St. Stephen’s Coconut Grove, V Lent, Year A

Jer 31:31-34, Ps 51:1-13, Jn 12? 20-33

Rev’d. Wilifred Allen-Faiella, March 25, 2012

Sermon # 624

Will You Strive for Justice and Peace?

“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”  This is our fifth baptismal vow.  We share in this and the other four vows with those who are being baptized and we renew it for ourselves with the following words:  (“I will, with God’s help”).

The concept of Justice has been very prominent in the media lately.  Not just the “standard” media of newsprint, radio, and television, but more importantly in an increasingly more powerful voice:  the social media.  In the past few weeks several issues have come into radical prominence because of Facebook and Twitter:  a mass murderer and corrupter of childhood innocence in Central Africa named Joseph Kony, venomous words against women spewed forth by right wing extremist Rush Limbaugh, proclamations of “We love the People of Iran/Israel and we don’t want to bomb you” by the people of Israel and Iran respectively.

But the issue  brought into the national and international consciousness by social media which has struck closest to home recently is the cold-blooded murder of 17-year-old African American Trayvon Martin right here in our own state of Florida.  Trayvon was shot because he committed the “unspeakable offense of WWB” (that’s “Walking While Black”).  Shame on us that this outrage didn’t hit our consciousness until almost a month later, but compared to the similar “offense” of WWB (Walking While Black) of Emmett Til in 1955 at least this time the whole nation is finally paying attention.  Not that that’s any consolation to Trayvon’s parents.  Their son is still dead and his alleged murderer is still  at large.  As a mother myself I can only begin to imagine their grief over the senselessness of his murder.

“Will you strive for justice and peace, respecting the dignity of every human being?” I will with God’s help.   And what is God’s help we call upon?  In today’s lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures we hear this from the prophet Jeremiah:  “this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the Lord:  “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”  God will put God’s law within us and will write it on our hearts.  In other words not an external law.  Not something superimposed upon us, but something of God embedded in our hearts.  Something not superficially, but indelibly part of us.  Our hearts, our innermost being is changed when God becomes the center of our lives.

Our theme for this Lenten season has been “step out of your comfort zone.”  What this indelible writing of God’s law -- the eternal law of love -- is truly all about is stepping out of our comfort zone and opening our hearts to be moved, to be changed, to be shaped into being capabable of sharing the kind of unconditional love that God has for each of us.  Entering into the possibility of that love transforming each of our hearts opens us up to move from one end of the spectrum to another.  One end of the spectrum is fear, as exemplified by the man who murdered Trayvon Martin.  The possibility that our hearts can be changed from fear to love is on other end of that spectrum.  And that possibility is exemplified by this story which comes from the blog “William Lucas Walker: Spilled Milk” which George Fisher shared with me earlier this week.  Walker’s most recent entry, written in the first person, is called “Homo’s Odyssey”:

“Not too long ago, our little clan took a road trip from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon.  Road trips are one of those mysterious things families feel compelled to do but no one knows why, like camping in the Mojave Desert or supporting the career of Miley Cyrus.  I predict in the end it won’t be gay marriage that brings about the destruction of the American family.  It will be the road trip.

After getting the kids settled into the back seat of our Honda Odyssey with their DVD players and movies, we hit the freeway.  Once out of LA I was finally able to sit back, pop open my laptop, and began jotting down a few ideas for this column.  I narrowed my list of possible future blog topics to ‘Surviving your Child’s K-Mart Taste’ and ‘Parents I Hate.’  Then suddenly -- at 70 miles per hour -- the transmission on our car blew out.  And a blog column was born.

I’m an American, a proud gay American who was raised to believe that bad things don’t happen to Hondas.   Yet ours has blown two transmissions in five years.  As we decelerated, the plume of smoke belching from underneath our hood began to panic our unflappable daughter.  I tried to calm her as my husband Kelly looked looked for a place to get off the road.

Somehow we managed to limp across four lanes of traffice3 to the next exit and turn down a hill into the welcoming parking lot of a visitors center that overlooked a picturesque lake.  A visitors center with bathrooms  and vending machines and other kids to play with.  A visitors center we soon noticed had a chain-link fence around it and a propped-up sign gloating, ‘Closed for Renovations.

We called AAA Roadside Assistance and waited.  Turkeys cook faster.  An hour and 40 minutes passed as my iPod faded from Gaga to gone and the sun sank deep into the lake.  The battery on our cell phone now dead, our world turned pitch black and eerie quiet

When our AAA savour finally arrived on the scene, I could have jumped for joy.  Instead, I froze.  The white knight who showed up for our rescue turned out to be a physical composite of every high school bully I ever suffered:  a tattooed skinhead-type, complete with soul-deadening stare and missing front tooth.

Barely looking up, he grunted, ‘You know we only tow free for 7 miles.  After that it’s 10 bucks a mile.  You got 15 miles to the next town.’

After finishing his paperwork he lumbered down from his cab.  He stared at Kelly, then at me, then at our kids and speaking in a slow guttural tone said:  ‘These kids y’alls?’.  We answered that yes, they were.

This man, whom I had now cast as the love child of Ned Beatty and spouse in the sequel to Deliverance, stared at us for what seemed a heart-thumping forever.  Then he moved off.  He spent the4 next few minutes hauling out huge, heavy chains and hooks which in my mind I pictured encircling Kelly and me as he sunk us into the bottom of that all-too-convenient lake.

After attaching the giant hooks to our Honda Odyssey -- which completed our family portrait and ensuring our suspect status:  two men driving a minivan! -- he moved to the side of his flatbed and began pulling mysterious levers that caused his vehicle to groan as it slowly tipped its flatbed.

This was too much for our youngest, James, a boy so Bam-Bam butch that for years we’ve referred to him as God’s joke on the gay daddies.  By now James truly was jacked up by the adventure of it all.  Biologically drawn to the smell of metal and grease, James peppered our AAA guy with questions:  ‘Is our car dead? Do you have a bathroom in your truck?  Who knocked out your tooth, was it Batman?”

At this point Kelly intervened:  ‘James, stay back so he can do his work.’  Mr. AAA stopped what he was doing and looked at us.  ‘His name’s James?  I got a boy named James.’

Then he did something unexpected -- something perfect.  This man, whose menacing silence and sidelong glances had me rattled, took off his work gloves and asked James to hold out his hands.  He then began to gently pull the huge, oil-stained gloves over our son’s tiny fingers.  Next he asked if James wanted to help him work the levers on the side of the flatbed so that he could haul our minivan up onto the truck.  Mute with awe, James could only nod.  as the chains grew taut and our car began to make its slow ascent up the ramp, James’ eyes widened to the size of the moon that had finally peaked over the clouds overhead.

Before long we were all crowded into the cab of the tow truck for the ride to the nearest town.  The AAA guy, Jesse-- he had a biblical name too -- pulled out his phone so we could see pictures of his family.  Then he asked Kelly and me ‘So...did you guys get married when y’all had that little window a few years back before the Prop 8 thing?’

We said we did.  ‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘My mom did, too.  She called me and my brother and sister and said Me and Maggie’s gonna have a wedding.  You got a week and a half to figure out a way to get here.’

From there on out, this man I was so sure I had pegged continued to upend my preconceived notions.  When he learned we lived in Hollywood he told us that as a teenager he’d been bused in from the suburbs, commuting 20 hours a week to the Hollywood High magnet program in theatre arts. Theatre Arts???? ‘Yep, it was great.  For PE we took dance.  Spent English readin’ Shakespeare.  Instead of shop, we built sets for musicals.  I loved it.’

He never charged us the $80 he should have for the extra mileage.  Instead, he directed us to the one motel in that truck-stop town that had a swimming pool for the kids.  After that he offered to drive us to our motel.  And after Kelly and the kids fell asleep I got curious and googled his name, Jesse.  It turns out ‘Jesse’ is Hebrew for ‘God’s gift.’”

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?  I will, with God’s help.  How does justice happen?  How is God’s new law written not on tablets of stone but in our hearts?   It happens by each of us stepping outside our comfort zone and opening our hearts to the possibility that we share a common humanity even with those we consider “other”.  That God loves each of us -- friend, neighbor, and stranger alike -- God loves each of us unconditionally.  Justice happens one heart at a time.  And the place we are called to begin is with our own heart.  AMEN