Waking from the Nightmare and Daring to Dream Again @Eastrose 1-17-21

We who believe in Freedom cannot rest.  I believe that, but sometimes I just get tired.  This last year has been hard in so many ways.  The last four years have been hard as we watched the arc of the universe bend away from justice, especially in this country.  For the last year we have been dealing with a deadly virus made worse by the incompetence of our national leadership. We have been sick ourselves, we have lost loved ones, many have lost their jobs and we have all suffered from the physical separation from our friends, our family and our church community.

Do I even have to mention the last two weeks where we witnessed a right wing insurrection and an attempted coup.  Hopefully the two pandemics of the corona virus and increased racism will soon be over.  There are only 3 more days to a saner less vicious leader for this country.  They will be 3 days filled with the fear and perhaps the reality of more violence and attacks on our democracy. I know and you know that even after Tuesday, we still cannot rest.  Freedom has not yet come.  It will continue to be the struggle it has always been.  I am really tired and I want to rest.  I want the nightmare over for once and for all.

Today we are celebrating the life and leadership of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.  He was a visionary man, strong in his belief in freedom, in a dream of a better world, in his faith in God and in the belief that the moral arc of the universe really does bend toward justice.  But King got tired too.  He despaired. He likely wanted to quit.  He was in despair in Montgomery, Alabama before the children stood up and led the people to a victory against segregation in that city.  The adults were all afraid of Bull Conner and his dogs and clubs.  But the children wanted to demonstrate, and King struggled with whether to let them do so. It was their freedom they were fighting for, however, so he said yes, despite his fears for them.  Over a thousand children went to jail before it was done and the images of their peaceful demonstrations being disrupted by dogs and firehoses helped turn the tide of public opinion and eventually end legal segregation. The images from January 6^th of this year I hope have had a similar impact. The veil that has often covered this country’s endemic white supremacy has been lifted once again.

But back to despair.  Our prelude this morning, Precious Lord, was King’s favorite song. Given the challenges he faced, knowing he was likely to be assassinated before his dream was realized, it is no wonder he found comfort in that old hymn.  It is both a cry for help and a statement of faith that there is a hand, a love that will not let us go. There is hope to be found even in times of the deepest despair. “I am tired, I am weak, I am worn.” 

I can sing those words myself with real feeling because I have felt that way. I suspect many of you have felt that way as well.  We have all been through the storm, through the night, and we yearn to be led into the light, to peace, to calm, to the feeling that we have come home. 

How do we leave the nightmare we have been living and dare to dream again?  King did it.  Can we?  Part of the answer to is hold onto hope.

Langston Hughes, an African American poet who was part of the Harlem Renaissance and also a gay man, had this to say about dreams:

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

We cannot let our dreams die, no matter how long or how hard we have to work to make them real.  

A song we did not sing today is hymn #149 in the grey hymnal.(remember hymnals?) Often called the Negro National Anthem, it is being sung this morning in most African American Churches and many of our Unitarian Universalist congregations as well.  It is a song of hope, but it also names the real despair, the awful hard times.  The second verse in particular, “stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod, felt in the days when hope unborn had died, yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet come to the place for which our fathers sighed. We have come over a way that with tears have been watered, we have come treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.”  That verse references both slavery and the civil war and the aftermath, yet ends with a vision of a bright star of hope.

Faith can help us when we are in despair, so tired it feels like we can’t go on. King said, “With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” 

Faith can be a tricky concept for some Unitarian Universalists.  I think we need some type of faith, however, to allow us to find and use what power we have even in the midst of heartbreak and despair. 

The Rev. Dr. King was not a Unitarian Universalist, although he and his wife did attend one of our churches for a time.   

It was not an accident, however, that there were more Unitarian Universalist ministers involved with him in the civil rights struggle than from any other predominantly white denomination. 

Some of them gave their lives, most notably the Rev. James Rheeb, who died after being beaten by a gang of white segregationists. 

Our faith tradition is one that lives in this world. If we had a Holy Trinity in this faith of ours, it would be Justice, Love, and Compassion. 

Dr. King always tried to live his life guided by love.  He was a visionary, an activist for justice, but most of all; he was a man of faith that believed in love.  

He stood tall and he walked proud.  

He faced dogs and fire hoses, and finally an assassin’s bullet, but he never lost sight of love.  He reached out to both his enemies and to those that hung back on the sidelines.  

Near the end of his life he also worked to end the Viet Nam war and he worked to end poverty.  His life was not about a single issue. 

Our faith gives us so much, a welcoming place, a place where we can feel accepted, where we can be free to be who we are, where we can follow both our heads and our hearts, where we can find a place to be whole.  But our faith also is a demanding one, one that asks us repeatedly to keep learning and growing, and doing.  It isn’t easy to walk our talk.  It isn’t easy to live according to our values.

Unitarian Universalists worked to abolish slavery in this country.  We worked for child labor laws, and for women’s rights.  Many of us marched with Dr. King. 

We have been in the front lines in the struggle for full equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.  We are involved in immigrant rights and the Black Lives Matter movement. 

But action can be risky.  James Reeb and Martin Luther King were both murdered. Many others have also lost their lives in similar ways.  But what is most important is not how they died, but how they lived. 

We don’t have to be a James Rheeb, or a Martin Luther King to follow in their footsteps, to keep their dreams alive.  Not just their dreams, but also our own dreams, and the dreams of our children and all who will come after them. 

I want tell you some of what MLK said in a speech he gave, at our Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in 1966.  It wasn’t one of his most famous speeches and it isn’t quoted often, but it was addressed directly to Unitarian Universalists and can, I think, speak to us today. 

Dr King told us that the church needs to stay awake and be responsive to what is going on in the world. 

“Certainly the church has a great responsibility” he said, “because when the church is true to its nature, it stands as a moral guardian of the community and of society. 

“It has always been the role of the church to broaden horizons, to challenge the status quo, and to question and break mores if necessary.”

“It is not enough for the church to work in the ideological realm, and to clear up misguided ideas. To remain awake through this social revolution, the church must engage in strong action programs”  

MLK changed hearts and minds.  He changed the world.  But he didn’t do it alone.  Thousands marched with him, thousands went to jail, and many were killed, as he was, by violence.  

Martin Luther King did the eulogy for James Rheeb, and in that eulogy he spoke of hope, saying he was not discouraged by the future, despite the heartache, despite the tragedy that was all around him.

He faced despair, a whole mountain of it.  A system of segregation that many believed would never really change.  But in his dream he climbed that mountain of despair and saw a vision of the other side.  He carved a stone of hope from that mountain, one that kept his dream alive.  

Many of us are in despair today.  We are in despair over the state of the world, the wars, the impending environmental disasters, the racism; the massive scale of human suffering that exists all around the world.   

Some of us may also be in despair over something that is going on in our own individual lives, a relationship gone bad, a health crises, a job loss, a need for housing, or for even a little bit of financial security. 

We need to keep dreaming.  We need to keep doing, to keep on working, making the effort, and keep taking the risks.  The largest problem can be tackled, step-by-step and piece-by-piece.  Work for justice.  Do your part to help heal the planet.  Ask for help when you need it.  Dare to keep on dreaming. If we keep dreaming together we can make those dreams, those visions of a better world, of a better life; we can make those dreams come true. 

I will end with these words by MLK

“When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

We are part of that creative force that will find a way to keep bending that arc toward justice.  May it be so. 

Benediction:

Hold fast to your dreams.  Shine the light of truth bright enough to scare the nightmares away.  Keep the faith, the one that will set us free.   Amen and blessed be.