WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR!
© Rev. Dr.
Gary Blaine
University
Congregational Church
April 26,
2009
Reading: Isaiah 6: 1-8 (RSV)
In the
year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and
lifted up; and his train filled the temple.
Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered
his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is
full of his glory.”
And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of
him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen
the King, the Lord of hosts!”
Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having in his hand a
burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your
guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven.”
And I heard the voice of the Lord say, “Whom shall I send,
and who will go for us?”
Then I said, “Here am I!
Send me.”
The congregational
minister saw a little boy standing in the narthex of the church. He was reading the names of tall plagues that
mounted the walls. He asked the
minister, “Who are all of these people?”
The minister answered, “These are the men and women who
died in the service.”
“Which service was that,” asked
the boy, “the morning service or the evening service?”
Based on the reading from Isaiah, I imagine that the
prophet was quite certain that he was going to die in the service. It was bad enough that six winged creatures
were flying around the sanctuary, but the whole place was quaking so badly the
foundations were loosening the thresholds.
How was the prophet going to explain that to the building and grounds
committee? Smoke filled the whole room
and a voice thundered in his ear. He
realized that he was in the presence of something Other – a power that was
beyond the usual trappings of prayer and preaching, song and chant, robes and
candlesticks. Immediately he questioned
his own standing before such power and order.
Impotence and chaos were more characteristic of his moral code, and like
any Jewish son he could only confess guilt.
There is nothing like an Albert Schweitzer or Mother Theresa or Thich
Nhat Hanh to remind you of how much work you have got to do.
Guilt, of course, is no excuse and the seraphim had a ready
solution for Isaiah’s troubled conscience.
With tongs the seraphim plucked a hot coal from the altar fires and
pressed it against the sinner’s mouth.
Would that Isaiah was Roman Catholic, where five Hail Mary’s, three Our
Fathers, and alms for the poor might cleanse his troubled soul. But there apparently was no time for
that. The seraphim went for the
purifying fires, pressed that coal against the one organ that gets us into more
trouble than any other body part!
But this Presence in the Sanctuary was troubled by more than
a nervous and uncertain preacher. The
whole nation was fraught with social injustice, political intrigue, foreign and
domestic enemies. Religion had become
superficial and political leadership was corrupt. Isaiah wrote, “Everyone loves a bribe and runs
after gifts.” The judicial system was
easily bought and sold at the expense of the innocent. The people of the nation presumed arrogance
and haughtiness despite the fact that their young warriors faced certain death
on the battlefield. Dishonesty and
deceit had polluted the entire nation.
Heaven and earth quivered in the death throes of a nation poisoned by
greed.
Deep from the throat of sacred sorrow a voice pleaded,
“Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
Doesn’t any one care any more?
Will any one speak truth to power?
Will any one stand up and be counted?
Does any one still believe they can make a difference? Someone, please help us.
Isaiah looked around the sanctuary. No other voices could be heard. No hands were raised. No one rushed to the altar singing, “Just As
I Am Without One Plea.” Isaiah wondered,
“Are you talking to me?” There was no
one else to answer the question. And
before he could stifle himself he heard his own voice speak bravely, “Here am
I. Send me.”
Whom shall I send and who will go for us – to Washington,
D.C., to Topeka, and Wichita? Whom shall
I send to New York, London, Paris, Baghdad, Tehran, and Jerusalem? Who will go for us to Moscow, New Delhi, and
Beijing?
Look around. There
is no one else but you. Jack and Bobby
Kennedy are dead. So are Martin Luther
King, Jr. and the Mahatma Gandhi. We too
often believe or hope that someone will come along and show us the way out of
greed and injustice and violence. We
wish that someone else will lead a movement that will safeguard our civil
rights, bring peace and justice to the world.
We long for that charismatic preacher that will inspire our nation to
genuine goodness and mutual respect amongst the religions. We yearn for the political leader that will
return us to a democracy that is seated in constitutional law rather than
ideology, guided by citizens rather than lobbyists, funded equitably by private
and corporate citizens, and oriented toward equal opportunity rather than to
special interest organizations.
Well, let me tell you that the search is over. You are the ones that we have been waiting
for! You are not second string or the
next in line. You are the ones we have
been waiting for! You do not need to
finish yet another degree, wait for nomination and election, or develop a
business plan. You are the ones that we
have been waiting for! You do not need
to be ordained or consecrated. You only
need to be dedicated to the restoration of the nation, your community, or your
family. You are the ones that we have
been waiting for!
I would
like to tell you about two very ordinary women, Mairead Corrigan and Betty
Williams. Mairead and Betty were born in
Belfast, Ireland. Mairead was one of
eight children, the child of a window cleaner and housewife. She attended primary school and had one year
at Miss Gordon’s Commercial College. By
occupation Mairead was a shorthand typist and secretary. Betty’s father was a butcher and her mother a
housewife. Her education included
primary and grammar school. Her
occupation was that of an office receptionist.
The
lives of Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan came together in August of
1976. In an attempt to evade British
soldiers, a young man named Danny Lennon was shot and killed in his automobile.
The car veered out of control and
smashed into a mother and her three young children. The mother was Mairead’s sister. The three children, Andrew, John, and Joanne
died at the scene of the accident. The
death of innocent people is not a new phenomenon in the history of war. The deaths of these young people were not
unusual.
Mairead
heard the sound of the crash from her house and rushed to the scene. Of course she was horrified by what she
saw. But something other than grief
broke into Mairead’s life that day – a firm determination to bring to an end
the war in Northern Ireland. Within a
few weeks she, Betty Williams, and others organized “The Peace People.” Together they staged a series of rallies,
mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people to bring an end to the war and the
senseless destruction of human life.
Their ranks were swollen by people like you and me, ordinary people who
dared to speak over the sound of machine guns and bombs and absurd political justification
for the continued violence. The work of
The Peace People slowly turned the public conscience and the soldiers and the
politicians could no longer find justification for their work. The long and bloody war in Northern Ireland
began to ebb and the goal of peace became the common goal of all. Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams were the
ones that Northern Ireland and Great Britain had been waiting for. They received the Nobel Peace Prize on
December 10, 1976.
Betty
Williams offered these words in her Nobel Lecture:
“Because of the role of
women over so many centuries in so many different cultures, they have been
excluded from what have been called public affairs; for that very reason they
have concentrated much more on things close to home…and they have kept far more
in touch with the true realities…the realities of giving birth and love. The moment has perhaps come in human history
when, for very survival, those realities must be given pride of place over the
vainglorious adventures that lead to war.”
Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan
were not waiting for permission, or the equal rights amendment, or special
appointment by the queen. They did not
wait for their church to plan the next social justice event. They determined to promote peace and human
dignity across Northern Ireland and in time their peace was won.
Whether we are discussing Isaiah’s Jerusalem or our own
capital, the abuses of power and greed constantly raise the question of who
will go and stand for justice. Who will
be sent for righteousness? Who stand up
for peace in our time? Who will insist
on truth in the public square? Who will
go, if not you?
When I
look at all of the qualified applicants; when I review the roster of potential
candidates; when I consider the resumes on file I can come to only one conclusion. You are the ones we have been waiting
for. You are the ones most likely to
make a difference in the outcomes of war and peace, poverty and immigration,
education and health care reform. Find a
cause and put your shoulder to it. Find
an issue and give it your voice. Claim
your political passion and write your name across the skies. Take to the streets and your word processors;
write your congressional delegates and newspapers; send out those emails in
your address book; and speak out on radio and television. Dare to believe that we are a government of
the people, by the people, and for the people.
And if that means that you miss a Sunday morning, let us know and we
will mark you present in church. If that
means that you cannot attend a committee meeting, let us know and we will mark
it as mission excused.
Walter
Rauschenbusch, the father of the Social Gospel movement wrote:
“The idea of the Kingdom
of God is not identified with any special social theory. It means justice, freedom fraternity, labor,
joy.
This great task of
establishing a righteous social life on earth embraces all minor tasks in so
far as they are good. The mother who
tries to make a good home, the farmer who feeds the people, the teacher who
trains them, the scientist who gets the facts for all, the merchant, the
working man, the artist, the leader in play – they are all contributing to the
Kingdom, provided they view their work so, and are trying to put an
evolutionary plus into it which will
lift the total nearer to the divine will.
The Kingdom is the supreme task, and all small tasks are part of it.”[1]
You are
the ones that we have been waiting for.
And if someone dares to ask who sent you, tell them that it was the same
voice that sent Moses to Egypt and commanded Pharaoh to “let my people
go.” And if someone questions your
authority to speak on such issues, tell them you do the bidding of freedom –
the same freedom that shaped chaos into order and death into life. And if someone asks, “Who do you think you
are,” you tell them that you are mud, shaped in the image of conscience and
moral authority. And if someone says,
“How dare you,” you tell them that you dare do nothing save the work of justice
and righteousness. And if someone asks,
“Whom do you serve,” tell them that you serve the fisher king – the wounded
mortal who sits between the wasteland of tyranny, corruption and greed, and the
promised land of human dignity. The
Carpenter sent you, even Jesus of Nazareth to “bring good news to the poor…to
proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the
oppressed go free.” Tell them that you
bear the holy grail of freedom and equality.
Tell them that you are the ones we have been waiting for.
Finis