sermons
The Way of Jesus In Public Life
The Letters We Write
Ivy Anthony
Oct 27, 2024
Recently I’ve been revisiting an essay that I have returned to again and again over the last eight years. It was written by Vincent Harding in the early 2000’s. Vincent Harding is a late civil rights elder who was a friend and speech writer for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – he was a historian and a theologian, and among many wise writings he published an essay called, “Is America Possible? To My Young Companions on the Journey of Hope.”
It’s actually not really an essay — it’s a letter that he writes to young people that have inspired him and the many hundreds of people that those young people represent. And it’s not a letter where he coercively crafts an argument with an answer to this roaring question — it’s an unfolding conversation (that he invites us to enter), that gives voice to the history of hope (often times blood-stained hope) that he lived and experienced. And it’s a conversation that also elevates the dialogue of contributions and possibilities of what creating a new America, “a more perfect union,” could be with the many young people’s voices that he has recently worked with and learned from.
I return to it because it is a love letter.
His letter starts as many do, “Dear so-and-so” — naming the recipient of the address. In this letter he addresses each and every youth that has been inspiring to him — for a full page and a half. And for each person he names he provides an additional little note — a blessing – a TRUTH that follows that person’s first name.
Dear Mumia (with appreciation for your refusal to submit to the threatening darkness),
Dear Rachel and Jonathan (as you manifest the blessed beauty of your mother),
Dear Pastor Sheila (because I know the Lord has laid her hands on you),
Dear Maria and Santiago (beloved adopted sister and nephew, continue to chant and live your hope),
And so on and so on and so on — he does this.
The very salutation of his letter communicates his deep care and love for humanity, for the possibility of this nation — for the beloved community that he felt was a spiritual responsibility as much as a political one.
The letter is a moving, tattered tapestry of story after story. Conversation after conversation of people — of all ages, races, ethnicities, connections and convictions — seeking to create and grow the beloved community. In America — and beyond.
I return to it because it’s a political letter.
It’s a letter that invites us into these dialogues too — asking us at a fundamental level — political questions. Political of course in its Greek origins means how we gather in public life, and who we gather with — and how we agree on how we gather? Public life is about putting our dreams into formation — giving shape to them , organizing how we gather as communities, neighborhoods, a nation.
It’s a gospel letter.
The gospels do this very thing, right? They tell story after story after story of the people of God. The followers and friends of Jesus – trying their best to live out the values and the teachings and the practices of God — so that our dreams and ignited imagination can create the kin-dom of God here on earth — so that we don’t lose sight of that.
It’s a lovely, political, gospel-y letter that denies giving way to define itself as any one of those categories — nor argues that one should stand as greater than the other. It is all actually one letter, one story, one way of being in private and in public life. And this is what makes it an inspiring letter.
And on most days – particularly as we draw closer and closer to an election — I need a little inspiration. I can give way pretty quickly to the verses in Ecclesiastes that say:
4 Generations come and generations go,11 No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come will not be remembered
by those who follow them. (Ecclesiastes 1)
And get stuck in thinking that all of this just doesn’t matter. All of this is meaningless — a horrible set up for the next generation, a house of cards, a letter that’s ending has already been written.
But Vincent Harding inspires me to return to what has indeed already been written — that truth and integrity and love matter in the face of violence, hatred and despair.
That much of the New Testament is a compilation of letters written to us. And they are not dead letters, they are letters of our living Jesus, letters of love encouraging our public life — even when it feels so (gosh darn) hard.
And it is our role — it is actually our calling to continue to write letters like this into our present day landscape. To write hope into the hearts of those around us — and to allow our hearts to be malleable of the same accord. Because we want the next generation to have blessings and possibility known and as close as their very names. So that they are emboldened – so that amnesia doesn’t take root — so that they have some signposts to read along the way. Along the way that makes way for other people. A chain reaction if you will, of making way for the way of Jesus. And to have the empowerment to re-write what we might get wrong along the way.
Today we’ll look at an interaction with the disciples and Jesus that might help us — and continue to hear thoughts and the voice of Vincent Harding. As we keep going in this sermon series called, The Way of Jesus in Public Life.
STORY | Writing letters to my daughter
Our daughter started college three years ago — and every morning of her first year (for a chunk of time) I got up early and wrote her letters of the heart — the truest form of a love letter.
“Dear Elle — (my beloved, the one who made me a mother).”
I wrote letters when she was feeling homesick — told her how she was missing nothing back here at home — how to keep looking forward even when nothing was familiar…
“Dear Elle (the one who holds so many dreams, those that are formed and those that are still to take shape — keep going).
I wrote letters to encourage her voice and her connection:
“Dear Elle (the one who has the great advocate at your side – say “yes” to office hours and say “yes” to parties too).
And I wrote to her with practical wisdom when she seemed to forget some of the basics
“Dear Elle, (may wisdom befall you in the form of time-management, setting an alarm clock — eating a banana).
And I signed each letter with a refrain —
“A new day comes, keep your head up — you are surrounded in love.”
I wrote so many letters that first year.
Ooooo! It was some of my best writing — love letters, gospel-y letters (inviting her into an awareness of something beyond herself).
I felt like such a good parent – inspiring, present, responsible.
And yet . . .Elle did not read one of those letters.
This girl did not even get her mailbox key until APRIL of her first year. *super*
SCRIPTURE
- Now Jesus might know a thing or two of what it feels like to have his words not be fully taken in. All of his teachings are recorded and written as letters for us, right?
Teachings that are meant to help us when we feel homesick for the world we dream for but do not yet see. Fundamental practices that are meant to buoy us when we forget how to start our days or live our days — encouragement to forge our way forward when all/so much looks like chaos, unrecognizable and unjust.
And yet — sometimes I flail around like I’ve never read a word — of the Word.
And so this morning I wanted to invite us to read some of the gospel of Mark, together. It’s where the disciples seem to flail around a little bit too.
We enter this scene where Jesus and the disciples have been traveling around and they’ve witnessed a lot of Jesus’ actions, listened to a lot of Jesus’ words — heard about the kin-dom of God, the one that is among them and yet not fully realized. And where we pick up here in Mark 9 is where Jesus has just added a little tidbit of information that foretells his death and then his resurrection… so the disciples are spinning a little bit, I think:
Mark 9:33 – 37
33 Then they (the disciples) came to Capernaum, and when he (Jesus) was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?”
34 But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.
35 He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
36 Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them,
37 “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Now the disciples have the unique opportunity to be with Jesus in real time. To see the teachings, the practices of Jesus enacted in their very presence. And yet they seem to not be reading the scene here.
I can imagine Jesus, as he sits them down addressing them:
“Dear disciples — dear , dear, dear disciples… (of whom I wish to bless, but who seem to not pick up anything I’m putting down), pray tell…
“What were you arguing about along the way?”
Now in the disciples defense — they’ve had a lot to digest. They’ve just witnessed the transfiguration of Jesus — they see Moses and Elijah on top of a mountain. They hear the voice of God through a cloud — they try to help a boy with an unclean spirit — but they can’t. And then Jesus calls them a
“faithless generation”
and then Jesus easily heals the boy — and then Jesus tells them he’s going to die… and then also in 3 days come back to life.
Soooooo — I get that they were just trying to figure out what was going on, and they feel the pressure, right? I mean Jesus has been doing/saying a lot of great things. Large crowds are following him and increasing daily. So if Jesus dies, the disciples think, “well we have to be “GREAT” too! We are supposed to carry something helpful forward for the kin-dom of God. And the prospect is scary. They are afraid.
I feel this too. I look around some days at our national landscape and I think I DO NOT understand. at. all. What is happening here? And Jesus, I do not understand what you are doing — call me a
“bad reader” — or a “member of a faithless generation”
but I think I need a little more “greatness” attached to my name to make an impact here.
I get why the disciples were arguing about
“who would be the greatest.”
It feels like a deep spiritual responsibility to create the kin-dom of God on earth. And the most recent experience they have is of FAILING to heal a boy — it’s what’s likely most fresh in their minds.
*Now I want to pause for a moment on this story of the boy.*
There are a fair amount of verses devoted to detailing what this unclean spirit does to the boy. It throws him to the ground, it convulses him, it makes him foam at the mouth, grind his teeth, it casts him into fire and into water — it tries to destroy him — it makes him not be able to speak or to hear.
Jesus — asks the father of the boy
“how long has this been happening?”
and the Father says,
“since childhood.”
Jesus casts the spirit out and turns to the disciples and tells them that it can only be cast out by prayer.
Now it’s not lost on me — that when Jesus hears the disciples arguing about ‘who is the greatest’ — that instead of getting into the minutiae of what they were talking about or the details of debate — that he brings a child to the center of their meeting.
A child who is not violently possessed by something trying to destroy it at all costs.
Despite not being recorded as saying anything — I think the child is the one holding the conversation here. Yes, We know Jesus gives voice to the voiceless – it is the vulnerable, the ones regarded as hopeless, useless, purposeless — held at the edges of society with no social or physical power — for whom Jesus writes the letters we read today.
“You belong, you are welcome.”
*Yes, Jesus of course — likes to flip our hierarchical ways of structuring our communities — as well as our ways of thinking of leadership — or who’s powerful, etc.. He flips it all upside down.
“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
Yes – and I think here he’s saying to the disciples,
“If you are going to talk about ‘greatness’ – let’s talk about what kind of “greatness that is” — and let’s think about the child you saw a couple days ago and the child you see here today….”
If you are writing a letter to them — about the kind of kin-dom/beloved community you are creating with the “GREATNESS” you are arguing about — how does that letter read?
- Is it a letter of possession?
- Of dominance?
- Of control?
- Is it Full of “BIG, BIG, BIG-ly — HUUUGE” — violent voices?
- Ones that overtake the voices in their path — ignoring them, silencing them, stomping on them?
Or do you write of a greatness that points to something even greater?
“If you believe in the kin-dom, if you believe in me — yes you will do the works I have been doing AND you will do even greater things than these…..”
Ones of compassion and of help. Of healing and of possibility. Of good news and great love.
But if you build a kin-dom that argues about how much greatness you can showcase in ideas, buildings, power or money — you will destroy this child, you will send him to the ground foaming at the mouth.
But if you embrace the child of which the kin-dom is born within — you start with a salutation:
“Dear young person, (beloved child of God — I see you…)”
“Dear young person, (beloved child of God — you are welcomed here….)”
“Dear young person, (may you be embraced by a future that needs your voice).”
And I can imagine that the disciples would think, “but Jesus this child can’t even read yet.”
And that’s the truth — the young may never read the letter — but they will get the message. The message of whether or not they are left alone in the wilds of our day, or whether they are embraced into the fold of greater possibilities, given greater capacity to receive and give love, and greater capacity to hope.
In the 1930s, the poet Langston Hughes observed that the origin of a deeper American Dream is not to be found in some GREAT, distant, abstract idea but very near, in the stories of our own lives — of those around us. Especially the young. His insight rings true to this day:
“An ever-living seed,
Its dream
Lies deep in the heart of me.”
(https://fetzer.org/resources/america-possible-letter-my-young-companions-journey-hope)
I think Jesus is inviting the disciples and us to grapple with the idea that if we are going to engage or even touch a conversation about what/who is the “greatest” — let it be unto developing this ever-living seed in all of us. Let it be unto growing the greatest humanity, the greatest spirit, the greatest community — a way of living alongside one another — that opens up the greatest capacities, the greatest gifts. Vincent Harding would say,
“let’s find ways to move against that which crushes our greatest human development, and our greatest communal and public development — like segregation — like white supremacy.”
Let’s find ways to work unto a shared flourishing — which creates a greatness we’ve never quite experienced before.
“Our work in public life is to care and receive care from each other. To create a world where those who are hurt and harmed — who are right now being harmed by patterns and practices of dominance and greed and deadly indifference to shared flourishing is a priority, a promise, a practice we collectively commit to”. (enfleshed.org)
What happens though is that when we are tired — when we are confused or dismayed – or afraid – we argue. Often loudly. And like these disciples — we can quickly get into a sickening spiral.
One that takes us away from whatever is true — whatever is honorable — whatever is just — whatever is pleasing — whatever is lovely — whatever is admirable — and those things are the things we need in our perception in our public life. (Philippians 4)
Because without them — the realities of life — will swallow us up — will throw us to the ground, to the fire. The bullies, the loud-mouths, the violence of our days will seep into the fractures that are ever-widening. And it will poison the roots of the childhoods of this generation and the next — if we continue to argue along the way.
SIGNPOSTS
https://onbeing.org/programs/vincent-harding-is-america-possible/
Vincent Harding started a project called Veterans of Hope – at the age of 66 in 2004. (And to be clear, in this context “veteran” refers to individuals who have dedicated their lives to activism and social change, rather than military service). It was a project designed to inspire and promote public civic engagement of disaffected youth by connecting them with organizers, artists, religious and political leaders, educators, healers and visionary activists from 50 to 90 years old. Veterans like himself that were not holding HOPE as a way to bypass the past or present darkness of our land — but still believing for such hope along the journey.
He recounts a time that he met with a young man – who as they started talking in a more personal way, turned out was one of the “leaders of the drug-running folks at the time” – but this young man shared that one of the reasons why he felt like he had gone in the way that he had gone — not trying in any way to excuse himself — was the fact that he, like many other young people, were operating in a situation where they felt it was just very, very dark all around them. And what they needed were, as he put it, some signposts, some lights in other peoples’ lives, that would help them…
“Live human signposts,” is what they needed.
These lights would help them to see the possibilities for themselves (to bring to life something that already was inside of them — that ever-living seed). Often the approach when working with marginalized youth is to educate them to figure out how quickly they can get out of the darkness and get into a more pleasant situation. When what is needed again and again are more and more people who will stand in that darkness, who will not run away from those deeply hurt people and communities and will open up possibilities that other people can’t see in any other way except seeing it through human beings who care about them. And Vincent Harding says, “if we teach young people to run away from the darkness rather than to open up the light in the darkness, to be the candles, the signposts, then we will do great harm to them and our communities.”
Imagine living a life in such a way where our lives could be signposts for what’s possible?
Imagine not having to be THE ONE — the only — the best/greatest signpost of all time for all humanity — but one of a constellation of signposts that could help guide us all unto greater movement into a true, honorable, just, admirable — nation/world?
Much of what Jesus had shown the disciples was exactly this — how to be a collection of people alongside other people — unto a better future they craft together. To the disciples they recorded these moments as “miracles” (the feeding of the 4,000 — the healing of the blind/sick and so on), and perhaps that’s what it would feel like to us too today if we were to witness a world where there was enough food for everyone to be fed, where the evil of pain and sickness was addressed seriously and holistically and transformed into healing — where the smallest, the weakest, the vulnerable the oppressed were brought into the center and given equitable access and voice — all of it does indeed sound miraculous. But it also sounds like a letter I would read again and again — if someone would just write it.
Jesus — reminds us it has been written….
“Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice – (live it!) And the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4:9) — Sincerely, Jesus.
And Jesus — Vincent – – the disciples — invite us to be the living letters we wish to be written into the future.
Elle eventually read my letters. I don’t know how much or how little –but I do know she can return to them when she needs the reminder that she is loved and that I believe in her.
But actually the greatest thing of all — has very little to do with me – or my words — but rather the collective humanity around her. The many signposts along the way in a year that was really tough — people who cared and loved her too; coaches, friends, lab partners, strangers at the store. Helping her live out what she is for and what she is meant for… saying, “Dear Elle (beloved child of God, I see you…).
Vincent Harding said that,
“Now it’s a powerful time in this country for young people and us to be asking the question: and what are we for? Do we exist for some reason other than competing as the greatest nation — or finding the greatest possible technological advances? Are there some things that are even deeper that we are meant for, meant to be, meant to do, meant to create?”
Jesus is asking us the same — and also reminding us that:
“We are not alone in this struggle for the creation of the beloved community it will take…
He reminds us that,
“It has long been written and known that those who choose to struggle for the life of the earth and its people are part of an ageless, membrane of light that is filled with the lives, hopes, and beautiful visions of all who have fought on, held on, loved well, and gone on before us.”
“This task is too magnificent — too hard — too great — for a few disciples to shape alone, to be carried by us alone, in our house, in our meeting, in our organization, in our generation, — but we try anyway — for the next generation — so that they will remember us — and for the generation after them, so that they will remember them… We are all a part of one another, and we are all part of the intention of God — to continue being light and life to everyone around us.”
Words by Vincent Harding. (“The Greatness of the Myth, The Goodness of the Man”, Eboo Patel, onbeing.org).
Prayer
Dear God, the one who reads all our letters — who regards them as prayers. May our lives — both private and public be holy renderings of the love you seed in us, the dreams you call out of our beings. And may you remind us that “a new day comes, to keep our heads up — and that we are surrounded in love — come what may.”
Resources:
https://fetzer.org/resources/america-possible-letter-my-young-companions-journey-hope
https://onbeing.org/programs/vincent-harding-is-america-possible/
https://onbeing.org/blog/the-greatness-of-the-myth-the-goodness-of-the-man/