"Welcome to the Struggle"

Were you there?

These are the words to a powerful and powerfully Christian hymn I heard for the first time a few years ago. Perhaps you have heard it, too. The words I remember go like this: Were you there when they crucified my Lord? And then it continues? Were you there when they nailed him to a tree? Were you there when they laid him in the tomb? Sometimes it makes me tremble, tremble, tremble.

Were you there?

At the annual interfaith prayer breakfast on Friday morning in celebration of the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, the pianist from Mt. Olive Lutheran church played this hymn tune on the piano, lightly, and it made me stop and pause. The speakers at the breakfast, held just down the street at Calvary Baptist church, the corner of 20th and Broadway, where our 6th and 7th graders are this morning at worship as part of our Neighboring Faiths program of religious exploration. At Calvary Baptist Church where we gathered for a prayer breakfast, the speakers included Rabbi Neil and Cantor Ken, who will join us this morning at the 11am service here, and representatives from the Bahai community, the Islamic community, and several kinds of Christians: Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist. I sat at table 8, next to our own Sandra Trutt, where I met Brother Herman Williams of Calvary Baptist, our Fire Chief Scott Fergeson, who attended in uniform, and an organizer from the SGI Buddhist community named Danny Hall. After we had our French toast and coffee and fruit, when Brother Williams got up to offer us all few words of welcome during the spoken program, he said, I think this is what Heaven must look like. We?re all of us in this together. We?re all in this together.

This morning our 9am service heard a story called A Sweet Smell of Roses, by Angela Johnson. Johnson wrote the book because, as she says, ?When we learn about the Civil Rights movement that blew across the American landscape in the 1950s and 1960s, certain names always arise. Thurgood Marshall. Rosa Parks. Ralph Abernathy. Fannie Lou Hamer. Medgar Evers. Malcolm X. Robert Kennedy. And of course, Martin Luther King. These are all important names. Each belongs to a man or woman who sacrified much?in the quest for freedom and justice.

She continues, ?But the men and women we commonly hear about are not the only ones who took action against injustice and oppression. For each of the names that we know, there are tens of thousands that we do not.?

This morning I wonder if some of those names are here with us now. I know Rabbi Neil will share a song with us at the 11am service called Your Grandfather Marched with Martin Luther King, about his father-in-law, who answered the call to Selma. I know this congregation sent our Minister Emeritus, Rev. Ernie Pipes, to Selma to march and witness and stand with the people of Alabama. Were you there? Were you there? Sometimes it makes me tremble, tremble, tremble.

Angela Johnson, the author of A Sweet Smell of Roses, writes that some of the names we hear associated with the movement for equality and dignity for all in this country are familiar, and some are overlooked, and some of those whom we?ve left out are children. Her book, she writes, ?is a tribute to them. The brave boys and girls who?like their adult counterparts?could not resist the scent of freedom carried aloft by the winds of change.? She shares the story of two young girls who walk, march, run, and are carried on the shoulders of others as they hear the words of Martin Luther King, on a bright summer day when the whole world smelled like roses.

Perhaps some of those children are here today, too.

The journalist Courtney Martin, writing sketches of young activist leaders in her collection of essays, Do It Anyway: The Next Generation of Activists, writes about the tensions contemporary activists feel in relation to the iconic struggles of the Civil Rights movement. ?History has a way of smoothing itself out, hyping itself up, being set to an emotionally manipulative soundtrack,? she writes. Absent the hype, absent the soundtrack, absent the editing, the present has a hard way of retaining its full complexity, fullness, details, richness, muddiness, and competing demands. How inconvenient. How real. The question changes, morphs, adapts, moves. It is not were you there, but are you here? Are you here, now?

Here in this time, in this week, we gather to celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King and all we ask him now to stand for: nonviolence, racial reconciliation, soul force, peace, civil rights, equality, passion, ministry, possibility, vision, love. We do so, as every year it seems we must again do so, we do so in the shadow of violence, separation, vitriol, war, inequality, hatred, and fear. They are close now, they are very close. And sometimes it makes me tremble.

This week President Obama spoke at the memorial service for the six people who were killed a week ago Saturday when they attended a public event with their district congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, at a shopping center in Tuscon, Arizona. Reminding us of the ordinary worth and dignity of each person who died, of the herorism of those who risked their lives to tackle the shooter before he could reload, of the husband who shielded his wife, the mother who sheltered her teenage daughter with her body. Reminding us of the ordinary worth and dignity of all people, President Obama addressed our fears that this newest violence was the direct result of our rage, the rage of our people expressed in a 24 hour news cycle, on the radio, in the newspaper, saying,

And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy -- it did not -- but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud?

We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another, that's entirely up to us.

I know some of our people here in this congregation will be attending Martin Luther King Day events tomorrow morning, asking folks to pledge and renew their pledge to nonviolence and soul force on the patio of the event?s community involvement fair. Are you here? If you?d like to be a part of this act of tenderness in response to violence, please find one of these folks after the service.

When I think of the children who marched with Martin Luther King, it is hard not to think of Christina Taylor Green, the 9 year old girl who was killed last Saturday in Tuscon. I?m sure most of you have read the same stories about Christina that I have, that she was born on September 11, 2001. That she had recently been elected to her student council. That she woke up on Saturday morning and went with her parents to meet her congresswoman because that?s what our children can do, in our participatory, democratic nation. And instead of coming home with a handshake or a photo, she didn?t come home at all.

Sometimes it makes me tremble.

This week I asked our people this week how they were coping with the tragedy, with the spin, with the images from Arizona. Here is what you said: You said, how do I understand the tension we hold here in this country between one person?s rights and another person?s freedoms?

You said, how do we as a society fail our mentally ill children so very badly? You asked yourselves, how often have I passed on doing the one small thing that could make a difference? We teachers never know when the lesson ends. You heard about the heroism of the bystanders, of the first responders, and you asked, what would I do?

You said, I weep for the people of Arizona, and I also can?t get these other images out of my head, these other stories about how deeply violent and conflict-ridden our world is, how such a tragedy here wouldn?t even be a ripple in the deep ongoing hurts there. And you said, I think this is a time when we can hold one another tighter.

At the close of the prayer breakfast on Friday, Father Arturo from St. Anne?s also just down the street on 20th and Colorado, got up and talked about this being the second time he?s attended the breakfast, since he is also new to the area. And he said that he knows Martin Luther King was a Baptist and he didn?t have the sacrament of confession as Father Arturo does in the Catholic church and yet he imagined what confession would be like, if Martin Luther King were to offer it to Father Arturo. And Martin Luther King would ask, Father Arturo, you?ve been in Santa Monica for a year now, and I want you to make a confession. What have you done for immigrants and undocumented residents? Are you feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, freeing the captive? Are you caring for the abused, the lonely? What have you done for peace? What have you done for nonviolent resolution of conflict?

And Father Arturo said, I hope next year I can make a better confession.

To which I say, me, too. As I turn once more to you, my spiritual friends, and ask not, were you there ? but are you here, now?

Are you here, now?

Because if you are here, in the shadow of Martin Luther King, standing with our neighbors from Beth Shir Shalom, if you are here perhaps you are here because once again the sweet smell of roses is in the air. Here on the streets of Santa Monica, the palm trees stretch toward the sun and the roses are blooming, the frangipani is coming into flower. Here the winds of change are blowing, if we can look at the footsteps of those who were there and recommit ourselves to being here, to holding one another tighter, to enlarging our capacity for moral imagination. To looking for common ground and purpose not in the rage, not in the senseless tragedy, but in the ordinary heroism of how we respond to that story, to that tragedy, as our best selves, as the people our children imagine us to be.

Inspired by the vision of civil rights movement, the real transformation of our society brought about by children, by ordinary women and men of dignity and worth, it can be tempting to say that without the soundtrack, without the preacher, without the urgency, what chance have we? How can we become that heaven on earth, create the beloved community? Because we forget, writes Courtney Martin, that our charge may not be to save the world, but to live in it. ?to live in it, [to live in it as we are:] flawed and fierce, loving and humble.?

Here are our people, living in the world, loving in the world, changing one another and changing this world. Here we are, and we are holding tight to one another. We are dreaming wide, hoping deep, singing loud.

The poet Adrienne Rich writes,

My heart is moved by all I cannot save;
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who, age after age,
perversely, with no extraordinary
power, reconstitute the world.

May it be so.

Copyright 2011, Rev. Rebecca Benefiel Bijur
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