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Following Jesus in nonviolent struggle for justice and peace, we love our neighbors and enemies as God loves us all, becoming a peace church to share in Gods work to save the world.

A Message Worth Shouting

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Text: Matthew 10:27
Delivered at the Akron (Pennsylvania) Mennonite Church, Nov. 7, 2008
By Dr. Matthew V. Johnson

Click here to download a PDF version of this message

    I come to you in the exaltation of perhaps the most meaningful moment in American history since the civil war; a moment saturated with hope and pregnant with possibility, while the forces of negativity and narrowness skulk in the shadows hoping the light will fade. My granddaughters will come to awareness in world where perhaps the most powerful man is black and though racially mixed like most African Americans he descended from the race that provided the fodder for the slave-ocracy that once was the United States of America. It is a remarkable moment. The election of Barak Obama is not, however, the end of our struggle; nor is it yet the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning. It is time for the struggle for justice and true democracy to mature and the mission of the church in the modern world to come of age. A short time before the alarming wake-up call at pearl harbor Life publisher Henry Luce prematurely declared the twentieth century the American century. But America was far too immature as a nation. America hadn’t grown up enough to accept its self proclaimed birth right to bring leadership to the nations. Perhaps now she has and this new century will truly be ours.
Where are we my friends? And how did we get here?

    Beginning with the election of Richard Millhouse Nixon and culminating in the Regan revolution and the Fundamentalist seizure of the moral and spiritual space of the public square , the forces of counter revolution swept across the country and beat back the tide of progress, as the forces of justice and demilitarization balkanized and engaged in territorial turf battles and competitive claims of whose position deserved pride of place in the moral universe and hierarchy of values. And whenever hierarchical thinking pre-empts moral cooperation and the principle of priority preempts the common cause empire thinking has displaced Kingdom consciousness and our best efforts are doomed to failure. This is why Jesus told his disciples that they were not to relate to each other as did the Romans. They were not to allow personal ambition to trump their sense of service to the Kingdom which first manifests itself in their love for one another.

42 But Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them.
43 But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister:
44 And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.
45 For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

    As competing voices began to contest and contend for the lion’s share of the moral terrain within the progressive sphere, that sphere itself came under fire and began to shrink. As the ideological siege dried up the spiritual resources of Churches Black, white and other and much of what little energy was left was squandered in infighting. There was excessive fragmentation and our movement to create a more perfect union stalled.

    Now the winds of change are blowing again. They started as a slight breeze, but they are lifting; rising until they finally and entirely engulf these amber waves of grain.

    We now have a window…And a window we’ve never had before and will perhaps never have again, certainly not in our lifetime. We have a window and we must use it now.<

Comments

This is classic oratory and perhaps the most eloquent and penetrating speeches on the present meaning and future possibilities in the Obama Era thus far articulated in any quarter.

Posted by: Rev. Dr. James A. Noel

I was grateful to hear this sermon in person, with the passion that is in Matthew, very well. The time is now, let's go!

Posted by: Jeff McLain

Beautiful. This is positively motivating with solutions of how we can improve some of the problems that still exist. Thank you for the helpful push in the back for action while the nation is still celebrating.

Posted by: G. JaVaughn Troxler

And here I am.

Are you coming to the School of the Americas Watch Vigil, I'd love to hear this presentation on the stage here.

Peace

Martin

Posted by: Martin Bates

As a Church we lost our way at the end of the Vietnam War; the culmination of the post-Watergate era; coup in Chile, etc.

As of the mid 1970s, the faith-based voice of peace and justice was replaced by an even louder one of violence and laissez-faire.

We have indeed - again - been given another chance. Lets retake faith-based politics and turn it into a symbol for love, tolerance, and giving.

The world expects nothing less of us, Eugene Sensenig-Dabbous, Beirut, Lebanon
www.ndu.edu.lb/academics/research/eugene~sensenig

Posted by: Eugene Sensenig-Dabbous

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