delivered 1-11-2009, Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Gwinnett
Be sure to read the accompanying text below prior to the sermon
While most of the world is just getting over Christmas, this time of year is Advent for me.
I mean no disrespect for Jesus, whose birthday the whole world is supposedly celebrating. He is a guy from whom we could all learn a lot. He set an example that I hold up as an ideal of humanity. But there isn’t any historical evidence to suggest he was born at or around the time of the solstice; that’s an arbitrary date that had important advantages to those who followed the teachings of Jesus centuries ago. Furthermore, though it was not due to any shortcoming of his, humanity didn’t do much with the salvation that he offered.
Folks turned him into a “personal” messiah – a role not well supported in Christian scripture, but more comfortable for the church than the revolutionary message of a dramatically different and egalitarian social order in accordance with the desires and intent of his deity.
That’s not to say that there wasn’t a profound message of personal transformation and rebirth in his teachings, but it seems to me from what got recorded that he had much more than that in mind. So this is one of the things that earns me the label of “heretic”: the celebration of Jesus’ birth seems to me to be a celebration of humanity’s lost opportunity and shirked responsibility.
The “messiah” of my generation was a man whose birthday we know with some certainty. He was another who called upon human beings all over the world to adopt not simply a new personal moral code but also to consider a dramatically different and egalitarian social order. Again, we fell desperately short. However, it’s much easier to point to the drastic changes inspired by Martin Luther King’s message than anything comparable brought through the life of Jesus.
So the high holy day on my calendar is not the contrived birthday of Christ the King, but the real and recent birthday of King the Christ – that is, the annointed one, the chosen prophet.
This advent season has particular import. It not only leads into King’s birthday. This year, it also leads into the inauguration of our country’s first Black President. It an event that I was quite sure would not come in my lifetime. Fifty years would not be long enough. Maybe a hundred. It’s a sort of miracle, then. Now, I reject the messianic language that we hear used about Barack Obama. The hopes and expectations this country has for him are so high that they can only set him up for failure and us for disillusionment. It’s the event, the historical moment of his election, that I revere as miraculous. No matter what follows, the inauguration is surely the most hope-affirming, inspiring light on our horizon.
In the advent season, the time of anticipation and rising hope for what is coming, my mind goes to the first robin. The one who comes, struggles, gives all, but before due season, and then just dies or fades away, largely unnoticed.
The more time I spent with that story – and I’ve spent a lot of time with that story – the more I find that I disagree with Broun in one significant way. Of course, I have had the benefit of 70 more years of history than he had. I think that if I could discuss this point with him, he’d agree. He wouldn’t use it, because it would clutter up the story and detract from his metaphor, but I think he’d agree anyway.
You see, he suggested that the first robin would be called a hero but his folks back home. Seems to me that the first one gets ignored, written off, forgotten. It’s the third, fourth or tenth that goes forth boldly and is cut down that gets to be a popular hero.
King was not the first, not by a long shot. He was the one who was in that spot in history, had the personal attributes and professional talents, had the friends and support network, had the momentum of that great arc of the universe that he could move something forward.
The preacher who served Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery before King arrived in 1954, Vernon Johns, got run out of the church and of the town because his message of egalitarian society, racial equality and resistance to oppression was too radical for that time and place.
Unless you are (like me) totally into the history of the movement, you’ve probably never heard of, or at least not heard much about, Vernon Johns. As far as I can tell, he was Montgomery’s first robin.
Similarly, Obama shakes the world as the first Black American President. Who was the first African American to run? No, not Al Sharpton in 1988. Not Jesse Jackson in 1984, either. But how many people can name Shirley Chisolm, who was a registered candidate in 1972? Again, unless you’re really into the history, I’ll bet her name did not come to mind. She had an amazing career and many remarkable, historic accomplishments, but nothing singles her out in the popular consciousness from the hordes of congresswomen and men who came before and since. The first. Nobody takes the first too seriously.
In our society, it’s only the first across the finish line that counts.
First out of the gate? First to attempt? First with the courage and will and prophetic vision? Forget it.
Broun’s story is not a story about martyrdom. The bird’s death is incidental to the tale. It’s the vehicle, it’s why we know about it. But it isn’t the point. It’s not about sacrifice for others. There is no talk here about how the other robins might benefit from his valiant action. Nor is it a Don Quixote story – the irrational, deluded campaign by a man dedicated and pure of heart against evils real or imagined. It misses the point of the story to suggest that the first robin’s quest was futile. In fact, it was inevitable but simply not yet possible. The point of the first robin is that he saw what was possible in the realm of the impossible. He knew in his heart what lay ahead. For him, it was not enough to know about it or talk about it; he lived it. He lived his vision, and his vision fell short of being realized for others. But because he lived it, it was realized for him.
There is much lacking in the metaphor. For bird history, the first robin’s bold action has no real impact. In human history, everything begins with people who see the possible in the impossible, and live it.
King’s predecessors did not benefit from the results of their actions. Vernon Johns never got another permanent job after leaving Dexter Avenue. But his flight lay the basis for the flight of those to come, those fifth and sixth and tenth robins.
In 1940, five Black men walked into the white-only library in Alexandria, Virginia (my home town) and applied for a library card. They refused to leave until they were issued cards, so naturally, they were arrested for trespass. Their case generated enough attention to lead to creation of a second, Black library in Alexandria. They refused cards for the segregated library, asserting their constitutional right to equal treatment. It was 1940, in Virginia; the case died a quick and silent death. But their willingness to live in their vision made the next move, and the next possible.
Few of us have anything like the talents or intellect or vision of a Martin Luther King. But any of us can be a first robin.
Maybe your vision – that possible reality you see concealed in the impossible – is different from mine. The first robin isn’t just in political movements. Every time that we can act in our vision, we create new possibility. When I was a lost kid, alone and hopeless, there were a few who spoke to me, who approached, who treated me like a human being anyway. As if they knew that, though there may be no apparent results, there was work to be done, a contribution to be made. For a kid who is afraid or depressed or cast aside, the first person to take him seriously may not see any benefit. But the ground is laid for another, and the fourth or fifth or tenth who tries to reach him may get through. But only if there is a first.
The first religious liberal who treats a fundamentalist as a human being and tries to have a conversation will gain nothing. But by living in the vision, but taking off and flying for dear life anyway, something begins.
Sometimes it is just about living the vision of a higher, invisible reality. When I refuse to shop at WalMart or buy from Exxon, I do not expect to have any impact on global reality. I simply am insisting on the possibility of a world where we as consumers do not contribute financial to abuse and violence against workers and indigenous people. I know that my pennies will not change anything for the laborers in overseas factories, for minimum wage workers here or for villagers in Nigeria. I realize that no-one else is even aware of my decisions about where to shop. But by refusing to benefit from the abuse of others in this small way, I take flight toward a world where such abuse is no longer tolerated… a world I will never reach.
the first minute of flight is reward enough, no matter what follows.
Most of us will never be recognized as great agents of social change. Most of us will never even know the impact we have on the individual lives we touch. But all of us have the capacity to participate in the progress of human history, in the realization of our personal vision – whatever that is. We need only (and I say only, as if it were a small thing, which it is not) we need only live in the reality of our vision.
We need not be the victim of dry rot or cautious or doomed eyestrain from too close attention to ledgers.
It means being taken for a fool sometimes. A sucker sometimes. Naive or gullible. Even just plain stupid. Irresponsible. Irrational. So be it.
It is, I think, is what Gandhi was getting at, when he advised the we must be the change we wish to see in the world. It is, I feel quite certain, what is meant in the cry, We are the ones we have been waiting for.
There is another way, but only if we are willing to risk it. When I hear folks say that God makes a way out of no way, my response is, OK if it helps to think of it in that way. But what we must remember, what we must remember is that even if God makes the way, it isn’t a way at all until the first ones on the ground take that path, until our feet walk it.
Perhaps it is too soon. But the good news is, it’s not too late. Not for all of us, not for any of us, if we are willing to live into our vision.
It’s not too late. Let’s go.
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