The last few months have seen a variety of challenges in the lives of our family—like everyone, we’ve had illnesses and tension. But one of the blessings we have had has been our son being able to stay with us, perhaps for one of the last times, for a month. He is in his senior year of college; he already has a job lined up after graduation. He’s our youngest, so that empty nest thing is staring us right in the face. We have played numerous games of UNO, he has tried once again to get me to understand how a Playstation controller works so I can play video games with him, and I have introduced him to the joys of 80s video games like Joust and Ms. Pac-Man.
One of the things we have always enjoyed as a family is watching movies together, and one of the ones we got to share was Encanto, the latest Disney movie. It’s even got music by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The basic outline of the story is this: A young family with triplets flees a war in Latin America, Along the way, the father perishes as they are pursued, but the mother, Alma, with only a candle to light her way, manages to save her children when the candle suddenly magically protects them. Not only that, the candle then creates a magical home for the family in a hidden valley and burns continually for the next 50 years.
One day the youngest grandchild, Antonio, gets his special power. Abuela takes great pride in these miraculous gifts and in their miraculous house—and there is great rejoicing as Antonio learns he can talk to animals, and his room appears in the house, filled with animals for him to engage with. The family celebrates by taking a picture--- leaving Mirabel out. During the celebration, Mirabel has a vision of the house cracking apart and the candle going out—a vision she alone experiences. Not only is she not believed, her grandmother treats her as a malcontent and a misfit, trying to destroy the celebration because she is jealous at her own lack of miraculous gift..
Yet Mirabel is certain she has seen that the house, and therefore the family, is in grave danger. Mirabel decides to try to prevent this calamity, and sets out on a quest to find out why she is experiencing what she is. In the course of her investigation, she uncovers family secrets and hidden fears. Perhaps these secrets and hidden fears are at the root of the house’s instability.
I don’t want to spoil the movie, so I will leave it at that. But as we prepare tomorrow to celebrate the impact and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on what would have been the start of his 93rd year, I can’t help but see this charming little cartoon as also giving some insight into MLK’s own life, and into our readings for today.
Mirabel had a prophetic vision. That was her gift. It didn’t require magic. It required courage—the unbelievable courage to tell the truth to those you love, even if—especially if—they don’t want to hear it, even if they FEAR the truth being told. She foresaw a disaster, and tried her best to get her family to focus on what should have been most important to them: not their individual powers, but each other. Abuela takes great pride in these miraculous gifts and in their miraculous house—more pride in these things than she does in seeing the family itself as a miracle. Frankly, the foundation of the house was shaken by the failure to value each person who lived within it equally.
You can just hear the prophet thundering in his refusal to accede to staying silent for the sake of comfort. And what calamity was it that Isaiah, and all of the prophets of Israel, named and denounced?
It was one that was ever-present, then and now. A failure of the Great Commandment: to love God with all of our hearts, strength, and minds, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. A refusal to commit to justice and care for all of those within society, attempts to exclude and marginalize others deliberately—or the softer, more insidious danger of being blind to the existence of division and injustice in the community, a preference for the comfort of the illusion of peace bought at the price of respecting the dignity and full equality of all people.
Isaiah also makes it very clear that salvation is not defined by a personal, individualist focus. Salvation, redemption, and release from the peril of death and destruction isn’t just about whether this person or that person individually goes to heaven or goes to hell. Jesus’s miracle of turning the water into wine similarly isn’t about just saving a wedding host from embarrassment. It’s about reminding us of God’s abundant gifts to all of us, and about God’s abiding call for us to share that abundance with each other and to be animated by that abundance in our dealings with each other. Salvation is about the reclamation of the community, about the strength of the entire body of God’s children. All or nothing.
Our reading from Isaiah is thus a perfect reading as we look back on the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin’s Luther King Jr. In the 54 years since Dr. King’s assassination, we have come to take for granted just how radical his message was, and how his vision of the Beloved Community still is yet to be realized.
Through the mists of time, we forget how much hatred and opposition Dr. King received—and not just from acknowledged segregationists and racists. No, as Dr. King noted in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” some of the greatest attempts to silence him and the civil rights movement’s prophetic demand for freedom and equality came from within the power structures of faith communities and the Church itself—the very body that as followers of Jesus should be most committed to justice for all. That letter—which every American should re-read at least every year, was written in response to a group of faith leaders, including Episcopal bishops, denouncing what they termed his radicalism, his impatience, his “outside activism” since he was not actually from Birmingham. We have forgotten how much suspicion the civil rights movement received from the federal as well as state governments, even from people of goodwill.
Isaiah also makes it very clear that salvation is not defined by a personal, individualist focus. Salvation, redemption, and release from the peril of death and destruction isn’t just about whether this person or that person individually goes to heaven or goes to hell. Jesus’s miracle of turning the water into wine similarly isn’t about just saving a wedding host from embarrassment. It’s about reminding us of God’s abundant gifts to all of us, and about God’s abiding call for us to share that abundance with each other and to be animated by that abundance in our dealings with each other. Salvation is about the reclamation of the community, about the strength of the entire body of God’s children. All or nothing.
Our reading from Isaiah is thus a perfect reading as we look back on the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin’s Luther King Jr. In the 54 years since Dr. King’s assassination, we have come to take for granted just how radical his message was, and how his vision of the Beloved Community still is yet to be realized.
Through the mists of time, we forget how much hatred and opposition Dr. King received—and not just from acknowledged segregationists and racists. No, as Dr. King noted in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” some of the greatest attempts to silence him and the civil rights movement’s prophetic demand for freedom and equality came from within the power structures of faith communities and the Church itself—the very body that as followers of Jesus should be most committed to justice for all. That letter—which every American should re-read at least every year, was written in response to a group of faith leaders, including Episcopal bishops, denouncing what they termed his radicalism, his impatience, his “outside activism” since he was not actually from Birmingham. We have forgotten how much suspicion the civil rights movement received from the federal as well as state governments, even from people of goodwill.
And it continues. Too many of us have insulated ourselves from the very real injustices that still exist right now. Even from within the Church—the very family which was the source of Dr. King's own hope. A nation, a church, or any institution, is only strong when the people within it are valued more than its edifices. When leaders focus on the institution, rather than the people, injustice flourishes.
Like Mirabel, like Isaiah, like Jesus, like Abraham Lincoln, Dr. King saw the cracks in the house—the house of this nation, in his own particular instance, a house which proclaimed itself dedicated to the notion that all persons were created equal on paper, when its reality was vastly different in practice. This was a truth and unvarnished revelation that those who were powerful, those who were comfortable, refused to acknowledge as an injustice, much less confront. Dr. King not only saw those cracks, and the long-term dangers they posed to African Americans and to all Americans, through his years of activism and his fifty arrests. He sought to have even those whose privilege inured them to the perils of injustice and oppression believe in a possibility and the necessity of a better, stronger, more united house that would include all. The heart of a home-- the heart of a nation-- is the people, not the structures.
But also, like Mirabel, like Isaiah, like Jesus, like Abraham Lincoln, Dr. King didn’t raise the alarm merely to be a critic and announcer of doom. He raised the alarm because of the great faith he had that we can do better in living into the vision of love and unity to which God calls us as Christians, and to which I believe God calls each and every nation, especially this one. Through the lens of this pandemic, it is patently obvious that this nation is still divided—and that the source of that division is STILL refusing to act out of a desire for the flourishing not only of ourselves and our personal circle, but of everyone.
You cannot repair the cracks in the house until you see them, and then determine to do the work of repair. You can’t repair the cracks in the house until you understand that the value of the house is about the people within it—and making sure all of them are equally protected, equally valued. Dr. King’s vision of a strong, united house, home to a strong, united community, founded on the bedrock of equality and commitment to ever seeking to make ourselves stronger as one people, is a vision we all as people of faith are called to share.
May we continue his prophetic work, rooted in our faithfulness to God, and to God’s desire for all of us to live in a house that is not only undivided but strong and flourishing because the people within it are secure and valued, regardless of their different gifts. Let us be a house united by our dedication to truth, to justice, and to dedication to our God and to each other.
Amen.
Like Mirabel, like Isaiah, like Jesus, like Abraham Lincoln, Dr. King saw the cracks in the house—the house of this nation, in his own particular instance, a house which proclaimed itself dedicated to the notion that all persons were created equal on paper, when its reality was vastly different in practice. This was a truth and unvarnished revelation that those who were powerful, those who were comfortable, refused to acknowledge as an injustice, much less confront. Dr. King not only saw those cracks, and the long-term dangers they posed to African Americans and to all Americans, through his years of activism and his fifty arrests. He sought to have even those whose privilege inured them to the perils of injustice and oppression believe in a possibility and the necessity of a better, stronger, more united house that would include all. The heart of a home-- the heart of a nation-- is the people, not the structures.
But also, like Mirabel, like Isaiah, like Jesus, like Abraham Lincoln, Dr. King didn’t raise the alarm merely to be a critic and announcer of doom. He raised the alarm because of the great faith he had that we can do better in living into the vision of love and unity to which God calls us as Christians, and to which I believe God calls each and every nation, especially this one. Through the lens of this pandemic, it is patently obvious that this nation is still divided—and that the source of that division is STILL refusing to act out of a desire for the flourishing not only of ourselves and our personal circle, but of everyone.
You cannot repair the cracks in the house until you see them, and then determine to do the work of repair. You can’t repair the cracks in the house until you understand that the value of the house is about the people within it—and making sure all of them are equally protected, equally valued. Dr. King’s vision of a strong, united house, home to a strong, united community, founded on the bedrock of equality and commitment to ever seeking to make ourselves stronger as one people, is a vision we all as people of faith are called to share.
May we continue his prophetic work, rooted in our faithfulness to God, and to God’s desire for all of us to live in a house that is not only undivided but strong and flourishing because the people within it are secure and valued, regardless of their different gifts. Let us be a house united by our dedication to truth, to justice, and to dedication to our God and to each other.
Amen.
Preached at the 10:30 am online Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO, on January 16, 2022 during time of COVID.
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