Sermon: Matthew 23:1-12 (Proper 26A)

Christ Church Riverdale, 30 October 2005

The Rev. Robert C. Lamborn, Rector

^NRSV Matthew 23:1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ² "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; ³ therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. ⁴ They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. ⁵ They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. ⁶ They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, ⁷ and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. ⁸ But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. ⁹ And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father-- the one in heaven. ¹⁰ Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. ¹¹ The greatest among you will be your servant. ¹² All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

             In just a few (hours/minutes) a religious service will be ending in Montgomery, Alabama, and Rosa Parks will be continuing her journey.  This leg of the journey will take her body to Washington DC, where the woman who was once told she couldn’t sit in the middle of the bus will lie in honor in the Capitol building, the first woman and second African American to do so. But as I say, the trip to Washington is only one leg of her journey.  Rosa Parks experienced as a child what it was like to sit behind a locked door as the KKK paraded down the street in front of her house.  In her early thirties, she was thrown off a bus for refusing to yield her seat to a white person, and around the same time she joined the NAACP, becoming secretary of the Montgomery chapter.  Some times she would walk rather than take the bus that relegated her to second-class status.

             On December 1^st, 1955, she boarded the bus after work and took a seat in the middle section of the bus, where blacks could sit as long as there weren’t too many whites to overflow the front section of the bus.  A few stops later, enough whites were on board that one white man needed to sit in the middle section, meaning that under the law the entire row where Parks sat–all four seats--had to be vacated.  Although she hadn’t planned it this way, this became where Rosa Parks took her stand.  “You may do that,” she said to the bus driver when he threatened to call the police and have her arrested.  He did just that, and a few days later, Parks was convicted and fined $10, plus $4 in court costs.  The day of the trial, the African American community of Montgomery began to boycott the bus system, refusing to pay their fares and receive second-class treatment.  While some of these 40,000 commuters rode in carpools, or in black-owned cabs for a reduced rate, most of them had to walk.  They were harassed by police and others, and churches and residences were bombed, including the home of the 26-year-old emerging leader of the movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

             The Montgomery bus boycott continued for over a year’s time, until a test case worked its way to the Supreme Court and their ruling became effective that segregation on buses was illegal.  But the violence didn’t end after the bus boycott.  There were shots taken at buses, and the bombing of churches and ministers’ homes continued.  Rosa Parks paid far more than $14 for her so-called crime that exposed the injustice of the law.  She was no longer able to find work in Montgomery, and moved to Hampton, Virginia briefly, then to Detroit, where she continued working as a seamstress until being hired by Michigan Congressman John Conyers in 1965.  As time went on, Parks’ courage became more and more appreciated,     and more and more people wanted to hear her talk about herself.  She wanted to talk about something different, though.  She wanted to spend time helping people understand the Constitution and their rights under it.

             Jesus said, “The greatest among you will be your servant.  All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”  It can be a common misconception that Christianity, with Jesus’ sayings like, “Turn the other cheek,” means that we should be doormats, that we should never engage in conflict and let everyone take advantage of other people.  Today we hear about humbling ourselves, not exalting ourselves, but I would say this: humbling oneself is a different thing from being humiliated by others.  Both of these words are related to the word human through the meaning of humus–earth.  We all share the common humanity of Adam whose name is related to earth, as well.  Humbling can be an insistence on being treated as human.  “Eventually the cup of endurance runs over,” Martin Luther King said about Rosa Parks on the bus that day, “and the human personality cries out, ‘I can take it no longer!’”  It’s been written that Parks was simply tired that day (and I believed that version until reading more in preparation for this sermon), but she said later that she was no more tired than usual at the end of a day of work.  “The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”  And so Rosa Parks humbled herself be arrested, fingerprinted have her mug shot taken, and an arrest report written up that not only listed her complexion as black, but her nationality–her nationality–as Negro.

            Next week in our celebration of All Saints’ Sunday, we’ll renew our Baptismal Covenant, including answering the question,  “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?  I will with God’s help,” is the answer.  Rosa Parks, today to be exalted at the US Capitol, has through her humbling of herself, given a great gift to the world, and to us as Christians striving for justice, peace, and dignity.  Her courage helped force us to acknowledge that “Separate but equal” isn’t – isn’t equal, that is.  “The back of the bus” has come to be a metaphor for second-class status, something society as a whole must not tolerate in the treatment of its minority groups. 

            Rosa Parks has been called the mother of the civil rights movement and an icon of the civil rights struggle.  As I said in my sermon two weeks ago, an icon is something you look through to see a reality larger than the picture itself.  In that sense, Rosa Parks indeed is an icon, someone to look through to see the sufferings of a people and the commitment of leaders to right historic wrongs.  To me, the most powerful icon of this icon is her mug shot from being arrested that day on the bus.  I’ll leave it where you can take a closer look after the service.