Mark 4:1-34

And those who could hear heard.

Jesus implored his disciples to listen. Listen.

The sower sows seeds with abandon, with grace and those who hear, hear. Seeds are sown everywhere.

Martin Luther King.  Stood for so much: Justice, equality, peace.
His tools:

• Scripture.
• God’s love.
• Non-violence.
• Deep discipline.
• Roots that grow deep into the soil, the soil that has been fertilized for generations.
• Leaders of the non-violent civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s revealed the hatred in our land with their love. Eating together, black and white, elicited violence. Or revealed violence.

Martin Luther King Jr. stood firm with roots deep in the soil of God.  Stood on the faith of our fathers and mothers. Told the truth about racism and war and injustice sowing the seeds of love.

For those of us who believe in reconciliation, who believe in truth telling, who believe that there are values that bind us together as as Christians and Americans, it has been a hard week. For those who believe that the values that bind us transcend partisan politics, it has been a hard week.

A short video appeared on my facebook feed from The Atlantic from March 2018, a song sung by Joan Baez, When the President Sang Amazing Grace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9iYBifsOPI

I returned to the video of the funeral of Reverend Clementa Pinckney in 2015.  I watched as a community gathered in sorrow over the killing of 9 people in a Mother Emmanuel Church because of the color of their skin.  In that moment a community gathered in grief and love—white and black. President Obama went to the pulpit and spoke.  His first words: “To God be the Glory.” That day, it was easy to know and believe that we would come together as people of God, as Americans, and break down the barriers between us with love–with Grace.  Gathered to honor, to recognize, to mourn our history of violence against African Americans (and might I add Native Americans and Japanese Americans).

When there are no words – when evil seems to be ascendant, we are called to sow God’s seeds, to bear God’s light, to sing Amazing Grace throughout the night.

Today, I endeavor to stand with the sower. To sow seeds with wild abandon. To look for a way to share the love. To be the light. To listen for God’s word.

Byran Stevenson of the Equal Justice project and author of Just Mercy believes it is critical that we build a narrative around what happened in our nation around slavery and lynching—the narrative that says that Africans are an inferior people. There are no memorials to Nazi leaders in Germany and that when they visited there a political leader said that after the holocaust, they do not have the moral authority to use the death penalty. In the US there are memorials to those who slaughtered native peoples; there are memorials to those who fought to maintain the institution of slavery.

So Bryan Stevensen, step to work to create memorials. As part of the lynching memorial, in Montgomery, they invited people to take a jar and collect dirt from the nearly 4000 places where there were documented lynching; they invited people to go to the places where lynching occurred and dig up some dirt to return to the memorial. A black woman was both scared and determined as she went to a field with trowel and jar.  A white man drove by, stopped, asked her what she was doing. Afraid, she surprised herself and told the truth.  He asked to read the brochure about the project and then asked to help.  As they filled the jar, he started to shake. “Are you ok?” she asked.

“No” he responded.  “I just hope it wasn’t my granddaddy or great granddaddy who did this.”

Together they brought the dirt back to the lynching memorial.

She was terrified.  But told the truth.  The truth that could have hurt her.  But reconciliation occurred. God is still sowing seeds.
To hear Bryan Stevenson’s interview with Terry Gross:
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/20/796234496/just-mercy-attorney-asks-u-s-to-reckon-with-its-racist-past-and-present

We are called to sow seeds and to be in ministries of reconciliation—not run from the truth but to stand in the light and love of God.

God gives us ears to hear.  To listen to the hurt and fear in another.  To find the place of common ground. To be just in all things.

Jesus said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand? For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

Listen. Watch. Sow seeds of love and justice. Amen.