“As Samuel grew up, God was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.”
In his last Sunday sermon, preached at Washington National Cathedral, Dr. King said our country was experiencing a triple revolution. He said we were experiencing a technological and cybernetic revolution. He said we were experiencing a revolution of weaponry with the atomic bomb. And then Dr. King said third “there is a human rights revolution, with the freedom explosion that is taking place all over the world.”
Let’s just pause. Dr. King talked about his moment in history as a “Human Rights Revolution” and a “freedom explosion.” If he were alive today, I wonder: what would Dr. King think about the revolution of human rights in 2024?
Would he still think of his times, or our times, as revolutionary? Or, or, would his tone be more the words from the first book of Samuel? “The word of the Lord was rare in those days. Visions were not widespread.” What would the dreamer make of 2024?
To answer that question, as Christians, is to talk about the role of the prophet. The first book of Samuel generally, and this story specifically, talk about the call of a prophet.
I think we often think about prophecy a bit like what happens in the dialogue between Nathanael. Nathanael is caught off guard. He is caught up in his own bias, yes, “can anything good come from Nazareth?” But it’s more than that, Nathanael is obsessed with a sort of magical thinking about Jesus. He is amazed that Jesus saw him under the fig tree. Now, we don’t know exactly what Nathanael was doing under that fig tree. But Nathanael thinks something magic has happened. He is astounded. And Jesus responds, “Do you believe because I told you I saw you under a fig tree?”
We tend to think of prophecy as a sort of magic, a telling of the future. But that’s not the gift of prophecy, not really. Whatever Dr. King would make of 2024, our day’s reality does not diminish the power of his words in his own.
Biblical Prophecy
A true Biblical prophet isn’t a fortune teller. That’s not what the Bible means by prophecy. The prophetic gift isn’t the power to see the future, it is about the power to see the present. A prophetic word tells a truth about today in a way that can make a difference tomorrow. In order to hope against hope, we have to listen in some unlikely places.
Samuel is an unlikely leader. He isn’t who we would expect God to choose. He’s not one of Eli’s sons. He’s not who we’d expect, unless we know our Bible. Because if you know the Bible, you know God’s words don’t tend to come from those you’d expect. They don’t come from the powerful. God’s words aren’t often popular. It’s one of the difficult truths of the Bible: God tends to speak through those you’d least expect.
God spoke through Abraham, an immigrant. God spoke through Joseph, the rainbow-wearing kid whose own siblings sold him into slavery. God spoke through Moses, a revolutionary fleeing charges of murder. God spoke through Ruth, a Moabite, an ethnic outsider. God chose a little shepherd boy, the youngest son, to slay a giant and become king. God’s own Son, we learn, had no place to lay his head, and he spent his time with tax-collectors, sinners, women of ill-repute, you know women like who Paul seems so paranoid today in that strange reading from First Corinthians.
We often talk about Dr. King as a modern day prophet, even as a modern Moses. Many of the history textbook chapters and physical monuments to to the leader, many of the ways Dr. King is now talked about by media and politicians today, ignore how unpopular the preacher was in his own day. We’ve made King larger than life, and forgotten King was controversial, even to those who supported civil rights.
Would we have marched with Dr. King?
These days in the Episcopal Church we consider Martin Luther King a saintDo you know that Dr. King’s famous letter from a Birmingham Jail was written to the Episcopal Bishops of Alabama? Bishop Carpenter and his Bishop Murray (along with Methodist, Catholic, Jewish, and Baptist colleagues) had published a letter entitled “A Call For Unity.” They wrote publicly to Dr. King, and asked him to leave the Alabama. They called his marches “unwise and untimely.” Episcopal Bishops were among those to whom Dr. King wrote from a Birmingham jail, when he said that the worst enemy of the black people was not the klansman but the white moderate. We all like to imagine, if he were alive today, that we would be marching in the streets with Dr. King. But our legacy as an Episcopal church complicates the question. There were Episcopalians marching with King, but they were not the mainstream of the church.
Prophets often aren’t popular, because prophets tell the truth today in a way that demands change for tomorrow. In days that seem chaotic, in days that seem spiteful and hateful, the prophets call us back to the way the universe was ordered for love. Prophets call us to justice because the revolution of God is a loving revolution for justice.
I think it is in that sense that we can pick up Dr. King’s idea of an ongoing revolution for human rights.
When Dr. King preached that last Sunday of his life at the National Cathedral, he sounded full of hope. He was in the midst of a new campaign, a poor people’s campaign. After the passage of the the Civil Rights act in 1964 and the Voter’s Rights Act of 1965, many thought King’s work was done. Dr. King knew it wasn’t done.
The hope he was preaching was hard won. Just a year earlier, Dr. King had published his fourth book. To write the book. Dr. King went down to Jamaica, to rest and spend some time in reflection. In truth he went to escape the pressures of the US. He had spent so much time on the road, in jail, worried about the threats against his life and his family. He took some time to contemplate what came next. After the laws were passed there were still riots in Watts, California and worker strikes up in Detroit, Michigan. Dr King took some down time in Jamaica to think and to pray. And he wrote his fourth and final book: “Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community?”
The Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley, of Alfred Street Baptist Church in the Washington, DC area says we are still asking that question today: “Where do we go from here: chaos or community?”
Chaos or Community Today
We’re at the start of a legislative cycle in Santa Fe, at the start of another election year, which will likely be a bruising year for many of us, listening to rhetoric that makes us worry about the state of our democracy. When you are frustrated, when you are tired, when voices of hatred are echoing, what will you choose?
You know, I believe we are actually called to grow the church? I know there are those today who would say: clergy just want to grow the church to get more donors. I won’t say “no” to pledges, but that’s not why I want to grow the church. I want to grow the church because I believe in the power of community. I believe in the power of belonging, especially in a world with an epidemic of loneliness. I believe that the antidote to the hate and the cynicism that we hear so much of in our world is sitting right here. Belonging has real power. Community can help us know we are beloved.
I believe Jesus wanted us to build up a movement for justice and love. Will we invite our neighbors who, like us are angry about the state of our world? Will we invite them not just to church, but to serve at the food pantry or to join us in a caravan to Santa Fe to meet with legislators. In days of such exclusion, will we invite our immigrant neighbors, our trans siblings, our hungry and housing insecure, addicted and mentally ill neighbors too? Will we invite our neighbors to a place they can belong?
If he were alive today, I pray that Dr. King would find us at work to ensure his prophetic words don’t fall to the ground. I pray he would find us at work telling the truth about today so that we could make a loving difference tomorrow. In this time of rampant cynicism, when so many of us sigh or yell at our tvs or telephones which report the news, I pray he’d find us putting down the devices. I pray he would find us inviting our neighbors into a ragtag community of unlikely hope, of loving hope. Even in 2024, I pray that Dr. King would find us involved in an ongoing revolution for human rights.
Mike Angell 