The Prophet and the President
Sermon by Steve Edington
January 17, 2010
Last Sunday I spoke about a lasting image from my time in the ministry - it was from the congregation I served prior to this one - that has stayed with me over the years. I have another one for today that goes back considerably further that the one I cited last week. This one is of Martin Luther King, standing with other religious leaders in Arlington National Cemetery on a very cold February afternoon, calling for a silent prayer for peace at the height of the Vietnam War. I was only one person in a crowd of several thousand ministers, lay leaders, and seminarians; but I could see Dr. King very clearly. Two months later he was assassinated.
I was a 22 year old divinity school student at the time. Forty two years have passed since then, but the image is as clear as ever. And even after all these years, I consider that instance one of the proudest moments of my life as I, along with all those others gathered there, stood with one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century. One whose birthday we now observe as a Federal Holiday.
It wasn't even on my mind at the time, but had anyone asked me back then if I thought I'd live to see that day when an African American would be elected President of the United States, I'm not sure what I would have said. The possibility seemed so remote; and there was a horribly bloody war on that was increasingly making little sense to anyone, and the country was reeling with racial turmoil. Whether or not we'd ever have a Black President really wasn't getting much discussion then, as I recall it.
But on that same cold February day in 1968, there was out there a six year old, first grade African-American kid, who would - forty years later - turn that seemingly remote possibility into a reality. He would take his oath of office, as President of the United States, not all that far from where we all stood with the Reverend Doctor King.
In Rev. Martin Luther King and President Barack Obama we have two remarkable - putting it mildly - Americans. They are of the same race but separated by more than a generation. Each of them occupies a highly significant, and yet still quite different role, in the larger narrative that makes up the ongoing story of the United States of America. Theirs are the roles, respectively, of Prophet and President. It was the Prophet who made the President possible, as Mr. Obama himself has gratefully and humbly acknowledged on more than one occasion. And yet the mantles that were, and are, placed upon them bespeak differing roles for them. It is the nature and meaning of those differences that I'd like to devote some attention to as we observe both the 81st birthday of Martin Luther King, and the end of the first year of Mr. Obama's Presidency.
To first note one more similarity, however, each of these gentlemen was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace - with an interval of 45 years in between - and each delivered a marvelously crafted acceptance speech. As I gathered my thoughts for this morning I read each one of their speeches. The most noticeable difference in the two could be seen right off the bat. Dr. King's speech required that two sheets of paper be run through my printer in order for me to get the whole text. Mr. Obama's took ten. But the issue here has little to do with the length or brevity of a speech. The content of each really does get at this difference in roles I'm holding up.
The prophet is the one who stands outside the corridors of power and calls the powers that be to greater and higher levels of what our second UU Principle calls "justice, equity, and compassion in human relations." Some of the earliest models for this are found in Hebrew Scripture, known to Christians as The Old Testament. The prophet was the one who confronted the King, and/or others in positions of power and authority, on behalf of the poor, the oppressed, or those who were fundamentally disenfranchised in any way.
An oft-cited example of this is the Hebrew Prophet Amos who stands in the public square of his day and condemns King Uzziah for his oppression of the poor; and, speaking for Yahweh, Amos tells the King that Yahweh/God will not accept his ritual sacrifices and his ceremonial rites until justice is truly done, concluding it all with the admonition to "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." [That would be Amos the 5th chapter and the 24th verse for those of you following along with your Bibles.]
When Martin Luther King stood at the Lincoln Memorial and delivered what has come to be called his "I Have a Dream" speech, he saw himself as standing in that tradition, the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, in which Jesus also stood. The sound byte clips of that speech, which get run and re-run over this weekend, tend to show only the final cadences, which indeed are among the most moving and inspiring words to be found in American public discourse. I place them in the same category as the concluding paragraph to Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.
But showing just the last few minutes of Dr. King's best known speech, or sermon since that's what it really was, is also a way of prettying it up; for that last stanza, as it were, is preceded by some very harsh commentary about the state of race relations and racism in America, as well as the plight of the poor, in the early 1960s. They are words that would make Amos proud. In fact, the very words of the Prophet Amos to which I just referred, were ones that Dr. King himself used at an earlier point in his famous speech.
When it comes to his or her power, the prophet has to rely upon moral authority and the strength of moral suasion. Prophets, by and large, do not have their hands on the gears of actual political or civic power. They rely on the power of the spirit, if you will, to in turn push those whose hands are on the gears. Such prophetic power should not be underestimated. Using the strength of moral authority and moral suasion, coupled with some very creative non-violent tactics, Mohandas Gandhi and his followers played a major role in ending British rule in India. In addition to the Hebrew prophets, Gandhi was the other major mentor and influence in guiding Dr. King, as he directed and chose many of the tactics that were used in the American civil rights movement.
When he accepted his Nobel Prize last month, President Barack Obama acknowledged that he was "someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life work." He then continued, "I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak - nothing passive---nothing naïve - in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King."
Even with such heartfelt, and humbly appreciative acknowledgements however, the President's Nobel acceptance speech had a markedly different tone and slant to it that the one delivered by Dr. King in 1964. Forty-five years earlier, standing in the same hall as did President Obama to receive the same award, Martin Luther King said, "Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."
Place those words of Dr. King alongside those of President Obama in his acceptance speech, when he said this, "We must begin by acknowledging a hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations - acting individually or in concert - will find the use of force not only necessary, but morally justified...Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have stopped Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince Al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history; (and of) the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."
I read these two statements, made nearly a half-century apart by two remarkable and outstanding Americans, and wonder if I'm copping out on myself when I find both, in my mind, to be true. Neither man was being naïve; and certainly neither was being stupid. But while they each may have delivered their speeches on the same physical spot, they were each standing on, and speaking from, different ground. For the President did, and does, indeed have his hands on the gears of political and military power; having his hands on those kinds of gears is right there in his job description. There is no such clause in the job description of the prophet.
To be sure, there are numerous occasions when an elected official - from the President on down - needs to exercise inspirational, even oratorical, leadership. There are times when s/he needs to speak from what Theodore Roosevelt called a "bully pulpit." The difference is that the prophet is called upon to speak truth to power; the President is called upon to speak truth from power.
So, I'm talking about a difference in roles, with each role having its own kind of necessity. The role of the prophet is to hold up a vision, a hope, even a promise, of who and what humanity may yet become. Without that role being taken on, and without human beings, from Amos to Dr. King being ready to live and die in fulfilling it, we human beings would quite likely still be crawling around in our caves. Someone has always had to be calling us to become more than who we are. We still have not reached the day when - in any complete and final fashion - justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. But that hardly makes Amos wrong in calling for such a day. Dr. King's dream remains only partially fulfilled, but that does not make him wrong for proclaiming it.
The path Dr. King took in pursuing his prophetic stance and actions was the African-American Church in which he was raised and in which his father was also a minister. While his journey also took him to Boston University where he earned a PhD, the church remained his ground for action. The organization through which he conducted his civil rights efforts, after all, was called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. As his civil rights efforts grew Dr. King had to reach beyond the church as he found himself the titular head of a national movement and phenomenon, but the African-American church was still the place where he kept his feet planted.
Barack Obama's path was that of academia and then the political arena. His community organizing work in Chicago gave him a deep appreciation, which he'd not previously had, for the role of the church in the African American community - to the point that he embraced Christianity and joined a congregation. But the church was not, and is not, his arena in the way that it was for Dr. King. Mr. Obama chose to operate on the inside of those corridors of power; and get his hands on the gears. In so doing made his way clear to the top. I happen to believe that Mr. Obama's commitment to social justice and peace is as strong as that of Martin Luther King's. But the path he chose and the ground from which he operates is not, and cannot be, that of the prophet who stands outside the halls of power in order to speak truth to power.
I think that the disappointment, or deflation, some of Mr. Obama's supporters may be feeling after his first year in office may well come from the fact that they were projecting their needs and desires for a prophet onto a man who was, well, just running for President. Mr. Obama, using some humor, addressed this very matter back during his campaign when he quipped, "Contrary to what some may think, I was not born in a manger." I think that was his dry humored way of saying that I'm more politician than I am prophet.
Please understand; I am not using the phrase "more politician than prophet" in any pejorative way. For if the prophet is the one who holds up the vision of the just society while also pointing out how far we still are from it; it is the politician - in the best sense of the term, as the one who truly seeks to serve the public, the polis - who actually has to mesh, and sometimes grind, the gears to get us even incrementally closer to the prophetic vision.
Along this line, President Obama has cited Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr as his favorite philosopher and theologian. Niebuhr, during the early to mid-20th century was a professor at New York City's Union Theological Seminary, which is one of the premier mainline liberal Protestant seminaries in America. For all the scholarly books he wrote on religion and theology and politics Niebuhr is best known as the author of the Serenity Prayer that is said at practically every twelve-step meeting that gets held. Niebuhr himself had no ties to the recovery movement; those folks just liked his prayer, which he more or less dashed off to wrap up a sermon he delivered at a seminary chapel service.
In academic and political circles Niebuhr is best known as the exponent of what he called Christian Realism. As the term suggests, it means that the broad based moral and ethical principles of Christianity, which are common to many faiths actually, can only and ever be partially realized as they are worked out amidst the many imperfections of an imperfect world being run by imperfect human beings. I know it's a gross oversimplification to boil the man's theology down to a single sentence, but in a very small nutshell that's it.
In writing on this subject of Christian, or moral, Realism, Niebuhr once noted, "Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems." That line is not exactly as memorable as his better known one that goes: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." But try it on anyway. "Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems."
Note that Niebuhr does not say "impossible problems." Insoluble, in this sentence, means problems for which a full, complete, and perfect solution will most likely never be found. That does not mean one should give up on the problems or challenges, though. You pursue, instead, the best proximate solution you can. So, if the role of the prophet is to speak truth to power; the right and proper role of those who hold power is to pursue those proximate solutions to the greatest extent possible given the realities of the times, and the circumstances, in which they are pursued.
With this difference in roles there's always going to be a certain tension between the prophet and the person who - even with the best of intentions and motivations - has his or her hands on the gears. In looking over the past year I'd say we have a President who draws his moral and ethical inspiration from Dr. King, while looking more to Dr. Niebhur when it comes to how he actually conducts his business and does his job. Speaking for myself, I feel that's the way it needs to be and, in fact, is the only way it can be.
I'll cite a couple of examples of what I mean before closing for today. Like many of you, I would imagine, I was often frustrated and disappointed at the way in which the health care reform legislation worked it way through Congress to the point where it now is. When I take a deep breath, and read a little Niebuhr, I also conclude that what's there now - with all its many flaws and imperfections - represents a proximate solution to an insoluble problem. The key word for me here is "proximate." Proximate means there's always more than can be done, further along the road, to make the problem as least less insoluble than it now is. My anger over the past several months when it comes to this matter is not with those who pursued proximate solutions - however much I may agree or disagree with any one of them - instead it is with those who only objective has been to frustrate, subvert, and undermine the achievement of any kind of solution, however proximate, to one of our most crucial domestic problems. And I'll leave it at that.
The other area where I feel quite conflicted is the conflict in Afghanistan, and how our President has chosen to deal with it at this point. I have no quarrel with him when he says, as he did in Oslo, "I face the world as it is...evil does exist in the world... To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is recognition of history; (and) the imperfections of man and the limits of reason." Dr. Niebuhr's sentiments are all over that statement.
One thing I'm clearly not is a military tactician. That does not prevent me, however, from asking the question of how wise, and more to the point, how moral it is to significantly increase the danger to both American troops and Afghan civilians, by way of an increased troop presence, to get at a specifically designated target that so far has proven itself to be immune to the use of traditional military force in combating it. That's as far as I can go right now. The question is an ongoing one which, in one way or another - and with a good measure of tragedy whatever the outcome proves to be - will be answered.
To bring this closer to home, part of our calling here is to be a prophetic community; to act on what my now retired colleague in the UU ministry, the Rev. Richard Gilbert, calls the "prophetic imperative." We are called to hold up a vision of what a world blessed by "justice, equity, and compassion in human relations" would truly look like. We are called to be inhabitants of a planet in which the respect for the interdependent web of life of which we are all a part becomes a truly global reality.
As we pursue this prophetic work, we must respect, and work with in whatever ways we can, those who have chosen to work out their calling, and their ambitions, in the midst of the many human imperfections that befall us all. We must still work with those who pursue proximate solution to our many insoluble problems. This inevitably means that those gears of justice and peace will often move far more slowly than we wish. The point, however, is to make sure they keep moving - however slowly at times - so that what Theodore Parker called "the moral arc of the universe" will continue to bend towards justice.
This, now, in closing: Part of the prophetic message is to say, "We're not there yet." This need not be a statement of despair, but rather one of hope. Hope that we human beings can continue to reach beyond ourselves and even beyond the time on earth granted each of us, and know that by faith, there is, and will be, more joy, more peace, more hope, and more love if we will use our small but vital efforts to make it so.
Martin Luther King's time on earth tragically ended before he even reached the age of forty. But I believe he died knowing that there would be more love, more peace, and more hope somewhere. The night before he lost his life he did say to an assembled audience that he'd been to the mountain top and had seen the Promised Land. We're still not there yet, but thanks to his prophetic life and ministry we are that much closer.
Stephen Edington
January 17, 2010
