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Which Way the Arc? A Worship Service by the Reverends Mark W. Christian & Jonalu Johnstone Presented to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday January 16, 2004
Reading: A Network of Mutuality Martin Luther King, Jr. (SLT 584)
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. In justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted. Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that. We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamations of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war. One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. We shall hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.
Prayer and Meditation: Without Love Egbert Ethelred Brown
Egbert Ethelred Brown, the first African American ordained as a Unitarian minister in 1912, founded churches in Kingston, Jamaica, and Harlem. The words of today’s meditation and prayer – at least as appropriate today as they were in his time -- come from Brown:
As we face a troubled and puzzled world, we too are troubled and puzzled. As our fond dreams remain unrealized and our bright hope of yesterday wither in the bitter disappointments of today, our courage fails, our spirits droop, our faith trembles, and frustrated, we bow our heads in despair. Nevertheless, we come to… this hour of worship, …[to] this house of prayer. As we pray for peace in our time, O God, may we ourselves be at peace with the world, with ourselves, and with Thee. May we know that without love there will never be peace. Teach us therefore to love. What does this world need more than love? May we, after hearing the message of the day, leave this place inspired and strengthened, faithfully to fulfill the duties of tomorrow. AMEN.
Which Way the Arc? A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday January 16, 2004
After placing today’s sermon title in the newsletter, it struck me that the moniker I had chosen to approach Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was—shall we say—oddly phrased. Upon reflection, “Which Way the Arc?” sounds like my creative juices were mixing lines between a Looney Tunes cartoon, “Which way did he go?” and the TV Series Laugh-In, “Here Comes the Judge.” Oh well, what you see is rarely what you get, right? Thus, I ask, “Which Way the Arc?” The basis of my odd sounding title actually derives from one of the phrases that Dr. King used in his tireless quest for basic citizenship rights for Black Americans. It is not as well known as some of his other words. Most of us can still hear the slain civil right’s leader proclaiming “I have been to the mountain top.” Similarly, his words “I have a dream” still live in our collective memory. But time and again, the words I come back to from Martin Luther King, Jr. are these: “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.” “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.” It says so much, so easily. “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.” It is a balm for the oppressed because it admits that change doesn’t happen fast, but it promises that Justice places a tidal pull on our daily values. At a time, such as this, when Moral Values seem to be the defining characteristic in ways I can’t seem to fathom, returning to Martin Luther King and his observation of a Moral Arc to the Universe seems wise. My question today is “Which way the arc.” Where is the gravitation of Justice leading us? Where does it call us to stand? What actions does it ask of us now? Martin Luther King used the metaphor of a moral arc in a variety of formulations. Combining a second metaphor Dr. King was known to suggest that there is a moral arc of the universe and that it “bends at the elbow of justice.” I have also found references to the moral arc claiming it “bends, sometimes imperceptibly, but always toward justice.” In one of those moments of denominational pride, I think it is very likely that Dr. King was inspired to use this phrase after reading a similar passage from the 19th century Unitarian Transcendentalist Theodore Parker. Parker was a staunch abolitionist. Unlike the vast majority of his Unitarian brethren, he supported John Brown, was an active ally to those traveling along the Underground Railroad and reportedly kept a loaded pistol in his writing desk in case he had to protect himself because of his stands over “fugitive slaves” seeking freedom. Parker wrote of a moral arc of the universe that bends toward justice in 1852. I suspect Dr. King read, re-read, and internalized these words until they were his own; thereby renewing their spirit more than 100 years after Theodore Parker set pen to paper. These words are Parker’s: Look at the facts of the world. You see continual and progressive triumph of right. 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 the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. Leave it to a Massachusetts Liberal to take 70 words to express what someone from the South can cover in 13! “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.” King’s sentiment is beautiful in its simplicity. Theodore Parker is not the only place that Martin Luther King intersects with our liberal faith. This same sense of justice and cosmic improvement which King painted can be found in a variety of theologies and philosophies that intertwine amongst us. The followers of the Social Gospel—of whom we still hold a remnant—believe our task is to complete God’s work on earth, to make real the Realm, or Wholeness, of God in which we live. The Humanist’s saw as their polar star the progressive, positive, evolution of humanity. “The Future is before us, onward and upward forever,” they would say. Actually the humanist adoption of this phrase was stripping down of an affirmation that was in common use at the time the Standing Order churches of New England split into the Unitarian and Congregationalist camps before Parker’s time. The affirmation so many of our Unitarian predecessors read stated: "We believe in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the progress of mankind onward and upward forever." I urge you to mentally bracket the patriarchal language, and consider what has always been important to us—namely the notion of progress and the irresistible pull of justice. These days I am afraid that a great many of us have doubts about the direction of the tidal pull, about the bend of the elbow, about the evolution of the species. Is it really toward justice? I do believe that there is a moral arc—but today I ask “Which Way the Arc?” I want to believe in the pull of justice upon our world—but it doesn’t take too much to make one question whether or not it is irresistible, does it? As I was pondering this predicament, a phrase from a song I like started repeating in my head. The song that hung in my thoughts is “Prince of Darkness” written by Emily Saliers of The Indigo Girls. The snippet that snagged in my mind comes from the opening of the song. My place is of the sun
And this place is of the dark. I do not catch the spark. Somehow that feels more real to me than the singular pull of Justice upon the world. The world seems torn between many pulls. Part of me feels the pull of one thing and the call of another. I guess I would identify those competing pulls as good and evil or, perhaps, justice and injustice—for lack of better terms. I wish I was convinced that Justice is the elbow of the moral arc—but I am not sure it is. I feel called to merge these strands of awareness—the notion of a moral arc and the reality of the pull of competing moralities—into something that better reflects the world I see. I believe that there is an arc to the universe because nothing travels in a straight line for long. I also believe that there are varied and various forces, which tug on our world. This feels true in the physical world and it feels true to the world of the Spirit. I am very far from being an expert on planetary physics—but it seems to me that all objects in space exert pulls upon each other. Weaker pulls are consumed by stronger ones and eventually a kind of balance is struck which keeps things in their proper orbit. I think the insight I draw from Emily Saliers' song is, in some ways, more useful than that of Theodore Parker and Dr. King. I both feel and fear the pull of something that leads away from justice at the same time I feel the pull of justice. Sometimes I feel that pull more clearly than the pull of justice. Actually I don’t think that Martin Luther King would reject that notion of competing pulls. I found a very similar sentiment in a quote from King just the other day. Last Friday while I was having some work done on my car I picked up a copy of the Oklahoma Gazette to pass the time. I usually just give the Gazette a cursory glance but the book I brought to occupy my idle time was tucked safely away in the car behind the technician’s door, so I delved into the Gazette more deeply than usual. There was a piece on Dr. King written by Deborah Benjamin that connected the arc of Dr. King’s life to Oklahoma City in a way I never knew. I knew that Dr. King had spoken in Oklahoma City a couple of times, most notably in 1960—but I didn’t know that in 1954 Oklahoma City’s Calvary Baptist Church had turned down Martin Luther King, Jr., as their new pastor because he lacked age and experience. It is interesting to toy with the idea of what would have happened Dr. King had come to Oklahoma City instead of Montgomery, Alabama. Was the man destined to greatness or was the cause destined to find a great leader in Alabama? We will never know and it really isn’t that important. What I found in that article, though, is a quote from Dr. King’s 1960 visit to Oklahoma that I gives us something to consider as we remember the fallen leader. In 1960, King told the Tulsa Tribune that the work of racial equality is at a precarious point in its history. We haven’t gone that far yet because we are at a crisis and when you are in a crisis, you have the alternatives that lead to both destruction and opportunity. We are now in a position where we can drift to our destruction, or reach out and embrace the principles of our democracy. I think Dr. King is saying that there is a moral arc to the universe—but that the turn toward justice is far from guaranteed. There is another pull—a pull toward destruction—to which we must be vigilant. It is the awareness of that other pull that makes remembering Martin Luther King, Jr. so very important. His work was never completed. In the same way that “Eternal vigilance in the price of liberty,” I tell you that the course of the moral arc of the universe requires constant attention. It requires adjustment. It requires remembering. It requires celebration. It even requires worship. It required Dr. King and it requires you and me. The need to tend to the call of justice is what we are reminded of each January in the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. One of the things that I believe deeply is that our lives don’t just happen to us. For certain, there are events, which we neither precipitate nor control that effect us profoundly, but we are more than passengers on a ship called life. We set a course. We trim the sails. We tend the tiller. We don’t always end up where we intend in the grand sense of things. Sometimes the winds are favorable, sometimes we face a gale, sometimes the doldrums beset us, but we have the power to make adjustments along the way. That is the nature of our humanity. We have the power to make choices that slowly, gradually, build on each other and shape the arc of our journey. I believe we shape the arc of the universe. Today I ask: Shall we steer toward justice or settle for something else? Is there a moral arc to the universe? Deep in my soul, I believe there is—I want to believe there is. Does it bend at the elbow of justice? It can. Does it bend at the elbow of compassion? It can. Does it bend at the elbow of love? It will, if we make it. Just yesterday, I received a “Pastoral Letter” from Bill Sinkford, the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Bill is an African American, and thus I read his comments on Dr. King with particular interest. Sinkford writes, in part… I recall hearing…Dr. King as I sat in a crowded room at the … General Assembly in Hollywood, Florida, in June of 1966, listening to him deliver the Ware Lecture. Dr. King decried militarism, economic injustice, and the scourge of racism. He invoked the words of Jefferson and Lincoln, a call for Americans to live up to the ideals that this country was based upon. And he called for Unitarian Universalists to be part of this struggle, reminding us that "when the church is true to its nature, it stands as a moral guardian of the community and of society." We gather as a covenanted religious community because we know that together our vision is clearer, our strength is greater and our resolve is more unceasing than when we stand alone. We gather as a religious community and we take up the yoke of being, in Dr. King’s words, “A moral guardian of community and society.” Tomorrow we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. While we remember one man, we make a mistake if we see him alone. He was part of a movement—a movement that sought to assure that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. We, too, stand in that continuum—or perhaps more accurately we have the opportunity to stand in the path that the arc makes across the moral universe. Tomorrow you will, no doubt, see images of Dr. King in newspaper and TV, you will hear recordings of his voice on the radio, you will see pictures of parades and of children reciting his words. Tomorrow when you see and read and hear these things—I want you to consider which way the arc bends today. Does it bend toward the image of justice Dr. King represents? Does it bend toward your ideal of justice? Asking the question, of course, is not enough—it’s barely a beginning. Next you must ask what you are doing, what you can do, what you will do, to further the arc along its flight. Sometime tomorrow ask, “Which way the arc?” Let us pray that together we make it bend toward ever greater justice. AMEN
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