A Sermon for Martin Luther
King, Jr.'s Birthday Weekend
by the Rev. Melanie
Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist
Church of New Orleans
Sunday, January 13, 2013
“What would
it mean to live in a city whose people were changing each other’s despair into
hope?” These words
from Adrienne Rich’s poem “Dream Before Waking” have been haunting me ever
since I was reminded of them by a quote in the New York Times Magazine
from December 30, the issue in which notable people who died during the year
are memorialized. I carried the
magazine with me and read it during my recent vacation days visiting family out
of state.
One evening during that vacation time, we sat in a
comfortable living room in Hershey, Pennsylvania, listening to a young couple related
to Eric speak of how their city, the capital of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, was
changing. They complained that the
city was full of crime, so dangerous that they wanted to move further away from
the city center. They went on and
on about it, and I have to tell you, Eric and I exchanged glances that said,
“They think their city is
dangerous!” And finally I picked
up my iPhone, thinking I would do an online search of violent crime in
Harrisburg vs. New Orleans, so that I could “trump” the couples’
complaints.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was, when I
discovered that the Crescent City is ranked 21st in the world and first in the United States for murders, behind cities in Mexico,
Columbia, Honduras, Brazil, Guatemala, Venezuela, and El Salvador, with close
to 58 murders per 100,000 people.
I was so stunned to learn so graphically that I live in the murder
capital of the United States that I couldn’t even twit the couple over their
concern about Harrisburg.
“What would
it mean to live in a city whose people were changing each other’s despair into
hope?” I thought
of these words again when I was in conversation with a member of the UUA
General Assembly Planning Committee about the possibility of our city’s hosting
the 2017 gathering of Unitarian Universalists. I asked if the high murder rate here was a factor in the
Committee’s decision-making, and got the frank reply that the real sticking
point was the price of hotel rooms, because the GA Planning Committee realized
that the majority of those murders occurred only in certain neighborhoods,
among people who mostly know each other.
I was a little stunned, but I guess sort of grateful that the Committee
was looking at it that way.
“What would
it mean to live in a city whose people were changing each other’s despair into
hope?” These words keep haunting me. On this Sunday before the birthday of
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who often spoke of “hewing out of the mountain of
despair a stone of hope,” we contemplate the church, the city, and how and even
if we can be part of helping to change the despair of New Orleanians in
the most dangerous of the city’s neighborhoods into hope.
First Church is, and always has been, a Unitarian
Universalist urban congregation, and the great legacy of Martin Luther King,
Jr. is one of ministry to the inner cities of America. Over the period of the 1960s and 70s,
our liberal religious movement, following a nation-wide cultural trend, began
relocating its urban congregations to the suburbs, and we are now mainly a
suburban denomination. The UU
urban congregations at one time were a dwindling group, but it is a trend that
shows some small signs of reversal—the most dramatic being the announcement by
All Souls UU Church in Tulsa that they are moving BACK to the central city.
The urban churches of the UUA have much in common, despite
differences in geography, theology, culture, and history. All urban churches share certain
challenges: that few of our
members live within walking distance of our churches; that the neighborhoods
surrounding our churches are more economically stressed than most of our
members; that we have more ideas and energy than the money and folks needed to
carry them out; that the problems of the cities in which we are located often
seem paralyzingly insurmountable; that the ethnic, racial, and cultural make-up
of our congregations does not usually reflect the composition of either our
cities as a whole or our immediate neighborhoods. But we UU urban congregations also share some wonderful
positive attributes as well: a
determination not to abandon the city for the more prosperous suburbs; a
commitment to the liberal values of inclusivity and pluralism; a dedication to
making our cities better places to live for ALL the people who live there.
“What would
it mean to live in a city whose people were changing each other’s despair into
hope?” Maybe this
is a hard question for us at First Church – maybe the stress and anxiety of the
snail’s pace of our recovery and rebuilding since Hurricane Katrina keeps us
almost unable to see beyond our own despair; maybe it’s too much to hope for
that church members and friends would be expending much energy in the wounded
neighborhoods of our wounded city.
But I don’t think so – I think on the contrary that maybe if
we turned our ministry outwards so that we could all feel that First Church was
relevant and useful in the healing and recovery of the whole city, that it
would paradoxically be easier for the church to heal and recover, because it
would be clear and obvious that we were not standing for ourselves alone. And maybe, just maybe, working to
transform our neighbors’ despair into hope would help to transform our own.
“What would
it mean to live in a city whose people were changing each other’s despair into
hope?” What would
it mean? What would that look
like? What is to be done? Could we effect such change without the
UU staples of debate, discussion, and more debate and discussion? Could efforts in this direction be made
before the Community Kitchen is built?
Adrienne Rich answers her own question by saying
…You yourself must change it. –
Though
your life felt arduous
new and unmapped and strange
what would it mean to stand on the first
page to the end of despair?
I don’t have all the answers – hardly any, in fact – but I do
know some things we can do. We can
join with the other congregations of the Greater New Orleans UU cluster
(Community Church in particular is doing great things with their partnerships
in the 7th Ward), with our Center for Ethical Living & Social Justice Renewal and their
volunteers and local partner organizations, and with people of other faiths and
cultures in New Orleans to do community organizing to redress inequalities, and
transform despair into hope.
Our liberal faith demands it; our own history demands
it. It has never been enough for
religious liberals to merely give lip service to our democratic ideals or to
our religious beliefs – the God of Moses, Isaiah, Deborah, Jesus, Paul, Mohammed,
Jefferson, Parker, and Martin Luther King Jr. demands that we put our beliefs
into action, that we "walk our talk."
In the past, people of faith, whatever their belief system,
have led the way to justice; in the future — and if New Orleans is to be a
healthy, desirable place for ALL our children to bring up their children – we
must help do it again. We will do
this by beginning to ask, "What can we do together today to make justice
and build peace for every single one of the people of New Orleans?" and
then doing the work that must be done.
When that question is asked in New Orleans, you can bet I want to be in
that number of the saints marching to hope and justice and equality with all of
you, joyfully taking our place in the healing of our city. I hope and pray that we will face this
challenge, follow the path set out for us by our forebears, and live up to our history
and our ideals. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!
