘Stronger than hate’: How the son of a Mother Emanuel victim chose to embrace forgiveness

Ronald Allen. “Commentary on Luke 6:27-38” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 24, 2019.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.

Sarah Henrick. “Commentary on Luke 6:27-38” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 20, 2022.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.

Mary Hinkle Shore. “Commentary on Luke 6:27-38” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 23, 2025.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.

Luke 6:27-38

27 “But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; 28 bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive payment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. 37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Image source: https://religionnews.com/2019/06/06/mother-emanuels-forgiveness-narrative-is-complicated-says-reporter-turned-author/

To Carry the Gospel of Freedom

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “To Carry the Gospel of Freedom” Luke 4:16-21

On Easter Sunday 1963, Martin Luther King sat in a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. King had come to Birmingham at the request of the local Black community to call attention to their experience of injustice. Birmingham was known as the most segregated city in the nation. Local businesses blatantly displayed “whites only” signs, despite negotiations the prior summer to bring change. African Americans routinely experienced police brutality and injustice. The Commissioner of Public Safety was Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor, a white supremacist and ardent segregationist. Birmingham had even earned the nickname “Bombingham” because it had more unsolved bombings of Black churches and Black homes than any other community in the nation.

Dr. King didn’t preach a sermon that Easter Sunday. Instead, he wrote a public letter addressed to eight Alabama clergymen, who had published an appeal to the “Negroes” of their state, urging them to wait for change. With time on his hands and only God for a companion in his prison cell, Dr. King began to scribble his letter in the margins of the newspaper, he continued on scraps of paper smuggled to him by another Black inmate, and when he was finally able to see his attorney, he requisitioned his lawyer’s legal pad. The Letter from Birmingham Jail was a blueprint for non-violent direct action and a forceful defense of King’s protest campaign. It is now regarded as one of the greatest texts of the American civil rights movement, and it continues to inspire those who practice peaceful resistance in pursuit of justice.

Accused by white clergy of being an outside agitator come to Alabama to sow discontent, Dr. King argued in his letter that he had come to Birmingham because he was “compelled to carry the gospel of freedom,” just as Jesus carried the gospel from Nazareth to Jerusalem and the apostles carried the gospel to every corner of the Roman Empire. King was keenly aware of the interrelatedness of all communities, saying, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” whatever affects one directly touches us all indirectly. He could not turn his back on the people of Birmingham any more than Jesus could fail to confront the oppressive powers of his day.

Our reading from Luke’s gospel grants us a glimpse of Jesus in the early days of his ministry, sharing his gospel of freedom with his hometown crowd in Nazareth. Unrolling the scroll of Isaiah, Jesus found the spot where the prophet had written,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to set free those who are oppressed.”

Next, Jesus sat down, as any first century rabbi would, to interpret the words of the Prophet Isaiah for the people of Nazareth.

When I’m teaching confirmation students about mission, we read this passage. I ask the learners, “Why this reading from Isaiah 61?” There are, after all, sixty-six chapters in Isaiah’s work, but Jesus deliberately chose to read this one. I suggest to the kids that this is Jesus’ mission statement. There in his hometown as he launched his public ministry, Jesus wanted people to know who he truly was and what God called him to do. In fact, as we continue to read Luke’s gospel, its one long revelation of how Jesus would pursue his mission by identifying with the poor and lowly, feeding the hungry, healing every sort of infirmity, setting folks free from the burdens of sin and death, confronting the oppressive powers of Temple and empire, and proving God’s great love for all people on the cross. Jesus saw his mission as a holy purpose for all people. In his parting words to his friends, he exhorted them to take his good news to all nations, so that God’s love and freedom might flourish among all people.

The great 16th century Protestant Reformer Martin Luther taught that the good news is often bad news (kakevangelium) before it is good news. In other words, Jesus’ mission to bring good news to the poor, presumes the reality of poverty. And the desire to bring release to captives points to people who are unfairly treated in the court of justice. Recovery of sight to the blind reveals the failures and shortcomings of traditional healing and the costliness that puts good medical care beyond the grasp of some. Setting the oppressed free presumes the reality of oppressors, the few who exploit power to dominate and control the vulnerable. The good news is bad news. It unmasks the sin of our world as we know it. And yet, even as we face the bad news head on, we trust that God is with us in the pursuit of love and justice, and with God, victory is certain. The good news is bad news before it is good news.

In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. King expressed his disappointment not only with the clergy who urged Black Americans to wait for their oppressors to grant them liberation, but also with the “white church.” Rev. King had anticipated that his fellow Christians would be on the frontlines with their Black neighbors in pursuit of good news to the poor, release for captives, and freedom from oppression. He lamented white churches that were more devoted to order than justice, who felt entitled to paternalistically set a time table for someone else’s freedom. King cautioned that, one day, society would need to repent of the appalling silence of “good people” as much as it did of the hateful words and actions of “bad” people. King’s peaceful demonstration in Birmingham had not created the hurtful, harmful division of Black and white. He had merely brought to the surface tensions that had long existed in Birmingham and the nation. King’s gospel of freedom had to be bad news for the status quo before it could be good news for all God’s people.

Jesus’ sermon in Nazareth and Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail continue to invite faithful people to join our purpose to God’s purpose and carry the gospel of freedom into the world. It’s a particular challenge for the white mainline church because it confronts us with the sins of our society and may even point to how we have unwittingly been complicit. One of the ways that we carry that challenging gospel of freedom is through the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, which seeks wholeness for the global community by addressing poverty, violence, racism, climate change, and the crisis in immigration. Let me tell you about two innovative ministries that our donations have supported.

The first initiative is Loads of Love, which seeks to fulfill Jesus’ purpose of good news to the poor. It began with a woman named Linda, who was living with stage-4 cancer when she confessed to her pastor that she could no longer handle the laundry—the sheer volume of blankets and bedding caused by her illness. Financially strapped and already living on the edge, the expense of using coin-operated washers and driers was driving Linda’s family deeper into poverty. Linda’s predicament prompted her Presbytery to launch Loads of Love, which teams struggling families with local volunteers who can help. Rev. Carol Vickery says that her church’s laundry outreach has put them in touch with a world whose hardships they were unaware of. It comes as a shock (bad news) for people to realize how costly doing laundry can be and to know that people can’t use their SNAP benefits to buy detergent, cleaning supplies, or personal hygiene items. Loads of Love brings the good news of caring and dignity to struggling neighbors.

A second initiative is the vision of Joseph Russ, a Presbyterian Mission Worker in El Salvador, who has been instrumental in establishing a network of more than 50 churches, governmental agencies, and non-profits in the US and Central America that are seeking to alleviate the concerns of the immigration crisis. In 2014 when Russ went to El Salvador as a young adult, nearly 70,000 unaccompanied minors were turned away at the US-Mexico border. Many of those kids ended up in El Salvador, which was unable to handle the humanitarian crisis (bad news). Joseph and his partners in the International Red Cross now run a shelter program for internally displaced people and returnees with no place to go. The shelter reduces people’s exposure to violence and poverty and helps them find stability amid difficult and dangerous situations. The organization also seeks to address the root causes of poverty and violence in Central America that precipitate mass migration.

Our gifts to Presbyterian Peacemaking are one of the ways that we join our mission to Jesus’ and further the vision he set forth in that first sermon in Nazareth.

Four months after Dr. King wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail, he was joined by 250,000 supporters in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Dr. King spoke last at the rally, his voice faltering and his way unclear until Ralph Abernethy shouted out, “Martin tell them about the dream.” The eloquent words that followed have long inspired us to pursue the beautiful kingdom where people of all races may come to the table of peace, freedom, and opportunity. After the march, the speakers travelled to the White House for a brief discussion with President Kennedy, who felt the day was a victory for him as well—bolstering the chances for the passage of his civil rights bill. The following February, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was made the law of the land, despite the President’s assassination in November and a 72-day Senate filibuster. The act prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It ended segregation in public schools, public accommodations, and federally funded programs. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and put an end to Jim Crow laws. The act also established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

I suspect that if Jesus and Dr. King were with us this morning, they would tell us that the gospel of freedom remains but a dream for some, especially in all the hurting and broken places of our nation and our world where faithful people prefer order to justice and the bad news prevails. May we dare to go forth with the gospel of freedom.

Resources

Scott O’Neill. “New PC(USA) mission network launches this week” in Presbyterian News Service, March 18, 2024. Accessed online at https://www.pcusa.org/news-storytelling/news/new-pcusa-mission-network-launches-week

Presbyterian Peacemaking. PEACE & GLOBAL WITNESS Leaders Guide, 2024. Accessed online at https://pcusa.org/sites/default/files/2024-11/PGW24%20Leaders%20Guide.pdf

David S. Jacobsen. “Commentary on John 4:16-21” in Preaching This Week, Jan. 27, 2019. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-luke-414-21-4

Karoline Lewis. “Commentary on John 4:16-21” in Preaching This Week, Jan. 27, 2013. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-luke-414-21

Martin Luther King, Jr. Why We Can’t Wait. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1963, 1964.

Luke 4:14-21

14 Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region. 15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Image source: https://www.cnn.com/2013/04/16/us/king-birmingham-jail-letter-anniversary/index.html

A Heart for the Lord

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “A Heart for the Lord” 1 Samuel 15:34-6:13

I’ve presided at more than 120 funerals since coming to Saranac Lake in 2005. That averages out to half-a-dozen or so each year. Some of those services have been for church members or friends of the church. Some have been for community members who have come to see me as their pastor. Some have been for complete strangers. All have felt the need for Christian burial and a celebration of life before the Lord.

In obituaries, eulogies, or the sort of spontaneous sharing that often accompanies the time of death, many things are celebrated about the loved one who has died. We hear stories about athletic achievement, workplace accomplishments, good grades, and advanced degrees. We praise intelligence, ingenuity, and special talents. We are certain to note titles earned, awards and prizes garnered, and times of leadership in the community. We celebrate a host of children and grandchildren, beauty, great smiles, and even good hair. For us, these are the marks of a blessed and well-lived life.

Our reading from First Samuel suggests that God may see things a little differently. It was the earliest days of the Israelite monarchy. The Prophet Samuel had advocated for God to anoint a king to gather together the twelve tribes of Israel and shape them into a powerful nation. God Almighty had resisted at first. After all, wasn’t God alone king over the people (1 Sam. 8:7)? But God relented, and the oil of blessing had been poured out upon Saul, a son of an influential family of the northern tribe of Benjamin. Saul looked the part: handsome, prophetic, a head taller than anyone else. People looked at Saul and said, “That boy! He is one impressive young man!”

But over Saul’s forty-two years of kingship, God ultimately saw things differently. It all came to a crisis over their neighbors the Amalekites. God had instructed Saul to wage holy war, utterly destroying the Amalekites, just as the Amalekites had tried to destroy the Hebrew people during their vulnerable years as wilderness wanderers. Yet, Saul preserved the life of the Amalekite king, saved the choicest livestock and best plunder, and then erected a monument to himself atop Mt. Carmel. When confronted with his pride and disobedience, Saul lied. It was time for a new leader.

The reluctant Samuel was dispatched to the household of Jesse of Bethlehem, who had an abundance of sons. What followed sounds a little like an Ancient Near East beauty contest. A parade of seven eligible sons was brought before the prophet. Eliab, the oldest, was tall and handsome, like Saul. Abindadab came next, perhaps a great huntsman and provider, followed by Shamah, perhaps the smartest man in all of Bethlehem. Each of the seven sons was impressive; each had the prophet reaching for his flask of anointing oil. But God said “No.”

God had different priorities for leadership, qualities not necessarily revealed in external beauty, strength, or intelligence. God saw the heart (lev). In the Hebrew understanding, the heart embodied and directed the whole person. Our soul, mind, body, feelings, will, conscience, and character were all believed to originate in the heart. God wanted a king with a heart for God. Regardless of their accomplishments, those first seven sons didn’t have what it would take.

David was considered so inconsequential that he wasn’t even invited to the party that day. Instead, he was off in the fields, tending his father’s sheep. When David arrived, he must have looked unlikely—just a ruddy shepherd boy, small and insignificant, in a dirty tunic and bare feet. As soon as Samuel laid eyes on David, the Lord spoke, “Get up, Samuel! This is the one. Anoint him.” At last, here was the son who would have a heart for God.

It’s a story that gets us thinking about our own hearts. We no longer attribute to the heart the qualities and abilities that our ancestors in the faith did, but I think we can surmise what God was looking for in David.

When we have a heart for God, we don’t get caught up in the externals. We’re not worried about being the most beautiful or popular. We’re not preoccupied with being the best athlete, the top of the class, or the person who dies with the biggest bank account. We aren’t driven by pride, the compulsion to please others, or an appetite for the limelight.

When we have a heart for God, we listen for God’s wisdom and leading. We take it to the Lord in prayer. We feast upon God’s word. We praise God in worship. We prioritize God in our lives, making the Lord the center of our professional identity, our families, even our civic engagement.

When we have a heart for God, we become obedient, even when the ways of God are at odds with the siren call of the world. It’s an ethical commitment to honesty—no cutting corners. It’s a moral call to integrity in our relationships. It’s the willingness to surrender our purpose to God’s purpose, to know that it isn’t always about us, and we won’t always get what we want. Instead, we choose to love God and love neighbor with all our heart, mind, soul and strength.

When we have a heart for God, we find our pattern, our role model, in Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of David. From the world’s perspective, Jesus didn’t have what it took to be God’s anointed one. He was from a humble community and of questionable birth. He labored long years as a carpenter, not a Torah scholar. He didn’t have a home, a college degree, a big bank account, or a mega-church. He was an itinerant preacher, who identified with the last, the least, the hungry, the vulnerable, the demon-possessed, the child. Yet the very heart of God beat within his chest, calling us to lives of love and humble service.

On February 4, 1968, Martin Luther King preached the message “Drum Major Instinct” from the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA. Looking at the life of Christ, King concluded that everyone can be great, not through outstanding natural abilities or our impressive accomplishments but rather through our capacity to follow Jesus. King said, “Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.”

We only need a heart like David’s, a heart like Jesus’, a heart like Dr. King’s: a heart for God.

It’s important to note that having a heart for God doesn’t mean we are perfect, impeccable paragons of virtue who never stray from righteousness. David notoriously abused power and failed as a father. Dr. King was accused of plagiarism and strayed from his marriage. But their hearts for God brought them around to the humility that saw themselves for what they were, sought forgiveness, and did what was needed to begin again. We aren’t perfect, either, but we have the good sense to grab onto God’s good grace and hold tight. Don’t we?

At the conclusion of King’s sermon, given only two months before his assassination in April 1968, Dr. King imagined his funeral and what he hoped people would say about him. He didn’t name his doctoral degree, his pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott, his founding of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, his march on Selma, his Poor People’s Campaign, or even his Nobel Peace Prize. On the contrary, King hoped that someone would mention his efforts to serve others, to love people—even when they were hate-filled, to feed hungry people, to minister to fundamental human needs, to visit those in prison, to be alongside Jesus in in love, justice, truth, and commitment to others.

This morning, as the Prophet Samuel pours out the oil of anointing upon a ragamuffin shepherd boy who would one day be Israel’s greatest king, we are invited to imagine what God sees in us. What would we like people to say about us at our funerals? We don’t have to be head and shoulders above the rest. We don’t have to be the oldest son or the brainiest daughter. We don’t need to be a hero on the gridiron or a flash of brilliance on the ice. We don’t need to be homecoming queen or carnival king. All we need is a heart for God.

Resources

Martin Luther King. “Drum Major Instinct” delivered February 4, 1968 at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA. Stanford: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Accessed online at “Drum Major Instinct” | The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute (stanford.edu)

Beth E. Elness-Hanson. “Commentary on 1 Samuel 15:34-6:13” in Preaching This Week, June 16, 2024. Accessed online at Commentary on 1 Samuel 15:34—16:13 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

Roger Nam. “Commentary on 1 Samuel 15:34-6:13” in Preaching This Week, June 14, 2015. Accessed online at Commentary on 1 Samuel 15:34—16:13 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

Klaus-Peter Adam. “Commentary on 1 Samuel 15:34-6:13” in Preaching This Week, June 13, 2021. Accessed online at Commentary on 1 Samuel 15:34—16:13 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

Ralph w. Klein. “Commentary on 1 Samuel 15:34-6:13” in Preaching This Week, June 14, 2009. Accessed online atCommentary on 1 Samuel 15:34—16:13 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

1 Samuel 15:34—16:13

34Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. 35Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.

16The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” 2Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ 3Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.” 4Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you come peaceably?” 5He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

6When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” 7But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 8Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 9Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 10Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” 11Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.” 12He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” 13Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.

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