The Lord Delights in You
A Sermon by the Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams on the Second Sunday after The Epiphany, January 16, 2022.
“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.” Isaiah 62: 1-5
We are living in something of an altered reality these days. The past two years have been so stressful and challenging. And now we are dealing with another Covid surge and all of the chaos and uncertainty that comes with it. Many people are just trying to deal with their own daily struggles, so it would be easy to overlook the profound significance of this Martin Luther King week-end. But we can’t do that. It’s too important.
Martin Luther King Jr was a prophet, very much in keeping with the Old Testament prophetic tradition. In our reading from Isaiah today, the prophet speaks to a people in captivity in Babylon, “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.” Isaiah has been called by God to be God’s mouthpiece, reminding the Israelites that God is with them and that God will liberate them from oppression. Throughout his writings, Isaiah reminds his people of God’s deliverance in the past when their ancestors were led out of bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land, and that because of God’s salvation in history, they can trust in God’s deliverance in the future. Their suffering now will not last forever. “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall be no more termed desolate; but you shall be called My Delight is in Her.. for the Lord delights in you.” Isaiah describes a covenantal relationship between God and God’s people, an everlasting bond, and God can not countenance their captors’ attempts to de-humanize them, God will restore their dignity, which is their birthright. And Isaiah brings them this word of hope, this word of expectant justice, when their name will be changed from “Forsaken” to “God’s Delight.”
One of the themes throughout Scripture is that of God changing people’s names to signify a new purpose in life and a new sense of self. It happens in both the Old and New Testaments. It happened to Abraham’s wife Sarai, after God told her that she was going to become a mother in her old age. God changed her name from Sarai, which means, “my princess” to Sarah which means “mother of nations.” Sarah and her husband Abraham were the mother and father of the Hebrew people, and through them God created a covenant that we are grafted into today. In the New Testament, Saul, the great persecutor of Christians became Paul the great evangelist. And in light of the name-changing tradition in the Bible to signify a new God-given mission, it is very interesting that Martin Luther King, Jr. underwent a name change as well. In an article by
On MLK Day 2019, I learned that MLK did not start out life as Martin. The name his parents gave him at birth was Michael, but his father renamed himself Martin Luther King and his son Martin Luther King Jr when his son was 5 years old. The elder King was a Baptist minister and in the summer of 1934, his church sent him on a trip to Rome, Egypt, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem before he arrived at his ultimate destination of Berlin, where he attended a meeting of the Baptist World Alliance. The trip was a year after Hitler had come to power and King saw the rise of Nazi Germany happening all around him. And during the denominational meeting, a resolution was passed denouncing “all racial animosity, and every form of oppression or unfair discrimination toward the Jews, toward coloured people, or toward subject races in any part of the world.” (We have to forgive the language realizing that this was 1934, but we can certainly admire the intent.) In addition to being in Berlin for the meeting, King also went to Wittenburg and saw where the German monk, theologian and reformer, Martin Luther posted his 95 theses, an act which led to the Protestant Reformation. All of these things seemed to come together in his mind, his heart and his imagination, the rise of Naziism, the Christian call to stand against hatred of every kind and his admiration for Martin Luther who took a huge risk when he stood up to call for the reform of the Church in 1517. King went back home after this life-altering trip and after a few months, changed both his name and that of his son. And little did he know (or maybe he sensed early on) that his son would grow up to become a prophet too.
Martin Luther King Jr would have been 93 years old yesterday. He was martyred when he was 39 years old, after being the primary face and voice of the Civil Rights Movement in this country during the 1960s, a movement that very much understood itself a part of the prophetic tradition and God’s everlasting commitment to God’s oppressed people, “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.” Martin Luther King and the many brave women and men of the civil rights movement would not keep silent. Those who stood up to Nazi Germany would not keep silent. And faithful people of every generation are called to stand up for justice and to work for equality through non-violent means.
Today we too are called to stand up for justice and peace. And we can never take freedom for granted and one of the most important symbols of equality is the right to vote. In 1870, the 15th amendment to the Constitution was passed prohibiting denying the right to vote based on color, race or previous servitude. And interestingly, a Black Episcopalian in New Jersey named Thomas Mundy Peterson was the first to cast his vote after its passage. But less than 10 years later, the provisions of the 15th amendment became eroded when states began passing legislation restricting voting rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 that MLK and others worked so hard to get passed struck down all of those restrictive laws but in 2013 a key provision of that act was overruled and since then many state laws have been passed restricting voting access. And we are still struggling with voting rights at the federal level in 2022. (Source: Episcopal News Service)
The Episcopal Church has long-advocated for voting rights and that is because it is one way we live out our baptismal promises to “strive for justice and peace among all people and promote the dignity of every human being.” We reaffirmed that promise just last Sunday when we baptized Olanna Emejuru and Grace DeMott. When we reaffirm our baptismal covenant we are reminded that it is important to put our faith in action, just as the ancient prophets called people to do in their day and time. The particular social context is different from age to age, but the timeless, covenantal love of God and our call to love our neighbor as ourselves never, ever changes.
Many in our country are lamenting the erosion of empathy in our culture and that is one of the many reasons that the Church is so very important. We are reminded every Sunday, in a myriad of ways, that it’s not all about us. Every person is precious in God’s sight. “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall be no more termed desolate; but you shall be called My Delight .. for the Lord delights” in each of us.
As Christians, we are called to minister to the oppressed and lift up the down-trodden because God is particularly and peculiarly interested in the marginalized, the oppressed, those that our society often sees as “less than”. People of color, people who identify as LGBTQ+, people who are poor, people who have mental health challenges. In God’s eyes, there are no “less-than” people, only God’s beloved ones. Martin Luther King Jr understood this. Our faith is not only about our own private salvation, although it is most certainly that as well. It is primarily about the salvation of the world. And God’s kingdom starts now. It is not just something that we are rewarded with when we die. It is also about bringing the kingdom now, being God’s agents in the world and working to make the world look more as God intended, a world that Jesus came to show us, a world where we love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, a world where we see ourselves and everyone we meet as the apple of God’s eye.
“You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall be no more termed desolate; but you shall be called My Delight.. for the Lord delights in you.”