Jesus’ Community of God is a revolutionary endeavor – to relate as equals, to be loving with one another, and to act as the creative healing power we are. Early disciples knew that for them to remain revolutionary amidst empire’s normal and opposite inequality, hatred, and violence they needed Community. Today’s second reading shows how early disciples endeavored to make Jesus’ Community of God normal. It included house church gatherings usually led by women. They gathered as equals, shared their goods out of love, and were healed and healed others, “The community of believers was of one heart and one mind, and no one claimed any possessions as their own; rather, they held everything in common. With great power they gave witness to the (healing) resurrection of Jesus.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew the revolutionary endeavor of Jesus’ Community of God. Like early disciples he knew that amidst this U.S. Empire’s inequality, hatred, and violence he and other disciples needed Jesus’ Community of equality, love, and healing. King called it the Beloved Community. The Beloved Community seemed to signify a hope to be actualized in an integrated, socially just nation at peace. It meant people had to come together in love to help heal the wretched legacy and existing practices of the U.S. slavemaster state. King and other progressives launched a Poor People’s Campaign to bring together southern Blacks seeking civil rights with northern whites seeking financial rights. As earlier slavemasters persecuted, wounded, and killed Jesus and early disciples, so too modern day ones would do the same with King and early members of his Beloved Community. Indeed ‘Deep State’ and normal state persecuted, wounded, and killed various people and communities. In addition to overt physical violence they also used political infiltration and financial deprivation against the NAACP, SNCC, Black Panthers, and others. George Wallace and other conservatives then launched a replacement segregationist campaign that reasserted the slavemaster state’s normal inequality, hatred and violence. They have been at it ever since. 50 years on from the murder of Dr. King the U.S. slavemaster state still targets African Americans and all those who are poor with what King called the triple evils of poverty, racism, and militarism. “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.” “Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world, declaring eternal opposition to poverty, racism, and militarism.” People continue to take the revolutionary spirit as witnessed by Jesus, Dr. King in the Poor People’s Campaign, Medgar Evers, and others. Rev. William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis are attempting to do so. People made poor, reaching across ethnic differences are gathering as a “new and unsettling” Community. Barber and Theoharis are raising up a new Beloved Community, “a freedom church of the poor.” Its principles include “building up the power of people…for a powerful moral movement…to transform the political, economic and moral structures of our society.” They are “demonstrating the power of people coming together across issues…affecting us all.” The Poor People’s Campaign is currently traveling across the states and gathering a Community together. Beginning on Mother’s Day, the People’s Community will gather as equals, share Jesus’ nonviolent love, and take action to be healed and heal others of empire’s normal inequality, hatred, and violence.
“All the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, … (we) must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation.”(Nobel Peace Prize Speech – Dr. Martin Luther King)
Prayer: Spirit of Peace, help me co-create a Beloved Community.
Question: How do I keep alive the revolutionary nature of peacemakers?
April 8, 2018 Gospel John 20:19-31 Second Sunday of Easter