IN THE NAME OF GOD
THE SOURCE, THE WELLSPRING AND THE LIVING WATER

Once upon a time it came to pass, that on a perfect spring afternoon the community gathered first to pray, and then to begin their march. The issue was the right to register to vote to participate in the electoral process.

It was a well-organized, disciplined group of several hundred people.

There was no chanting, no yelling, no signs --
just people walking 4 abreast --
making a statement simply by their presence and their courage.

The line stretched the full length the central business district -- all four blocks of it. From the small church at one end to the brand new jail at the other end.

Just before the leaders reached the jail, the march was stopped by a barricade of a half dozen police cars and offices. The other end of the march was stopped in front of the church.

There was a tension filled silence, the silence broken only by the demonstrator's own self-appointed Marshall's who moved quietly and slowly up and down the line giving simple instructions. Be quiet. Be calm. Don't move.

The quiet voices were suddenly drowned by a group of people who came out of the church and stood on the front steps.

Their voices were loud and angry and filled with venom as they hurled obscenities at the demonstrators.

As their voices receded the voice of one well dressed man was heard calling out the names of those he recognized.

" Kate, Bob, Chris, Ann don't bother to go to work Monday. You no longer have a job"..

And so there they stood. The people of God. Some on the steps of the church. Some lining the sidewalk. Some in the street.

Deeply divided and separated from each other.

A snapshot of one of the many ways in which the household of God , the children of God are divided.

The Gospel of John gives us a picture of another deeply fractured community. For that community the issue was not race or civil rights but the question of "Who is Jesus?" A demon possessed man? The messiah? A false prophet?

Those who professed belief in Jesus as the Messiah challenged long and deeply held beliefs, familiar and powerful customs and practices that defined their relationship to each other, their world and their relationship to God

The backlash not surprisingly, was severe.

In this context, It is not terribly difficult to grasp the intention of the Gospel writer.. Those who believed - those challenging the status quo, needed to hear that Jesus was the Messiah -- the One sent by God - who lived and died and rose again -- One who cared and loved deeply enough to lay down his life so that he could take it up again.

Not out of coercion, Guilt or , compulsion,
but voluntarily, by His own power.

It was and still is a powerful message or hope and redemption.

What are we to hear in this passage? Is the sole purpose of this story to identify and name Jesus as the Messiah? Are we meant to hear that Jesus and only Jesus is called to risk, to lay down, to give up his live in order to begin anew?

OR ARE WE TOO called to participate in the dying and rising again of Jesus Christ? If so, what exactly does that mean for us for surely we are not all called to martyrdom?

The overwhelming majority of us in this room are not people despised and ostracized for what we believe, how we look, or how we act.

The privileges of our socio-economic status, education, and for most of us, the whiteness of our skin have allowed us to escape the dehumanizing power of prejudice and discrimination that fractures communities and peoples all over the world all throughout history.

But the fact that we have escaped such extreme prejudice found in these stories, does not mean that we have escaped unharmed or unscathed.

We are in fact scarred by the way prejudice has played out in history and as a consequence we are unable to dwell and feed in the life-giving pasture to which the Good Shepherd leads us.

Before I press this point further I want to return to the text for a moment for a better foundation.

The metaphor of Shepherd and sheep is not simple a description of how God's love works through Jesus. It is also a description of how God's love pours through us and out in to the world.

God's love is unquestionably a powerful force in our lives. It gathers us and binds us inseparably with God and with each other. This binding quality of God's love is not meant to bind only things that look and act alike but to gather and bind all of creation -- in all of its diversity.

Think of it this way. God's love is like Super glue.

Imagine if I covered my hand with superglue, laid it down on the ambo -- and let it dry. Then if I force these two things apart both of these things will look a little different -- both scarred in some way. Neither is left unchanged.

So it is with God's love for creation. We are created to be bound together -- we live disconnected lives to our own detriment.

Could it be that the naming and resisting of those forces in our lives that Push and Pull and Resist the binding power of God's love is one way we participate in this dying and rising again.

If so, then we must look hard at what forces are at work and how they work.

The day of blatant, ugly, public prejudice that was displayed in that small southern town. Such action, thinking, and speaking is no longer politically correct. That is not to say it never happens because it does although less frequently and must less publicly.

But what I want us to examine and think about is the subtle sometimes unconscious ways that prejudice and privilege influence us. The ways that Prejudice manifest itself as benign privilege, or the ways that privilege manifests itself as prejudice.

If we can somehow find the courage to penetrate and sift through the honeycomb that is our subconscious mind, we would be appalled to see the brilliance and detail of the tattoos imprinted upon us by our "more is better, it's all about me" culture of power and privilege.

The tattoos with which we are stamped do not always manifest themselves in obvious word and action. No, these tattoos often show themselves in the unintentional and unconscious way

In part because we know too little about ourselves.

Let me give you an example.

Recently I was sitting in a commercial van ready to leave the Atlanta airport. I watched as a Black woman approached the van. She was traveling alone, with a lot of luggage piled into a cart, holding a drink in her hand.

I watched the van driver approach her, heard the driver snap at the woman - "well, hurry up" - as she yanked the luggage cart out of the woman's hands. The force caused the woman to lose her grip on the drink in her hand and some of the luggage to fall on the ground.

The woman stood for a moment in shock and then said to the drive "Bring my things back here. I will not be treated like this."

The driver hesitated and she repeated her statement. "I said bring my stuff back here I'm not getting on your van."

The driver returned the luggage and cart to her and she said again" I will not be treated like this, I will find another way to get home".

I watched as she gathered her things and turned and disappeared into the crowd.

I heard another couple on the van muse over the woman's "overreaction" to the driver.

I sat quietly and silently. My heart said "get off this van. Stand with her, protest with her." But I did nothing. I sat silently.

I simply didn't want to make a scene. I did not want to find another way home. And I I did not want to get off the van, get back on, and sit silently during a two hour ride feeling that all the eyes were on me because I overreacted and made a scene.

I had a choice and I made it.

After all, having and making that choice was a privilege I had.

I have no doubt that all of here if confronted with the brutal injustice blatant racism of the first story I told, would cry out in moral outrage.

But If we are to bear in our lives the gathering and binding force of God's love, we must develop the moral courage to act.

Acting begins with the courage to examine our lives
To recognize our privilege and our prejudice.

Acting begins with naming
and resisting the privilege and prejudice in our lives.

For if we do not resist them, they will come to rule us.

And if either privilege or prejudice come to rule us, there will be too little room for the binding power of the Spirit to come into our lives.

And make no mistakes about it, without the power Spirit we may never be reconciled to each other or to God.

We may never be the ones of whom Jesus spoke when he said "Out of the believer's heart will flow rivers of living water." We are much more likely to live our lives as dried up creek beds.

Perhaps it is our participation in the dying and rising again that we realize the deepest and most fervent prayers of our hearts.

Jesus said I am the good shepherd and I lay down my life.
I lay it down that I may take it up again.
I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again,

It is only through the power of the risen Christ that we can seize opportunity to lay down a life of privilege and prejudice, -- so that we can take up our life again -

And the world is full of opportunities. Opportunities to give up, to lay down some aspect of our life. so that we too can take up life again in a new way..

So that we can yet lay another something down, so we can again pick up a new life

And then lay it down, and take it up. again,

and again,

and again…

AMEN