Sermon on January 17, 2021: Epiphany 2
A sermon for the second Sunday after Epiphany, by the Rev. Daniel Moore
Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
Nathaniel wants to know. He was not accustomed to thinking that good things come out of a place like Nazareth. Nazareth was a nothing town, a nowheresville, a place from which important people do not come. It was flyover country. It was the sticks. Important people come from important places.
Can anything good come out of a place like Nazareth?
Nathaniel is dubious. He has an obvious bias. And in asking the question, he has exposed his prejudice. The question is rhetorical. Nothing good could come out of Nazareth. Those people over there have nothing to offer me. They are not worthy of my time or attention.
What a strange and thing to be included in the Gospel. Nathanial’s bias is forever sealed within the words of scripture, a bias which will put him to shame once he realizes, eventually, that not only can something good come out of Nazareth—but salvation comes from there. The Son of God. The King of Israel. Nathaniel has an epiphany, a discovery that turns all his preconceived notions on their head. Salvation comes from out of nowhere; the least of all the places he could have expected.
Nathaniel’s epiphany ought to resonate with us, in this moment in time, as Christians who live in a nation that is divided against itself, a house that cannot stand. It should resonate with us as we grapple with the legacy of racial bias and the history of white supremacy—and by white supremacy, I am not referring to white hoods and burning crosses, but to the power of whiteness in general, the implied sense that white is right, is “normal,” is central, is default. Whiteness is what is at work when we drive through poor Philly neighborhoods and lock our doors and ask, “Can anything good come out of there?” It is at work in the church when we go on mission trips to the “less fortunate” in poorer nations like Haiti and Guatemala, and leave feeling thankful that we are here, and not there. The story of American Christianity is the story of whiteness ensuring its supremacy, so that American Christians would keep on asking Nathaniel’s question:
Can anything good from there? Can anything good come from them?
Tomorrow, people from across the nation will celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It’s a federal holiday on the third Monday of January, of course, which commemorates his birthday, although in The Episcopal Church, his feast day is celebrated on the day he died: April the 4th, which this year is Easter Day. But tomorrow we will hear a lot about MLK, the Black preacher turned Civil Rights leader who has become something like an American saint. In a poll taken just two years ago asking Americans their opinions of various Civil Rights leaders, MLK received a high overall rating: 90% favorability—a higher rating than any other figure, even Rosa Parks. Among White, Non-Hispanic Americans, his approval rating was 87%.
Here’s the thing: even though White Americans today overwhelmingly approve of MLK, the polls in the late 1960s tell a different story. In a 1966 Gallup poll, taken just two years before his death, only 33% of Americans rated him favorably. Meanwhile, 63% rated him unfavorably. During a time that so many look back on as a turning point in the nation’s history, it turns out that White Americans—and White American Christians—viewed him with profound suspicion. This should not surprise us. In a 1963 poll taken of White Americans, when asked what they would do if Black families moved into their neighborhood, 78% of them said that they would leave.”
He was born in Atlanta. Can anything good come out of there?
He marched at Selma. Can anything good come out of there?
He was jailed in Birmingham. Can anything good come out of there?
Tomorrow, the memes and the quotes will dance across our social media feeds. And we will be tempted to share the ones that make us feel good about ourselves, and signal our virtue to all of our Facebook friends. Quotes like, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” It’s a good quote. But there’s another quote that you probably won’t see shared, and which we desperately need to hear. It’s from the open letter that Dr. King wrote from Birmingham Jail, responding to the “Call for Unity” written by eight Birmingham clergy, including two Episcopal bishops. Some of you will have read his letter at one point or another, and I commend it to you for your reading today. In this quote, Dr. King identifies what he believes to be the single greatest impediment to racial justice: not white extremists, but rather, white moderates. Here is what he writes:
I must make two honest confessions to you … First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
This is a hard word from brother Martin; and yet, a word that we must hear and sit with, rather than asking whether anything good can come. This is a word directed at establishment types, like Episcopal priests, and at anyone for whom the phrase “law and order” was the right response to the Black Lives Matter protests that took place last summer. The idea of preferring “a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice”—that strikes me to the core. Only a person of privilege will have the luxury of such a preference. Can anything good come from holding up a mirror to ourselves and looking into it? Maybe more than just good can come—perhaps an epiphany, one like Nathaniel had, perhaps even the means of our salvation.
The greatest stumbling block toward greater equality for communities of color is not the neo-Nazis, the Confederate flag wavers, and the parade of alt-right extremists who sieged the Capitol. The greatest stumbling block, it turns out, is people like me. And the only way forward, for people like me, is to start asking the question: what does it look like to seek the presence of justice, and resist finding solace in the absence of tension?
I am speaking not generically as an American citizen, but as a baptized Christian in the Episcopal tradition, where as part of our baptismal identity we affirm that we are to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being. We do that because we believe that the image of God is found in every human being, and in response to the call to love our neighbors as ourselves. In the coming days, our ability to respond to this call is going to be tested, and amidst the upcoming inauguration of a new president, many will resort to violence, and be tempted to violate the image of God in one another. I fear that many who claim to be followers of Jesus will ignore his command for them to love their neighbors.
I don’t know what the coming days will hold, but I believe that our witness as Christians can only be found in an active and radical nonviolence, which has and will always be a risk. It is always so much easier to take up the sword—or our guns. But Jesus told Peter to put away his sword, when they came for him in the Garden of Gethsemane. We do not follow a strongman savior who needs defending with weapons. We follow Christ, who forgave his enemies from the cross. And if Christians in American cannot learn to put away our swords, then we cannot take up our cross and follow Jesus, and we cannot claim to be his disciple.
Can anything good come from the way of disciplined nonviolence? It was the way of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was himself following in the way of Jesus. A discipline which is not a negative peace, an absence of tension, but a positive peace, the presence of justice even in the face of others’ violence.
Can it be done? God only knows. But we know that it is only done by the grace of God, and with God’s help. Not by our own strength, but by the strength of the Prince of Peace. The Messiah, the Son of God. He is our peace, and is the One who reconciles us to God, and to one another. To him be the glory throughout all ages.
Amen.