God's Dream for the Victims and Oppressors of America

Title:  God’s Dream for the Victims and Oppressors of America

 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

 

           I chose to identify with the underprivileged.  I chose to identify with the poor.  I chose to give my life for the hungry.  I chose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity.  I choose to live for and with those who find themselves seeing life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign.  This is the way I’m going.  If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way.  If it means dying for them, I’m going that way, because I heard a voice saying, “Do something for others.” (Vincent Harding,  Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero;  Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York  1996,  p. 93. )

 

Tonight I want to, first give a tribute to Dr. King, to thank him for the gifts he has given to my life and journey as a white southern male.  Second I want us to ask, “Where is injustice in the land today?”  Third we need to consider if it is not time for another poor people’s direct action campaign in this country.  Finally, we need to celebrate the fact that we don’t come to Dr. Kings Birthday Celebration in despair, because the God of Justice is sovereign yesterday, today and forever.

 

Move 1.  A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

I want to begin my remarks this evening by giving a specific tribute of deep  personal gratitude to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the gifts he gave to me as a white southern male.   The first expression of gratitude in my tribute to Dr. King comes from the gift he gave me in his Letter from the Birmingham City Jail.   In that letter he taught me that the heart of the Christian Gospel is the work of justice, the work of freedom, the work of uplifting human dignity for all people, especially the poor and oppressed.

 

I was in seminary at Candler School of Theology when I read Martin Luther King Jr.’s  Letter from the Birmingham City Jail.  I was from Birmingham and was asleep,  I could say dead, in my comfortable acceptance of  the open hostility to Dr. King’s work in Birmingham for racial and economic justice.    Dr. King woke me up to see that the meaning of Christian discipleship is at the heart of the African American struggle for freedom, justice and equality.  I cried for several days after my encounter with his letter to me discharging the pain of my oppression as a white southern male.  I continue to weep because of the entrenched racial and economic injustice in this country.

 

John Wesley had taught me the wonderful truth that God loved me as a sinner.  That truth freed me to have the courage to wake up to the current social reality of injustice;  and to wake up to the truth that God was working in the life and ministry of Martin Luther King, Jr.   Since those days I have often referred to myself as a recovering racist.  There are some problems with the designation of recovering racist.  In America recovery is an inadequate metaphor for dealing with racism because if you are recovering you can not use the drugs any more. ? As a white male I still benefit from white male privilege whether I want to or not,  because the dominant value of our society is still white male supremacy.

 

I want to thank Dr. King for waking me up.  I thank you, Dr. King for the freedom to see and freedom to discharge the pain of my oppression.  For today I can say that I love myself completely and with our reservation as a white southern male and I am committed to that day when every person in America can experience that love for themselves and all people.   I am committed to see the love of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reflected in all the social structures of our society.  This love is God’s dream for the victims and oppressors of America, the dream Dr. Martin Luther King lived and died to proclaim in this land.

 

The second expression of gratitude I want to include in my tribute to Dr. King is to thank him for the gift of “beloved community.”  I did not have the privilege of knowing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. personally but over the last several years in Birmingham I have had the wonderful gift of sharing in the “beloved community.” A community that is the God given fruit of King’s leadership of the nonviolent movement for racial and economic justice in Birmingham.  That gift of “beloved community” has been one of the greatest gifts of my life.  There are many problems in Birmingham today, as there are all across this land, but as Dr. Abraham Lincoln Woods, Jr., president of SCLC in Birmingham says, “Birmingham is not all that it should be, but it is a better ham than it used to be.”  I want you to know that the “beloved community” is alive there.   I rejoice to have the privilege of fellowship in that community.  Thank you Dr. King for the gift of “beloved community.”  Dr. King taught us the keys to “beloved community.”  He said, “Fear leads to hate, and hate leads to violence but  nonviolent resistance in the spirit of love leads to God’s dream for the victims and oppressors of America which is “beloved community.”

 

I thank God for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  for he helped me see and let me know that I could be a part of the “beloved community” that is God’s dream for America.   Dr. King did not exclude me as a white southern male.  He invited me to the revolution  of life for all.  I accepted the invitation to God’s dream for the victims and oppressors of America.  As we  celebrate Dr. King’s Birthday,  God is still calling all of us today through his ministry and the celebration of his birthday to leave the American nightmare of greed, racism, materialism, militarism and hate and join the revolution for the values of freedom, justice, and jobs for all.   These values of  love embodied in nonviolent resistance are central to God’s dream for victims and oppressors of America;  values that build “beloved community”

 

Move 2.  Where is injustice in the land today?  Welfare Reform.

 

We must follow Martin Luther King, Jr.’s  commitment as a holy watcher  for justice and ask:  How is it with the poor today?  Who is left out today?  For God’s love for all never ends and it is still true that, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”   We need the pain that truth often brings and the hope that only the non-violent struggle for justice can bring.  We must help one another to wake up to injustice and to stay awake!

 

We must not sleep through the ongoing revolution for justice and slumber  in our silent acceptance of the pain of any who are oppressed.

 

It has been interesting to watch the progression of the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s  Birthday over the decades since his death.  We have moved the celebration from the nonviolent struggle in the streets to the security of the stained-glass windows.  Often we are content with pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities rather than joining in the continued mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice that is still rampant in the land.  We are in danger of burying Dr. King’s active commitment to justice by honoring him with our words of celebration devoid of actions in community with the poor.

 

How is it with the poor in Kansas?   In Alabama the poverty rate is 18% for the total population and 25% for children.  In Greene County Alabama 46% of the people live in poverty.  58% of the children live in poverty in that county.  We could spend the next several hours talking about the increasing state of poverty and homelessness in America.  We don’t have the time to do that but most of us are, or should be, familiar with something of the current state of poverty in America.   If we are not, we must become familiar with poverty, not just in the literature about the poor,  but through personal relationships with our brothers and sisters in poverty.    We need to step forward on his birthday and say what would Martin King the holy watcher for justice have to say about the current state of poverty in America.

 

One of the first things he would be asking,  is the Welfare Reform Law passed by the 1996  Congress and signed by the President of the United States an unjust law and does a nonviolent poor peoples campaign need to be initiated to challenge it?

 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would say that the New Welfare Reform Law is an unjust Law on the same basis that he declared the segregation laws of Birmingham, Alabama unjust 34 years ago.   He defined the terms of an unjust law through the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, “An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just.  Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” (Testament Of Hope, p. 293)  The New Welfare Reform Law says that we will only treat you as human being for two years at a time with out a job and a total of five years in your life with out a job. Any law that declares that a person is human being and a economic citizen of this country only as long as that person has a job degrades human personality. After that time you are expendable, according to the law, undeserving of the mercy of this country.  Any law that declares any human being expendable based on economic status, or any other status, is an unjust a law.  As a law that declares a person expendable because of the color of their skin is unjust.  Dr. Martin Luther King would be asking, “Is the new welfare reform law unjust?”

 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. also analyzed laws in terms of  the thinking of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber  (TOH p. 293).  He would say the New Warfare Reform Law substitutes an “I-it” relationship for the “I-thou” relationship.  The New Welfare Reform Law ends up relegating persons to the status of economic objects, things.  People are classified like machines, of no value, unless they are working.  Throw them away if they are broken or out dated.  Or like cattle, shock them with the sting of law to force them to work regardless of their mental or physical health, educational opportunities, availability of child care or transportation to the jobs.

 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would address the welfare reform law in terms used by Paul Tillich (TOH p. 294) who said that sin is separation.  To separate or segregate humanity in America into those who are considered human by whether they have a job or not, is as unjust a separating or segregating humanity based on the color of your skin.  A human being is a human being.  A person is a person.  God created us all for “beloved community.”

 

Martin King would give us one more concrete example of unjust laws by pointing out that there is no economic democracy in America only economic totalitarianism.  A totalitarianism that controls the vast majority of our country’s budget from the powerful corporations and the Pentagon. Military expenditures are not even on the legislative table.  The people who are poor and without jobs have no way to participate in the determination of their economic future.  They are totally at the mercy of others who are non-poor.  They see life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign.  This is not a just arrangement, but a clear denial of economic democracy.

 

A young, homeless, black man that is a member of the church I pastor told me last week,  “Preacher we have grown past waking up and saying good morning.  We don’t even speak to one another any more.  We are living on the edge, like in a concentration camp, living only for self, not caring for one another.  “We need jobs,” he said, “but before we need jobs we need respect.”

 

How are things with the poor?  They are bad and getting worse.  Is it time for major, direct, nonviolent action to correct the situation not only for the poor who are victims of America in our own land,  but for the poor through out the world?  

 

I can hear Martin Luther King, Jr.  the Holy Watcher saying, “Therefore O leaders, may my council be acceptable to you:  atone for your sins with righteousness, and for your iniquities with mercy for the oppressed, so that your posterity may be prolonged.”  (Daniel 4: 27)

 

There are other struggles for justice beside the presence of a New Welfare Reform Law that Dr. King would question.  Current reversals in the gains of affirmation action are under way that Dr. King would also question.

 

Move 3. Where is injustice in the land today?  What about Affirmative Action.

 

So, we must also ask, who else is being left out today, and why?

 

A little history will help us here.  To refer  my good friend Dr.  Karnie Smith’s unpublished Doctor of Ministry Project from Union Theological Seminary in Daton, Ohio; (p. 50-51)  Dr. Smith is pastor of the St. John AME Church in Birmingham,

 

 He points out that in the years following the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 there was promise and expectation as a result of the Freedman’s Bureau Act.  The Bureau served a supportive role to black schools and social agencies.  Furthermore, the Bureau attempted to correct the atrocities of slavery by institutionalizing a  “Land Distribution Program” for exslaves.  This was not an unusual law because standard land practice in settling the states was to give land if you were white.  The program was designed for the Freedman’s Bureau to acquire 40 acre plots from Confederate States and make the land available to African-Americans.  Thus land ownership would allow African -Americans to become economically stable and self-sufficient.  Unfortunately, the “Land Redistribution Program” did not last  long.  In 1865, the U.S. Congress decided to put an end to the “Land Redistribution Program” and reclaim the land that had already been given to some African-Americans.  The reclamation of the land and the failure of the Freedman’s Bureau in 1874 created an atmosphere of hopelessness and despair in the African American community.  Lerone Bennett, Jr. in his book: Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America, articulates the sadness and pain in the African American community as General O. O.  Howard attempted to tell blacks in South Carolina that they must give back the land,

 

Bennett writes:

“He tried to say it, but the words wouldn’t come.  How do you tell a people that they have been taken again?  To cover his confusion and shame, General Howard asked the people to sing a song.   One old woman on the edge of the crowd was up to the occasion.  She opened her mouth and out came the words tinged with insufferable sadness:  “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.”  Howard, a gentle, one armed humanitarian, broke down and wept.  There were tears, there were rivers of tears, but there were no mules and precious little land.  Without land, tools, without capital or assess to credit facilities, the freedmen drifted into a form of peonage:  the share cropping system.” 

 

In the 1860’s there was a move from forty acres and a mule to sharecropping.   An amazing reversal from justice to deny blacks land when whites received 200 acres or more when the state was settled.   Today in the 1990’s Martin Luther King, Jr. would point out the same reversal taking place in a more subtle form.  The years following the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s were filled with hope and expectation because of affirmative action.  Now we have moved from affirmative action to privatization, outsourcing and temporary labor.  Affirmative action gave minorities and women access to jobs in corporate America.  Now new definitions of exclusion are working through the practices of downsizing, out sourcing,   and temporary labor.  These business practices of the 1990’s exclude the participation of a whole new community of people from employee benefits such as stock ownership, retirement plans, family health care, vacations, sick leave and other benefits of wealth.  People whose labor is purchased through a contractor are very often denied these benefits.   Exclusion from the benefits of wealth under the old social construction of race accomplished by reversing the Land Redistribution Program of the 1860’s is now taking place afresh through the business practice of hiring temporary labor.   Under slavery and Jim Crow segregation, the denial of land was used to keep black folks from gaining any property,  assets or benefits of white wealth.  Today the blocking of people from the benefits of wealth  is at work in privatization, downsizing,  temporary labor and outsourcing to keep the new excluded from inheriting any benefits of wealth or having any power in the decision making process.  Martin Luther King,  Jr. would be asking, what is behind this new definition of exclusion? Is it because affirmative action gave blacks and others a new line of access to the benefits of wealth?  Is the same process going on here that took place in 1865 with the reversal of the Land Distribution Program?   Are these new constructs of exclusion the new reversal, new ways of leaving people out in the 90’s?

 

The way this works out for the working poor members of the church I serve is as follows:  They work for the temporary labor organizations in downtown Birmingham.  They are paid minimum wage.  They are deducted for transportation each way back and forth to the job.  They are deducted for a lunch plus a service charge.  They are deducted for the rental of safety equipment.  They end up taking home around $25 a day.  This is not enough income to become and stay established in an apartment and provide personal transportation.  Public transportation is becoming more limited with the passing of each month and year and is inadequate to support transportation to work in most cases.  They have no paid vacation, no sick leave, no paid holidays.  This is extremely difficult around holidays like Christmas and New Years.   They miss at least four days work and pay in two weeks because of the holidays.

 

They are also required to sign an agreement that they will not work for the company they are contracted to for 90 days.  Some are then hired by the company.   After that period they get an increase of pay and can make it into some form housing.   Often doubling up with a friend or family member and sharing expenses, struggling with transportation.  Many are then laid off before their 30 day trial period is up and never qualify for any benefits.  They end up back on the streets.  I have known some men to go through this process 3 or 4 times over the last 3 years.  They are to be complimented for their courage and faith.  They work at hard labor and often in hazardous conditions.  These conditions are the basis of my friends earlier reflections on the need for respect.  Dr. King would have us ask who is left out?  And call us to wake up to economic injustice in the land.

 

Move 4.  The Nonviolent Direct Action Campaign:  Join the Struggle for Justice and Human Dignity.

 

So, how do we sing happy birthday to Dr. King when these reversals of access to justice are rampant in our land?  How do we sing happy birthday and use it to wake ourselves up to Dr. King’s God-given vision of a just world and a just America?  We need a new nonviolent direct action campaign for the poor.  We must join in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s  expression of  God’s dream for the victims of America.  We must know the trouble the poor in this land and in the world are seeing today.   We must  join with Dr., King and sing:

 

I choose to identify with the underprivileged.  I choose to identify with the poor.  I chose to give my life for the hungry.  I chose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity.  I choose to live for and with those who find themselves seeing life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign.  This is the way I’m going.  If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way.  If it means dying for them, I’m going that way, because I heard a voice saying, “Do something for others.” (Vincent Harding,  Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero;  Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York  1996,  p. 93. )

 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,  the holy watcher for justice is  calling us once again three decades following hid death to the four basic steps of a nonviolent campaign. He points them out in his Letter from the Birmingham City Jail (TOH p. 290):

 

 (1) Collect the facts to determine if injustices are alive.  Ask the question about jobs.  In Greene County, Alabama there are 900 people looking for the 90 job opening in that county.  The 226 people in that county who are now on welfare are not expendable.   They  cannot be written off.   Where are the jobs the poor are to work?  What about pay and benefits?  What is a living wage?  Who is working for what money?  What about job training?  What about quality public education for the poor?  What about public transportation?  How do you get to the jobs?  The Civil Rights movement in Alabama was about Black people riding on the front of the bus, now there are no buses to ride to the places of economic vitality.  The bus service is radically deminished.  What about health care?  What about affordable housing?  The questions go on and on.  Where is economic justice for the poor in this country?   Let’s collect the facts.  We must do compassionate critical analysis.  We must walk with the poor in this land today to understand their pain not to condemn them. 

 

And then (2)  Let’s negotiate with Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton to quit acting like it is a sin to be poor.  We must stop this philosophy that punishment of the poor will solve their problems.  This philosophy only helps the rich get richer.  It does not solve problems.  We must pass legislation that enables the poor to establish the relationships they need to raise their families in the warm home of a just economy.  We need job training, we need transportation , we need housing, we need jobs that pay a living wage.  We need respect and dignity for the human beings that are poor.  It is not a sin to be poor brothers and sisters.  Poverty is the clear Biblical sign of an unjust economy.  

 

If Bill and Newt won’t negotiate we must (3) Purify ourselves in our faith communities.  We must pause and deeply reflect on what the Torah and the Gospel and the Koran say about God’s concern for the poor.  We must let the Sermon on the Mount fill our souls and break our hearts of stone.  We must have workshops on nonviolence until we can accept blows without retaliating.  

 

And then if necessary for justice for the poor we must (4) move into direct action that will create a crises and establish such a creative tension that our nation will be moved confront the issue of economic justice and act for  the poor of the land.  I think that Dr. King would be saying that it is time to resurrect the poor peoples movement and march on Washington one more time.

 

Celebration:   The God of Justice is Sovereign

 

Brothers and sisters we don’t raise these questions in despair or without hope for:

 

All of God’s works are truth, and all God’s ways are justice.  God is able to bring low those who walk in pride.  God is able to lift up the poor and downtrodden to walk in freedom and wholeness ( Daniel 4: 37).

 

King said in 1967 “For years I labored with the Idea of reforming the existing institutions of the society, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently.  I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values.” (Vincent Harding,  Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero;  Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York  1996,  p. 103. )

He went on to add: “We have moved to the era of civil rights to the era of human rights.” (Vincent Harding,  Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero;  Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York  1996,  p. 104. )

 

God is sovereign and God is able to bring about the reconstruction of the entire society and a revolution of values.  For all of God’s works are truth and all God’s ways are justice.  God is able, to bring low those who walk in pride.  God is able, to lift up the poor and downtrodden, God is able for the poor and downtrodden to walk in freedom and wholeness in the fullness of their human dignity.

 

Brothers and sisters, we do not come to this Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday celebration in despair.  As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his article The Power of Nonviolence  (TOH p. 14.);  “There is something in the universe that unfolds for justice....  And this was one thing that kept the people together, the belief that the universe is on the side of justice....  We must keep moving with wise restraint and love and with proper discipline and dignity.”

 

“On the night of his assassination, with a sense of what might be very close to him, (King) could still call others. . .  to the great uncharted path.  In the big church in Memphis, speaking to thousands of black people who had gathered together on a very rainy, stormy night, King spoke these words of encouragement.

 

Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness than ever before.  Let us stand with a greater determination than ever before and let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be.  We have the opportunity to make America a better nation and I want to thank you and I want to thank God for allowing me to be here with you.

 

We’ve got some difficult days ahead ( King said)  but it doesn’t matter with me now.  Because I have been to the mountian top.  And I don’t mind.   Like any body I would like to live a long life.  Longevity has its place.  But I am not concerned about that now.  I just want to do God’s will.  And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountian and I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the promised land.  I may not get there with you but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.  And I an happy tonight.  I’m not worried about any thing.  I’m not fearing any man.  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” (Vincent Harding,  Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero;  Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York  1996,  p. 126-127. )

 

Last Wednesday evening,  January 15, 1997, we stood in ‘beloved community” in 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama and sang, Mine Eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.  We ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around, turn us around!  Were gonna keep on walking, keep on talking, marching up to freedom land.

 

R. Lawton Higgs, Sr.

Pastor

Church of the Reconciler

Birmingham, Alabama

1/20/97  Topeka, Kansas