I'll begin with a riddle: When is a park bench more than a park bench? When is a park bench not just a park bench? ANSWER: When it is used to restrain people; when it is used to oppress people and abuse people; when a park bench is used to dehumanize people, it becomes more than a park bench-it becomes a tool of manipulation and control.
Over the last 10 years there is a movement in some metropolitan areas of our country to control the numbers of homeless people sleeping on park benches by making these benches shorter in length, thus assuring that it is very difficult for an adult person to sleep comfortably on such benches.
In the past several years when we take our 8th grade students to Washington, DC, we have been told that, in fact, this is one of the main reasons it is more difficult to find homeless persons sleeping out at night. I have read that in at least one major city on the East Coast, there is an ordinance entitled the Sidewalk Behavior Ordinance, which very specifically criminalizes homelessness.
How do we decide which population of human beings we need to dominate? When is a park bench not just a park bench?
In our Church calendar we are in the Season of Epiphany. It is on these few Sundays following Christmas and before Lent begins, when we hear of the various ways we come to know and understand how Jesus is revealed to the world.
If two weeks ago the Infant Jesus was revealed to the non-Jewish world with the coming of the three wise men; and if last week at Jesus' baptism Jesus was revealed as God's Beloved Son by a voice from the clouds; then today we hear Jesus being revealed as the Lamb of God and his ministry then begins with Jesus calling his first disciples. Today we distinctively see John the Baptist pointing to Jesus and saying, "Look, here is the Lamb of God! Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"
Today Jesus is revealed to us as the Lamb of God, and then almost immediately, when two of John's disciples wonder aloud where Jesus is staying, Jesus invites them to come, to keep on coming! That's our invitation: Come along! Keep on coming!
Most often the image of Jesus as the Lamb of God is connected with the Suffering Servant poetry of the prophet Isaiah, which is the image of Jesus dying on the Cross. But I will remind you that in the Old Testament, before we come to know the image of the Suffering Servant, we hear the story of the Passover Lamb at the time of the Exodus. I suspect most of you know the story: the blood of the Lamb was sprinkled on the door mantel by the Hebrews so the angel of death passed over their homes, sparing the Hebrew children. Thus, the Pharaoh let the Hebrew people go free and leave Egypt.
The earliest image of the Lamb is one of freedom! Today, in the First Chapter of John's Gospel, we are given the image of Jesus, the Lamb of God, Jesus the liberator, Jesus who came to bring us freedom.
What a most compelling image we hear on this weekend when we remember The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.! What a most moving model we hold before us as a person who was set free and liberated by God's grace in order to do the work of freedom, a person who defined the Body of Christ expansively as The Beloved Community, a person who became a beacon of light to the nations for those suffering from injustice, poverty, and discrimination in our country and in the world.
Before I conclude, I would like to name three areas where God's grace can free us to do the work of the Gospel. (I know there are more, but I'll lift up only three this morning!)
God's grace can free us from a narrow, restricted understanding of community! MLK longed for a community reaching beyond religious sectarianism, beyond nationalism, to "lift neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation, to an all-embracing and unconditional love."
Deliver us, O Lord, from a narrow, selective, exclusive understanding of community!
God's grace can free us to a deeper understanding that nothing pollutes our minds and hearts more completely than conflict and war-whether as a nation or as a family around a dinner table! Conflict of any size and intensity sets people against other people.
Deliver us, O Lord, from anything that makes us believe we are better, holier, and more respectable than another!
God's grace alone can free us from our feelings of hopelessness, apathy and regret, thinking that the odds are too great, the struggles too difficult! God's grace can free us to truly believe that another world is possible, that another way of solving differences is achievable, that there is another message-one of hope, and desire and commitment!
Deliver us, O Lord, from anything that makes us believe the cost to be too great to work toward a different type of world!
Finally, we can talk about the institutions and workplaces and churches that are broken, dysfunctional and wounded, but too often in the very same way we, as individuals, are broken, dysfunctional, and wounded. Too often the structures we have created are mirrors, not of what we want to be, but of who we really are.
I think MLK would remind us that we cannot heal the world if we have not been healed ourselves, healed of our prejudices, our intolerances, our judgments. So, if we are to become a "light to the nations," our hearts must first be open to receive our God who takes away any sin that keeps us from becoming such light.
So, I pray that together we might construct park benches as places to sit together, places to rest, and places to talk. I pray we build longer park benches, even as tiny places of refuge for those who have no other place-but just for now-until in Christ and through each of us, there will be no need for any people to sleep on benches, because our world has become free enough to be more purposeful and more persevering in our love for all of God's people. Amen.