Thread by @jeffblack945

#RevThread #170
A Tribute to John Lewis

1/ I loved seeing John when he was, I think,77, crowd-surfing on a Stephen Colbert show. He was then a little older than I am now. Letting strangers keep you aloft just on their hands is an act of faith not just in God but in humanity.

2/ The writer, Jon Meacham, who knew Lewis up close and who knows something about history, has been saying that John was a saintly person. I second the motion.

3/ Not only was John Lewis a good man, and a just man -- he was a holy man. That is to say he was simultaneously courageous, courteous to all, candid about being fallible, humble, fun -- and loving every person while demanding justice, especially in this hour of our corruption.

4/ I want to talk about what John Lewis' life offers to us -- something we desperately need now and in our future.

5/ What did John Lewis learn during his formative years that propelled him across a long life and fueled his integrity? Who came into his mind and his heart that empowered him to live such a genuinely glorious life?

6/ America’s Founders, Jesus of Nazareth, and Mohandas Gandhi all found a home in the awareness of this son of sharecroppers growing up in Jim Crow rural Alabama in the 40’s and 50’s. God’s surgeries are delicate and precise.

7/ Alabama sharecroppers knew how compromised the Founders were. Even so, John took in the Founders’ great words, “Created equal” “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The message went in.

8/ In the midst of the miserable oppression of Jim Crow, when you could be lynched for "getting uppity", there was a place of freedom....

9/.. On Sunday mornings there was a place where pain could be voiced, joy could be dared, hope could flicker and sometimes abound. Their oppressors stayed the hell away. It’s why, to this day, African American churches are so often so full of life.

10/ There John learned about, read about, heard the words of Jesus of Nazareth. And the words were not distant, not only nor even mostly about how to get my sad and scared soul to heaven....

11/.. They were words about another yoke, His yoke, which I could share with him and he would make light; words about a truth that would set us free; words about a way suffering can be subverted and made to serve redemption;...

12/.. words about a new law that is not weighing on our backs but lightening our load; words about loving our enemies and putting away our swords.

13/ Soon enough another American Founder, a young man whose baritone words flowed like magic, Martin, came into John’s life, and from both Martin and Martin’s father came word of a more recent witness of God’s, ...

14/..a soul whose walk into the mystery of non-violence had set a continent free from the rule of oppressive white culture. John began to learn of the walk of Gandhi.

15/ Gandhi did not buy into Western Christianity’s version of the teaching of Jesus. How could he? His experience of the adherents of Western Christianity was the violent theft of India’s goods and the ruthless oppression of her people.

16/ One time during a visit to England, Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western Culture. He replied, “I think it would be a marvelous idea.” (My favorite mic drop.)

17/ For all his toughness, Gandhi found a way of “ahimsa”, of loving confrontation that remained non-violent, a way that liberated hundreds of millions without killing the oppressors.

18/ It’s the way of redemptive suffering, which in turn is the way of awakening the human conscience, which is the voice of God within.

19/ How about viewing the cross of Christ in this hour as the way of committed non-violence, springing from grace and love, that leads to justice? That would make a good Reformation.

20/ That’s what John Lewis modeled. His was a life of great beauty fed by those three streams -- the Founders’ hope of liberty and equality, the daring and healing compassion of Jesus of Nazareth, and the courage and political skill of Gandhi. Friends, let’s walk like that.