January 19, 2003 sermon by Tim Lusk

I’m going to tell you where I’m going with my sermon, and I’ve got about 15 minutes to do it, so let’s see if I make it. If I don’t make it in 15 minutes, then please forgive me. I want to start out on a personal note, and then I want to look at some history. After that I actually want to go to Matthew’s text and talk about it a little. We will just see if all that pulled together may have something to say to us in the year 2003.

Even though I grew up in a rural part of this country, I’ve come to understand something as an adult with which most of us come to grips. You know, when we are children, we just absorb life. We are not always as perceptive as most adults are regarding what life gives us. And when we grow older, we look back and see many gifts that we simply took for granted when we were children. Ironically, I lived in a very cosmopolitan world when I was growing in the southern West Virginia coalfields. Although that statement might seem funny to you, I remind you that those little coal camps were made up of Hungarian, Polish, Italian, Black, and indigenous mountain communities. In all that intermingling of cultures, I received gifts from each group that I simply took for granted as a part of the life that I lived. I remember almost 20 years ago, when my family and I moved to Phoenix, Arizona, how I thought I was moving to this huge city. I assumed that there would be the similar cosmopolitan feel that I had known as a child. But what I discovered in the big city was that there was a fairly bland, middle-of-America culture that wasn’t nearly as exciting as all those cultures were that mingled and interacted during my childhood. Still, there were other things that, as a child, I did not notice that were peculiar. It is only looking back as an adult that makes me realize what dramatic times my childhood contained.

You see, 60% of the people who lived in my community were African Americans. Interestingly enough, that was a very mixed bag. The public health dentist who fixed my teeth was black, and the physician who came to our home when we got sick to take care of us in the middle of the night happened to be black. But as a child, what I noticed was there was a place where blacks lived across the creek. Somehow, for the blacks to live in the white neighborhoods was not right. There were certain political jobs in the county where I grew up that the blacks were forbidden to have, just by the course of things. Many people where I lived used derogatory words that showed negative feelings toward them. Part of the hypocrisy was that the religious people—and there aren’t any more religious people in the world than in the Bible belt where I grew up—were the ones with such negative attitudes toward the blacks. The blacks, of course, were God’s children as much as the whites were. In the 2nd grade things changed. The schools integrated, and suddenly I was in a classroom with half of the kids being African American. Believe it or not, there were African American teachers who taught me, and some of them were the best teachers I’ve ever had.

I told one story last night about one of those teachers. Today I’m going to tell you about another one, just so you get a different story. When I was in 6th grade, there was a woman named Mrs. Barksdale who was this very short, very big-bosomed lady who happened to be black. One of the grossest things she did was that she had a chain around her neck on which she kept her purse secured in her bosom. And when she would go to get that purse, I just couldn’t take it. She was a very sweet lady, and believe it or not, even I had moments when I was a child that I could be disrespectful and bratty. One day in geography class, I had a 101 Dalmatians book slipped inside my geography textbook (you know how big geography books are), and I was reading my 101 Dalmatians book in class instead of paying attention. Mrs. Barksdale caught me! She called me on the carpet! I told her that that my book was more interesting than she was. Now what I want to say to you is that if one of my kids did that, I won’t tell you what I might do! It was wrong. I remember sitting around the supper table that night, and my mom and dad could tell something was wrong. They asked me what was going on, and I told them that Mrs. Barksdale was a really mean teacher. When they had me explain why she was mean, they took a different view than I did. After some discipline that I won’t get into (I’ve talked to my therapist, so I won’t talk to you about it), my dad insisted that I go to her the next day and apologize for being rude, and remind her that I wasn’t always like that. Now, I thought my punishment had come at the hands of my father. The real punishment came the next day; because when I apologized to Mrs. Barksdale, her eyes filled with tears, and she looked at me and said, “Timmy Lusk, I knew you were going to be okay.” Then she hugged me, and I was drowned in her bosom. And you need to understand that for a 6th grade boy, that is not a good thing! When I think of human relations, what I am reminded of are the things I learned, sometimes ever so humbly as a child. I learned that there were certain people who had not been treated fairly where I grew up. I can’t imagine why Mrs. Barksdale wanted to teach little white boys like me, when whites had been so mean to her and to many people that she knew. She taught me what it was to live above discrimination, and what it was to live with dignity, and what it was like to share in love with people even when they weren’t so nice. Maybe the greatest lesson that she taught me was never found in a geography book. I guess I’ve had to live the rest of my life hoping I could somehow not be so hurtful as I was that day, ever again. Somehow Human Relations Sunday is really about that story—about people who are different for whatever reason. Human Relations Sunday is about how Jesus has reminded us in the Bible that we must be a just and righteous people. The interesting thing about the early church was, and the reason it grew so fast was that it made no distinction between Romans and Jews or between the rich and the poor. The early church made no distinction between slaves and people who owned slaves. All were one in Christ. And it was on that grace that the foundation of the church was built. We know that for all the good our country has given this world, that one of its greatest moral scars will always be segregation, which even our founding fathers tolerated in ways they never should have.

Several months ago I was reading an article in the Smithsonian. It was an interesting article about political correctness, and it took a middle position on it. The article was talking about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and what each of them had given us as a nation. Now what I want to remind you of is that sometimes we want our heroes to be perfect, and we paint them out to be perfect; but we forget that only God is perfect. Even so, in the midst of our greatest human frailty, God can use us. The pivotal point I want to make is that Thomas Jefferson was the guy with ideas, and George Washington was the guy with integrity. At the end of all the turmoil, it was George Washington’s integrity that turned out to be far more important than the words Thomas Jefferson wrote. When the great question of slavery came up in the Continental Congress, Thomas Jefferson was able to write that all men were created equal. On the surface Jefferson said that he believed that slavery was a wrong and immoral thing, but he and many other delegates to that Congress failed to act on the principles upon which they founded this country. In fact, when Thomas Jefferson’s debt went high, he simply sold his slaves like property to pay his debts. George Washington said that slavery was wrong, and at his death not only did he free his slaves, but he also took a significant hunk of his inheritance to see to it that those slaves were able to go and live as free people with some support. He did not simply abandon his slaves. Many historians will tell you that the glue that held our country together during those fragile years of its birth was the integrity with which George Washington lived his life. What Washington said, he did, and he lived by his word. This morning, when we think of human relations, we need to be reminded of the words that Jesus used as he taught us how to live. We need to be a people of justice and righteousness in all that we do. On this Human Relations Sunday, we are to be reminded that even in a world that is full of human depravity and sin that God is still calling us to live fairly and justly.

The problem with ideas like “justice” is that the word is only found in the dictionary. We do not live in a perfect world. But God pushes us all into His kingdom and calls us to live more fairly each day. And though the threat of war looms in the Middle East (and is in the back of all of our minds), what I want to remind you of is that human relations are poor in many places in the world. Although China may have become one of the greatest trading partners of the western world, it still is a communist regime. I’m often reminded humbly when I buy something that was made in China, that many of those people are prisoners of consciousness. They live in prisons and for pennies produce things so that I can live more comfortably. That isn’t a just world, is it? I had a friend of mine killed in Zimbabwe this year. He was a doctor who cared for me like none other when I was in high school. He wrote letters so that I could get money to go to college. He retired to Zimbabwe and bought a huge ranch so that he could provide an economy for a people who had no way of making a living. Someone murdered him and stole his car; and in a reverse of discrimination, it was because he was white that it happened. Because Zimbabwe is under a military state, many people are starving because of a dictator. If you disagree with a dictator, you die. We, on this Human Relations Sunday, understand justice still to be something that we continue to strive for around the world in which we live.

Now I want to back to Jesus’ sermon recorded in Matthews’s Gospel. Let me tell you about Matthew. It’s the only one of the four Gospels that came immediately from the Middle East. The rest of the Gospels came from different parts of the Diaspora that had occurred, and we see much of the flavor and the struggle of early Christianity written deeply within the pages of Matthew. Can you imagine a young, growing church in which the rejection by the majority of the community could result in brother and father killing one another? Jesus tells us about this. Can you understand what true act of faith it took to follow the Christian faith when death was often its result? At the very least, rejection and being cast out of a community could often happen. Now the interesting thing is that Jesus’ response to them is very similar to the one he made himself. He did not tell them to pull out their swords and go kill the people that were oppressing them. He said, “Be you wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” What he was saying to them was to know the truth and live the truth, but be kind in how you handle those who would harm you.

Martin Luther King was a controversial figure. Similar to Thomas Jefferson, there were parts of Martin Luther King’s life that were wrong. But what I want to say to you is that the gift he gave our entire nation should never be forgotten. You know where I got the title for my sermon? Actually, Martin Luther King preached a sermon by that exact title and used that exact biblical text. There were many blacks in this country in the 50’s who had had it with American hypocrisy. They wanted to take guns and mow down every white person they saw because of the wronged lives that they had to live. By most of our standards, they would have been right to do it. But Martin Luther King reminded them and the whites of this country that Jesus had called us to live as a people that were colorblind. Jesus called us to live truthfully. Jesus called us to live as harmlessly as doves. The great revolution, which the civil rights movement brought to this country, was brought not with guns and weapons and destruction. Rather, it was brought with words of truth. It demanded that people live by words of truth. Because of this, our country was transformed and made all the better. We still live in a world where we struggle with the rightness of how we live. Let us remember that living the truth of the Gospel will always give us more than trying to force our way onto those with whom we disagree. We all need to be reminded of our human frailty. Not one of our heroes in this world is perfect. Only God is perfect. We need to see those moments, even in our own human imperfection, when God is able to use us. Whether or not you and I are Martin Luther King, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or whoever we are; may we pledge that our lives will reflect justice and fairness in all that we do. That way, we as a praying people, can pray for a world that needs justice and fairness. Now let’s bow our heads for a word of prayer.