FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 1968
The morning confirmed what many refused to believe the day before. The nightmare was real. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, a champion of social justice and equality for all, had been mortally stricken by an assassin’s bullet at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN.
A sermon by Jayan Koshy for the Feast of the Annunciation.
Which is worse:
-Bombing a maternity hospital or a military base?
-Detonating a bomb in a church or in a prison?
-Assaulting a senior citizen or a teenager?
-Shooting a black person or a white person?
It’s tempting to rate sins, to put them in a hierarchy, to assign each a relative value in terms of how many people suffered or died, the degree of vulnerability of the victims, the motivation of the perpetrator, or the cultural and historical context in which the transgression took place.
I was reminded recently of an Ash Wednesday, during my time in seminary working at Trinity Wall Street. Between services, volunteers of the church, lay and ordained, would stand for hours in the nave, administering ashes to any as wanted to receive.
I will be 40 years old tomorrow and even though there is literally no time for me to be reading self-help books, to prepare for my mid-life crisis I researched Arthur C. Brooks’ new bestseller, From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. Brooks is a Harvard Professor, PhD social scientist, musician, best-selling author, and columnist at The Atlantic. His compelling research reveals and affirms much of the same wisdom disclosed in today’s Gospel and in our Christian tradition of observing a holy Lent.
What does it mean to fight for freedom? What does it mean to struggle against oppression? For Black people, descendants of Africans who were enslaved, that struggle for freedom has often coincided with our faith in something bigger than ourselves, our faith in the Divine creator of the universe. Against all odds, we have relied on the power of the Divine to help pull us through no matter how bleak the situation we were in may have been.
I’ve been thinking about my garden a lot lately, sitting out on the edge of my front yard and on the boulevard near the curb, the ground still and frozen, resting under a blanket of snow. Lent, as Barbara reminded us last Sunday, shares its meaning with the natural season of Spring, drawing as it does from the same root for “length” – as the daylight lengthens and the earth slowly tilts on its axis in the northern hemisphere toward the warmth of a distant sun.
A sermon by The Rev. Barbara Mraz
February. 27, 2022
St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church
St. Paul, Minnesota
Love your enemies…Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Perhaps no other command in scripture is more important than these for upending the damaging ways of the world and initiating the realm of God we so desperately need and even occasionally desire. I would hazard that these commands, given today by Jesus in the context of his great Sermon on the Plain, are even more important than the Great Commandments: to love God and love neighbor as yourself.
Luke’s account of the Beatitudes reminds me of the chorus in “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” the first track on Michael Jackson’s legendary 1982 album, Thriller.
Copyright © 2020 St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church
St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church
[email protected]
651.228.1172
60 Kent St N, St. Paul, MN 55102-2232
Map & Directions
