Sermon by Seminarian Emily Hamilton October 12, 2014

Oh, Israel. How did you get here? The Israelites had been in the wilderness for all of three months when Moses was called to the mountaintop to talk with God. Three months ago the Egyptian army was thrown into the sea and the Israelites were singing and praising God for their deliverance.  They witnessed God save them from a threatening battle with Amalek. God allowed them to see Godself approach Moses in a dense cloud so they could trust Moses’ leadership forever. Then Moses went up to talk with God. He put Aaron and Hur in charge while he went to receive the law and commandments. He didn’t imagine they could get into too much trouble while he was away. Forty days and forty nights later, all hell broke loose.

I can see why the Israelites would be nervous. Moses had been gone for a long time and didn’t tell them when he would be coming back. He went up into a mountain surrounded by clouds and fire. Maybe he wasn’t coming back. Maybe he died. Who was going to take care of them? They needed to know for sure that God’s presence would be with them. They were tired of journeying to liberation. They wanted a quick, easy answer to their doubts. Years of oppression, months of wandering in the wilderness, it took a toll. They were ready to be completely free. How better to assure their liberation and God’s presence than to build their own, shiny, distracting God who can tell them exactly what they want to hear? “Make a sacrifice to me,” says this God, “and then you can have a party! The journey is over! Well done.”

We get this. It’s easy to get tired of the journey. Some journeys to liberation take longer than others. It has been over two months since Officer Darren Wilson shot an unarmed teenager named Michael Brown on the quiet suburban streets of Ferguson Missouri. It’s easy to think from up here that the protests are over, and the journey to liberation there is through. The news outlets have moved on to marriage equality in the courts and Ebola in Texas. Don’t get me wrong, those things matter, too. But making a distracting golden calf out of the news cycle that ignores Ferguson doesn’t change reality. The people of Ferguson, especially young African Americans, are still protesting every day. Young people are being arrested. Pastors are putting their bodies between black and brown youth and police response. This weekend alone, hundredsds of people are descending on Ferguson for a weekend of action and protest to demand justice for Michael Brown and his family, and liberation for people of color there.

The journey toward justice for people of color in Ferguson is not over. It isn’t over anywhere else, either. After all, it isn’t only about Michael Brown. It’s about Trayvon Martin, and Jordan Davis, Renisha McBride and Emmett Till, and four little girls killed in a school bombing. It’s about decades of lynchings of black men. It’s about the long legacy of slavery stretching back before the founding of this country and forward to the mass incarceration of people of color today.

Americans of all races, especially people of color, have been journeying together out of racist oppression toward liberation for centuries but still, the journey isn’t over. Why aren’t these stories in the news? Are our feet getting tired? Have we been settling for something less than God’s vision for us?

The Israelites’ golden calf was the outcome of human beings trying to substitute an easy solution, an easy peace and victory, for God’s peace and victory. We could do that. We could stop listening to God’s call to work for justice for all people. We could watch Moses go up the mountain and build our own God to reassure ourselves that our actions are just and the journey over. Many of the other things we could and do focus on are good! It is good to worship God, to feed the hungry, to house the homeless. The Israelites were called to do all of these things, too. They were also called to follow God on the long journey, together, to liberation.

One of the biggest golden calves we build today is the idea that we’ve completely dismantled some form of oppression or other, or oppression entirely. When we worship that golden calf, we can pretend the journey is over. Racism is over. The pattern of the killing of black and brown people in this country is over. But the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson tells us this is not true. Whole communities are responding to the reality of racism and violence in this country. In Ferguson religious people from around the country are on the front lines of protests, just as they are in Detroit, in DC, and wherever they call home. 

We, too, cannot stay too long in our weariness along the journey. As we look for inspiration to keep going, we find that the Bible is not the only place we can look for God’s messages about liberation. Look around our own city. Sometimes it is tempting to look at our history, at the 50^th anniversary of the Rochester Race Riot and say, “This was over fifty years ago.” It isn’t the case. The neighborhoods most affected by the riots haven’t fully recovered – some of the buildings damaged in 1964 were never fully rebuilt. Like every other city, Rochester still has a problem with racism. We see it in jobs and lack of jobs, in education and lack of education, and in health disparities. Our congregation, too, needs to continue thinking about ways to work against racism here. People of faith of many races organized for years to create jobs and opportunities for people of color, and together they made great progress. Will we follow the lead of religious groups who followed God’s call by joining together in solidarity after the summer of 1964 to work for justice? Will we join groups learning about what’s happening in Ferguson, or talking about mass incarceration? Will we make partnerships with other congregations in the inner city working to improve access to health care, education, and job opportunities? 

As individuals we do lots of good work in both direct service and toward systemic justice. We can do the same as a congregation. This congregation can pray together for God’s guidance to choose our best way to bring about God’s kingdom in the city with others. Whatever we choose to do together as this community, we know that God’s justice is coming. God will lead us to the liberation of all people if we stay the course and do not settle for a quick fix.
          If we’re looking to follow the long road, we can look to ur heritage in Rochester and in the wider liberation movements for strength, for guidance, and for inspiration. One leader we can look to is Ella Baker.

Some of you already know that Ella Baker was a behind the scenes organizer during the Civil Rights Movement. She started her career at the NAACP as an organizer, and helped form both the Southern Christian leadership Conference. She saw students, both black and white, already taking on the work of the movement and encouraged them to form their own organization. This group was called the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, also known as SNCC. Her work and words inspired Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, a Black singer, song writer and activist. She worked during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s as a member of the Freedom Singers, a group organized by SNCC. She also founded the a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973. In 1983 she wrote “Ella’s Song,” putting the words of Ella Baker to music. Ella’s song begins like this:  

“We who believe in freedom cannot rest.
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.”

It continues,
“        Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons

Is as important as the killing of white men, white mothers’ sons.
Not needing to clutch for power, not needing the light just to shine

on me.
I need to be just one in the number as we stand against tyranny.
Struggling myself don’t mean a whole lot I come to realize
That teaching others to stand up and fight is the only way my

struggle survives.”

Ella Baker didn’t say, “We who are Black in America.”
She said, “We who believe in freedom.”

As people of God of every race we believe in freedom. We are tied to the story of liberation found not only in Exodus but through the entire Bible. We cannot, and will not, settle for easy answers. We are called to respond to God’s call as we hear it in the Scripture, from the people of Ferguson, and in the reality of our own city. We who believe in Freedom cannot rest. We who believe in Freedom cannot rest until it comes.