Sermon copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.
Readings
The first reading was a poem by Clint Smith, “For Your First Birthday.”
The second reading was from the Hebrew Bible, the book of Amos, chapter 5, verses 21 through 24.
I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.
Sermon: “Roll Down Like Waters”
The birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is a time for everyone in the United States to refer back to his writings and speeches and reinterpret them once again. We do this every year, and by this point in the history of the United States, it can seem like there’s nothing left to say. Maybe we should just skip it this year. The thing is, preachers love to quote Dr. King, because he was such a good writer — such a good stylist — and there’s something incredibly satisfying about saying aloud his words. Being a preacher myself, there’s no way I’m going to pass up this opportunity to read aloud something written by Dr. King. So, like it or not, you’re going to get yet another sermon about Dr. King and his legacy — even if I have nothing original to say.
Yet people continue to find novel and interesting ways to interpret King’s thinking. For example, King famously said that he wanted his children to live in a land where “they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Recently, this quote has been used by some conservative politicians and pundits to help bolster the claim that we should not teach critical race theory or the history of racism in our schools. This is certainly a creative use of King’s words, but it’s probably not what he intended.
On the other side of the political spectrum, liberal politicians take pleasure in invoking King’s words, but they tend to do so selectively. For example, they pass lightly over King’s pointed critique of capitalism, as when he said: “We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor — both black and white, both here and abroad.” [The Three Evils of Society, 1967] In today’s society, it would be political suicide to criticize capitalism quite so openly. And so political liberals creatively interpret King by leaving out some important parts of his message.
And I think something we all tend to forget these days is that King was a progressive Christian minister. Today, Christianity’s reputation has suffered as a result of the clergy abuse scandal, the hypocrisy of Christians who demonize LGBTQ people, the refusal of the largest Christian denominations to allow women clergy, and for many other reasons. We live in a time when progressive Christians feel the need to apologize for being Christian. As a result, I think many of us, including Unitarian Universalists, either try to apologize for King’s progressive Christianity, or try to ignore King’s supposedly outdated religious convictions.
It’s a mistake to dismiss his religious convictions so readily. King was a serious intellectual, earning his doctorate degree from Boston University in systematic theology with a dissertation titled “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.” (Weiman, by the way, was a very progressive Christian theologian who late in life joined a Unitarian church.) With his progressive Christianity in mind, let’s look at one Bible passage that King repeatedly invoked. This was the passage we heard in the second reading today, from the Hebrew Bible, the book of Amos, chapter 5, verses 21 through 24.
The words we ehard are not the words of the human prophet. Amos was giving the actual words of his god, whom Amos knew as Yahweh. And Yahweh is not happy with humankind. God tells humankind that they have strayed from God’s core ethical and moral teachings. In particular, God calls out the privileged people who rule over the country where Amos lived. God tells the privileged people that they “trample on the poor” and “afflict the righteous,” that they take bribes and “push aside the needy.”
Amos was probably a real person. At the time he lived, the historic land of Israel was split into two countries, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. In those days, there was no distinction between politics and religion, for that distinction only dates back to the European Enlightenment. So the power of King Jeroboam II and the power of the official cult of Yahweh were the same thing. Thus, by repeating the words of his god, the prophet Amos was taking on the entire establishment. Amos’s prophecy makes clear that the king’s rule was against the will of God. The cultic leaders wrongly interpreted the will of God — so says Amos.
This helps us understand why Amos reports God as saying, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.” God is telling the humans in charge of the northern kingdom that they were doing things that were completely against the will of God; no amount of festivals or church services or solemn assemblies on the part of the humans could make God ignore what they were doing wrong. As to what they were doing wrong, the Biblical scholar Norman Gottwald sums it up like this:
Amos was attacking “the patriotic and pious … reaction that had gained currency among the upper classes during the prosperous reign of Jeroboam II. The greedy upper classes, with governmental and judicial connivance, were systematically expropriating the land of commoners so that they could heap up wealth and display it gaudily in a lavish conspicuous consumption economy.” [The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction, Gottwald, 1985]
Knowing this, we can better understand how King might find the book of Amos attractive. From the perspective of Black Americans in the mid-twentieth century, the American establishment had kept Blacks in low-paying jobs that supported the increasingly comfortable lives of the elite, all of whom were then White. And just like the greedy upper classes used their religion to maintain their position during the reign of King Jeroboam II, the elite White rulers of mid-twentieth century America used their interpretation of the Christian religion to maintain the status quo that benefited them.
If you remember King’s famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” he was responding to well-to-do ministers who were part of the White establishment of Birmingham, Alabama. These White ministers criticized the Civil Rights Movement in a public statement in which they called King and his allies “extremists.” King responded directly to this criticism by telling these Christian ministers: “Was not Amos an extremist for justice: ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.’” Later on in that same letter, King told these White ministers:
“So the question is not whether we will be extremists but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? Perhaps the south, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”
This helps us understand why King quoted Amos so often. No doubt in the days of King Jeroboam II, the greedy upper classes called the prophet Amos an extremist. In much the same way, King was called an extremist in his day. Both of them said things that were uncomfortable to hear. And that discomfort was intended to provoke people to take action. I would go so far as to say that if we don’t feel uncomfortable when we hear King’s words, we’re not paying attention.
But sometimes King translated the passage from Amos differently than the version we so love to quote. The Hebrew word “mishpat,” usually translated as “justice,” can also be translated as “judgement.” So in his essay “Paul’s Letter to American Christians,” King wrote: “Yes America, there is still the need for an Amos to cry out to the nation: ‘Let judgement roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.’”
This translation, while equally valid, sounds more challenging. “Let judgement roll down” — in fact, this almost sounds threatening, and it may better translate the sense of the original. The prophet Amos was telling the people of his day that their God would judge their actions. Amos saw himself as spreading the words of Yahweh, and Yahweh was telling the people in power that they must stop supporting injustice. The purpose of the book of Amos is for the rich and powerful to realize that, despite the stories they liked to tell themselves, all was not well in their land.
Martin Luther King spread a similar message to America in the 1950s and 1960s. While the American economy was booming in those years, Black Americans were mostly excluded from prosperity. In response, King preached the message that his God wanted all persons to be treated with love and dignity; and while King was most focused on how America treated Black Americans, his message included persons of all races who were treated unfairly. King preached the uncomfortable message that if some people were excluded from prosperity, then his God would let judgement roll down like waters.
In our own time, Black Americans still face job discrimination, and people of all races face increasing economic inequality. This can seem overwhelming. Yes, we have made progress since King’s day, but so much remains to be done before we have true equality in America. But I will leave you with the thought that King’s message was ultimately a hopeful message. Speaking at the National Cathedral in March, 1968, King said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” When King said this, he was paraphrasing the great abolitionist and Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker. Back in 1853, Parker preached a sermon in Boston where he said: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.”
No wonder Martin Luther King paraphrased this passage from Theodore Parker so frequently. I understand this as a message of hope. When Theodore Parker preached this sermon, slavery was the law of the land, and it seemed impossible that America would ever put an end to it. A century later, Martin Luther King paraphrased Parker’s words, and Jim Crow was the law of the land, and it seemed impossible that America would ever put an end to it. Yet we did put an end to slavery, and we did put an end to Jim Crow, and we can and will put an end to the other injustices that still confront us.
The arc of the moral universe may be long, and from where we stand today we do not see where it finally comes to rest. Yet we know deep within ourselves that we are moving towards justice — slowly, perhaps, but inexorably. We have not yet overcome injustice. But some day, sooner rather than later, we shall overcome injustice and build a land where we let justice roll down like waters, and peace like an everflowing stream.