Well, good morning!

It is truly a joy for me to be with you today, and I am so appreciative to have this invitation from our very good friend and brother, the Reverend Mike Kinman. I am glad that I am also not here by myself, but my family is here with me – my husband Rodney, and our son, and my cousin Dena and her husband, who live not too far away and have come to be with us.

We know on this auspicious occasion, as we commemorate the birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, there are so many things that he talked about that could be overlaid onto so many issues today. So, we enter this time with a real spirit of humility, and remembering that, even though it would have been his ninetieth birthday – can you believe that? – we know that, for all that he was able to do, and the thousands that worked with him, there is still so much more left to be done.

So, for today I invite you to meditate with me on the theme, “When God Breaks Silence.” Let us pray.

Loving God, we give you thanks and praise for this day, for this is the day that you have made, and we have come to rejoice and be glad in it. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

On the night of April 4th, 1967, more than three thousand people gathered at the Riverside Church in New York City to attend an anti-war event that was organized by the Clergy and Laymen cConcerned about Vietnam. Dr. Martin Luther King was a featured speaker at this event, and it was one of the most public times where he was wading into the waters of speaking out against the Vietnam War. As you heard in the text that was read earlier, this was something that he did that was against the advice of his colleagues and advisors. Many of them said, “Dr. King, don’t get involved in that. What have you to do with the war? Just stick to talking about civil rights.” But Dr. King took the very bold and brave step to help people understand that what he was speaking about and against, in relation to the war, had everything to do with them and civil rights and so much more. Dr. King helped to bring together the talk about militarism, racism, and poverty and its impact on people right here in the United States and around the globe.

But, one of the things that really became a breaking point for Dr. King was seeing the images of children who were living in Vietnam whose bodies had been battered and burned by the effects of the war. It became just too much for him to bear, too much for him to continue to remain silent, too much for him to look the other way. For, as the writer Arundhati Roy says, Once you see, you can’t unsee. So, Dr. King broke his silence about this, and spoke about the injustice of the same war in which the elder of the Omaha Nation, Mr. Nathan Philips, was a veteran.

Some of you may know Mr. Philips by a video that has been shared many, many times on the internet. Mr. Philips was in Washington, D.C., this Friday attending an indigenous march, a very peaceful protest. You may have seen the video of him beating on his drum and singing his chants of peace and of unity and of love. At the same time, you see a gathering of teenagers starting to come around him. They are wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, and he’s still singing and beating his drum. This would not have been a bad thing if this group had not come around him to stand in solidarity with him to say that we are with you, that we believe all children are created in God’s image and are welcome and are part of a beloved community. But that’s not what was going on. They were standing there to mock him. They were standing there to disparage him. And where the chaperones were in charge of that group, I’m still not clear.

This country has a long history of mobs of people surrounding people of color in intimidation. You’ve seen these images, whether it was children walking into a school for the first time in an attempt to desegregate the school – you see the images of the black children walking, and a mob surrounding them. Who would have thought that in 2019 we’d see the same type of images? But, you know, when our children hear the person who has been elected to the highest office in this land consistently demean people, call people names, disparage people, and dehumanize people we are teaching them that this is acceptable behavior. Because, certainly if we thought this was not acceptable behavior, there is no way we would tolerate this from the President of the United States.

I can’t speak for any other parents in this room, but I am wearying of having to point to his speeches and his activities, and make them a teachable moment for my own children. We are raising our children to be kind, that are loving and respectful of themselves and of everybody else. But what I am very clear about is that if one of my sons decided to go into their classrooms when they get back to school next week and spew some of the name-calling that the President of the United States is permitted to do, they would immediately be suspended or maybe even expelled. What we are saying is that we are holding our fifth graders to a higher standard than the President of the United States. We have lost our minds. I don’t want to hear any more talk about “This is not who we are.” Oh, yes, it is. We’ve had two year to do something about it, and we have done nothing.

The Rabbi Abraham Heschel said that words create worlds. His daughter, Susannah, described this perspective when she talked about her Dad, saying that he used to remind us that the Holocaust did not begin with the building of crematoria, and Hitler did not come to power with tanks and guns. It all began with the uttering of evil words, with defamation, with language and propaganda. Words do, in fact, create worlds. We know that many times people used to tell children, “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will never hurt you.” Friends, that’s not true. Words and bad names can be very hurtful; they are hurtful. And they diminish another child of God. So, words must be used very carefully. As Abraham Heschel said, “The Book of Proverbs does remind us that death and life are in the power of the tongue.”

But, as we talk about breaking the silence, we know it is not just about talking, but it also about action.

Throughout history, we’ve seen young and old and black, brown and white who have reached a pivotal point in their lives when they have made the cat let go of their tongue, and they stood up and spoke out against injustice. We have a long tradition of freedom fighters for justice, whether it was people like Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mary McCloud Bethune, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, or Fanny Lou Hamer – who declared that she was sick and tired of being sick and tired – or even the young activists in the Ferguson uprising who reminded the entire world that the whole umm system is guilty as umm. This is true.

In our text today, we see God breaking silence. For, he says in verse seven,
I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.

What happens when God breaks silence? What are the conditions that are too much even for God to bear? What is the sound of the cries that reach all the way to God’s ears and into God’s heart? The late Dr. James Cone, affectionately known as the father of Black theology, declared that God is, in fact, the God of the oppressed. And we see this playing out in verse eight, where God says, “So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians.”

Friends, I have come today and I want to leave us with one thought for consideration. When God breaks silence, God might just choose you to use. So, what are you gonna do, when God comes for you? [She hums and bounces to the tune.]

In our text today, God came for Moses. Now, scholars throughout history have debated the reason that God came to Moses. People say, “Why did God choose Moses to do this?” Maybe God remembered the great risk that Moses’ mother and his sister took just to keep him alive. Remember, it was during that time when the Pharaoh ordered all newborn boys to be killed. But, his mother and his sister subverted this unjust law and directive, and sought to hide him so that he might have a chance to live. Or, maybe God saw Moses’ great concern for his fellow Hebrews when they were being beaten or even beating each other. But, whatever the reason, what we know for sure is that God came for Moses, and Moses was not having it.

You remember when God got Moses’ attention through the burning bush. You hear God talking to Moses through the burning bush, and Moses is like, “What is happening here?” And God says, take off your sandals; you are standing on holy ground! And then you have all this back and forth after that between God and Moses. God is making plain what it was that God wanted Moses to do, and why he wanted him to do it, but Moses had a rebuttal every time. He would say, “Who am I to go to Pharaoh?” And God would say, “I will be with you.” And Moses says, “But but but but but, what if they don’t believe that it is you who sent me? What if they make fun of me? What if they don’t listen to me? What if….” And God says, “Tell them that ‘I am’ sent you.” Can’t you imagine Moses going, “‘I am?’ What kind of response is that? ‘I am’?” “Yes, ‘I am that I am that I am’ sent you.” And after all this back and forth, Moses finally had to silence the fear and the doubt in his own mind, and trust God to do what God said he would do.

Friends, God is breaking silence all around us. As the late Dr. Katie Cannon, one of the mothers of womanist theological thought, reminded us, we must continue to cultivate our God-consciousness as doers of justice. When we see people standing up and speaking out against injustice, we are cultivating our God consciousness by seeing their actions as being done on behalf of God. Whether it is about opening up our government, whether it is about walling off people along the southern border and saying that we need not wall off and out people, or it is about fortifying our schools’ walls so that every child has access to a well-resourced education.

Our family has had a wonderful time being here in California, not only because it is seventy degrees and we’re not in the snow with our friends back at home, but we also got to see a lot of sights. One of the greatest sights we saw was when we were on a tour and we rode past Michael Jackson’s old elementary school. And who did we see outside the elementary school but the teachers out there. They were walking [she marches across the chancel and back again] and they were chanting; they were singing they would not be moved. And we got to cheer them on. I told the boys, “Let’s clap for them!” It was one of the greatest moments of our trip to be able to have just a moment to say “Yes, we are with you! Yes! Stay in the struggle! Yes! Keep up the fight. Yes! What you are doing is going to create schools that are no longer separate but unequal, but schools where all of our children, black, brown, and white can have a well-resourced education, and our teachers and educators can be more wholly valued.” [Long and loud applause]

God is breaking silence all around us. We don’t have to look far to hear it, to see it, to feel it. We only need to open our hearts and our minds to it and resolve to be a part of what God is doing. Because we know that God can come for anyone; God can use whomever God chooses. But, I continue to believe that God is not eager to let those of us who call ourselves “followers of Christ” off the hook. For, we’ve chose of our free will to say, “We are going to walk in the way of Christ.” And the only way to walk in the way of Christ is to walk in the way of love and mercy and justice for all.

God is breaking silence. So, what are you going to do when God comes for you?
Amen.