A Sermon Given by The Reverend Roger Fritts

At the end of the 19th century Unitarians were optimists. We can see this in the hymns from that time some of which are still in our hymnal. Turn, for example, to hymn number 138, These Things Shall Be. Look at the words:

These things shall be: a loftier race than e’er the world hath known shall rise, with flame of freedom in their souls, and light of science in their eyes.

That is an optimistic hymn! It is typical of the theology that you would have heard preached in Unitarian Churches one hundred years ago. At the turn of the last century Unitarians believed that human life was on the verge of great advances.

However, this positive outlook did not meet the needs of all Unitarians. Take for example, the poet Thomas Sterns Eliot. Eliot’s Great Grandfather had helped found All Souls Unitarian in Washington D.C. in 1821. His grandfather was the first minister of the Unitarian Church in St Louis and the founder of Washington University. An uncle founded the First Unitarian Church in Portland, Oregon.

However, T.S. Eliot moved to England in 1914. In addition to being close to the unfolding tragedy that was World War I, Eliot married Vivien Haigh, a vivacious young English woman who turned out to be emotionally unstable and a danger to herself and others. Her problems drained Eliot’s energy, his time and his financial resources. Partly in reaction to his personal difficulties, in 1927 T.S. Eliot joined the Church of England. The church, with its acknowledgment of evil, with it story of Jesus suffering on the cross, spoke to Eliot in ways that the optimistic Unitarian Church of his youth did not. Eliot often quoted a line from Yeats. “We begin to live when we have conceived life as a tragedy.”

At times it is clearly dangerous to be an optimist. In her memoir Hanna Tillich the wife of the liberal theologian Paul Tillich, described their experiences in Germany in 1933. Hanna insisted that Paul see Hitler. With a special ticket Paul Tillich was guided to the platform were he could see the new leader of Germany close up. He came away shudderingly impressed by the evil he saw in Hitler’s eyes. Paul and Hanna Tillich took their young daughter and traveled to Berlin to talk to friends and assess the situation. Hanna Tillich wrote:

Some of Paul’s friends who, despite their Jewish origin, did not realize the seriousness of the situation and wanted him to stay in Germany. Exhausting debates filled the long afternoon. . . . Other . . . friends went underground politically. Paul had to decide. . . . We walked the asphalt streets of the big city for hours. . . . Paul wanted to join the underground movement, to write for them. . . . I felt the ground under my feet shrinking until there was none left except the bit of soil directly under my soles. We walked home on midnight streets through the thin gaslight. . . . [the next day] Paul kept his appointment with the secretary of education. I waited . . . in the Café Kranzer . . . Paul arrived late, throwing down on the table three boat tickets he had bought after leaving the secretary. . . I walked out of the café without saying a word. I flagged a cab and asked the driver, “Do you have children?” He answered, “Yes.” I pressed some bills into his hand with the words, “Buy some toys for them.” I believed my husband had just been given a new lease on life.

Sometimes it is healthy to be a pessimist.

Tomorrow our nation will again celebrate and remember the life Martin Luther King, on his seventy-second birthday. In his own preaching Dr. King struggled with the issue of optimism and pessimism. In one sermon he said that in the past century:

. . . a series of tragic developments, revealed the selfishness and corruption of man, and illustrated with frightening clarity the truth of Lord Acton’s dictum, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This awful discovery led to one of the most colossal breakdowns of optimism in history. For so many people, young and old, the light of hope went out, and they roamed wearily in the dark chambers of pessimism. Many concluded that life has no meaning. Some agreed with the philosopher Schopenhauer that life is an endless pain with a painful end, and that life is a tragic comedy played over and over again with only slight changes in costume and scenery. Others cried out with Shakespeare’s Macbeth that life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

This passage is from one of Dr. King’s favorite sermons, “A Knock at Midnight.” King first wrote this sermon in 1957 and gave it over and over again. He loved to preach it in black churches the Mount Zions, the Shilohs, the Victory Baptists, and the others on his circuit. It was designed to explain his vision of the black church in America.

The name of the sermon, “A Knock at Midnight” comes from a parable in Luke. Luke 11: 5-13 tells the story of a person who beats on his friend’s door at midnight in a effort to borrow three loaves of bread. “Midnight” King said, signifies the deep darkness America confronts on a social, personal, and moral level. The “Knock” is the world’s need of material and spiritual help.

Reading the newspaper accounts about the relationships between African Americans and white Americans it often feels like we are still knocking on the door in the deep darkness of midnight. I think here not only of the big news stores of the past ten years, such as the Los Angeles riots of 1992 or the O. J. Simpson Trial of 1995, but also of the stories that appear almost daily in the news.

In last Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine, for example, I read a long essay about the racial tensions within the Secret Service. The newspaper told the story of Secret Service agent Ray Moore who, after sixteen years as an agent, was passed over for promotion 140 times. Almost every time, the agent promoted instead of Moore was white. Often the white agent had less experience and a lower job performance score than Moore. Several times the agents promoted past him were people he had trained. Thirty-eight black agents, nearly one-sixth of all blacks who have ever been in the Secret Service, have joined with Moore in giving sworn statements. These statements claim that the leadership of the Secret Service has systematically passed over African American agents in favor of less qualified white agents.

In last Monday’s news I read about the fear that John Ashcroft, the nominated to be Attorney General, is a racist. Ashcroft mounted a vigorous and unusual lobbying effort to block the elevation of an African America judge named Ronnie White to the Federal court. Judge White was the first black judge to serve on the Missouri Supreme Court. Because of Ashcroft’s strong opposition, Judge White became the first judicial nominee in twelve years rejected by the full United States Senate. Ashcroft says that race did not motivate him. However, his actions enraged African Americans in Missouri and many went to the polls in November to help vote Ashcroft out of the Senate.

In last Wednesday’s news I read that seven African Americans have sued Microsoft. They allege that the software company paid them less than their fellow employees. They claim officers in the company repeatedly passed them over for promotions, and subjected them to harassment when they complained.

Of course, the daily news includes much more pessimistic news beyond the accounts of racial tensions in our society. For example, reporters also write stories about the on going madness of nuclear weapons. According to last week’s news although the cold war has been over for more then ten years both the United States and Russia continue to maintain 3,000 nuclear weapons ready to launch. In addition, our countries have about 40,000 other nuclear weapons in storage.

Daily news stories also appear about the lack of economic justice. I read this week that, according to the US Conference of Mayors, in the past year requests for emergency food has increased by 17 percent and demand for emergency shelter increased 15 percent. Catholic Charities reports a 22 percent increase in the use of its emergency services of shelter, clothing, food and medicine. The latest U.S. Census reports that one in every six American children is poor, and that one in three children of color is poor. No other developed country has anything approaching U.S. child poverty rates. In such a world it is difficult to embrace an optimistic vision.

We live in such an imperfect world. Each week, reading the paper tempts me to be a pessimist, to stress the negative, to take the gloomiest possible view, to conclude that the evil in the world outweighs the good.

Yet, if I yield to that temptation, I become part of all the problems that surround me. The challenge is to see the world for what it is and yet not succumb to helplessness and resignation.

My own answer to the question that I asked in the sermon title is that neither optimism nor pessimism is the healthiest approach. My alternative to simple optimism or desperate pessimism is hope. To hope is to know that the world, at its base is never manageable, that it is full of surprises and challenges and possibilities, and that therefore we must learn to expect the unexpected and to open ourselves to new opportunities as they arise.

Hope is the awareness that in any situation there are always more possibilities than I can imagine. Every situation always contains more resources than I can perceive. Therefore, new beginnings are always possible.

When I have hope, I do not believe that everything will always work out for the best, or that we will solve all problems. I do not believe that future will assume some preconceived form or structure. I do not have all the right answers.

When I act with hope, I seek to respond to the moral challenges of the day, knowing that the effort may be inadequate or futile. What life requires is not that I be perfect but that I be engaged and that I remain open to the lessons the world is trying to teach me.

The evidence justifying this kind of hope can be found in the history of the civil rights movement. When Rosa Parks, tired from a day of work, climbed on a bus, and refused to give up her seat to a white man, no one would have guessed that this simple event would provide the impetus to topple the structure of segregation across the nation and call out of Martin Luther King the great power that lay hidden within him. No one could have predicted how this 27 year-old minister would respond when on the night of January 30, 1956, in the middle of a speech to a mass meeting, he received word that his home had been bombed while his wife and baby girl were inside. That night King left the speaker’s platform and went home immediately. At the house he found that his wife and child were all right. Around his home was a crowd of angry blacks. He spoke:

I want you to go home and put down your weapons. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with non-violence. Remember the words of Jesus: “He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.” . . . Remember, if I am stopped, this movement will not stop, because God is with this movement. Go home with this glowing faith and this radiant assurance.

At times people are capable of responding to the evil in this world with profound extraordinary courage. To know this is to have hope.

King concluded his sermon, “A Knock at Midnight,” with his own story of hope. He explained that at the beginning of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, he and others had set up a voluntary car pool to get people to and from their jobs. For eleven months this car pool functioned extraordinarily well. Then the mayor of Montgomery introduced a resolution instructing the city’s legal department go to court to stop the car pool. A hearing was set for Tuesday, November 13, 1956.

At the regular weekly mass meeting, scheduled the night before the hearing, Dr. King had to warn the people that the courts would probably stop the car pool. He knew that they had willingly suffered for nearly twelve months, but now he had to ask them to walk many miles, back and forth to their jobs. If they could not do this the protest would fail. He said that for the first time he almost shrank from appearing before them.

When the evening came, King mustered sufficient courage to tell the truth. Trying to conclude his speech with words of hope, he said, “We have moved all of these months, in the daring face that God is with us in our struggle. The many experiences of days gone by have vindicated that faith in a marvelous way. Tonight we must believe that way will be made . . .” Yet he could feel the cold breeze of pessimism pass over the audience. He said that the light of hope was about to fade and a lamp of faith to flicker.

If a few hours later Dr. King was in court as the city lawyers argued before the judge that he was operating a private enterprise without the franchise. King’s lawyers argued that the car pool was a voluntary share-a-ride plan provided without profit as a service by Negro churches. It became obvious that the judge would rule in favor of the city.

At noon, during a brief recess, King noticed an unusual commotion in the courtroom. Then a reporter came to the table where, as chief defendant, Dr. King sat with his lawyers. “Here is a decision that you have been waiting for,” said the reporter. “Read this press release.”

In anxiety and hope Dr. King read that the United States Supreme Court had that morning unanimously ruled bus segregation unconstitutional in Montgomery, Alabama. King heard someone shout from the back of the courtroom “God Almighty has spoken from Washington.”

At times people are capable of responding to the injustice in this world with courage and wisdom. To know this is to have hope.

“The dawn will come,” said Martin Luther King.

Disappointment, sorrow, and despair are born at midnight, but morning follows. ‘Weeping may endure for a night,’ says the psalm, ‘but joy comes in the morning.’ Faith adjourns the assemblies of hopelessness and bring new light into the dark chambers of pessimism.”

http://www.cedarlane.org/01serms/s010114.html

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