"READY TO DIE"
"READY TO DIE"
Luke 9:24
"For those who want to save their life will lose it,
and those who want to lose their life for my sake will save it."
Alton B. Pollard, III Director,
Program of Black Church Studies and
Associate Professor of Religion and Culture
Candler School of Theology Emory University
Sometimes, the most defining moments in our lives come like a thief in the
night, surreptitiously and by stealth, and with little or no advanced warning.
I grew up in the northern hinterlands of Minnesota where the bone-chilling
reception from white folks and old man winter alike were barely indistinguishable.
My twelfth birthday was fast approaching. No longer a mere child, I was an
assertive and restless black male, a young man with aspirations of manhood,
stirred to action by the images I saw coming out of the Deep South: the black-led,
justice-obsessed, God-intoxicated movement of church workers and youth workers
and sanitation workers and the endless phalanx of manhood signs, cardboard
placards that simply declared "I am a Man." I was sitting in the
living room, watching television with my parents when it first began to happen,
the change. I don't remember what program was on that night, only the breaking
news coverage that forever and irrevocably altered my life. Martin Luther
King Jr., at thirty-nine years old was dead.
There was a time when many of us would tell the story of Martin Luther King
Jr.'s death, at least in our private if not public remembrances, but not so
much any more. I for one choose to remember and never forget. April 4, 1968.
A major Thet offensive was just beginning in Vietnam, the quadrennial campaign
for the presidency of the United States was well underway (and Lyndon Baines
Johnson was running for his life), and King's poor people's campaign loomed
on the horizon. He leaned over the balcony of the second floor of the Lorraine
Motel, just outside the room he always stayed in when he came to Memphis, to
ask the musician slated to play for that evening's mass meeting to be sure
to play his song. "Be sure to play 'Precious Lord' brother Branch. Be
sure to play it real pretty." King had always drawn strength from melodious
gospel music, from the songs of faith that had shaped him, nurtured him, prepared
him. He intuitively understood the African proverb: "The spirit will not
descend without a song."
It was as he straightened up that martyrdom came. The metal-jacketed bullet
exited the rifle's chamber. The assassin's shot, still also and somehow lodged
deep within the American psyche, found its target with ungodly accuracy and
deadly speed. King fell, never to rise again in this world, at least not under
his own power. He lay there, with his legs draped over the railing, gaping
wound in his jaw, spinal cord severed, eyes fixed in a death stare, as life
oozed out of him in a pool of blood. It was early Thursday night. Five days
later on Tuesday, April 9, as together our family prepared to watch the funeral
on television, my father unboxed his new reel-to-reel tape recorder. I will
never forget how he recorded every minute and every hour of the day's proceedings
with great care, from the slow long trek of thousands upon thousands of mourners
following the mule-drawn coffin, walking mile after mile across Atlanta, to
the grief-stricken outbursts along the streets from Ebenezer Baptist Church
to Morehouse College and Spelman College, and finally to Sisters Chapel, where
Dr. Benjamin Mays delivered the eulogy. A sanctified silence hung over our
house that day, as if a member of our own family had died. To be sure, one
had. King's funeral was the only recording I ever saw my father make with his
then state-of-the-art equipment. Other than sickness, it was also the only
time that my sister and I missed school.
Only days earlier, fresh with the scent of what was to come upon him, speaking
to thousands of black people in Memphis on a rainy, stormy night, King had
spoken these immortal words:
Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness than ever before. Let us stand with a greater determination than ever before and let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be. ·We've got some difficult days ahead but it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has it place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will.
Every now and then it is good to take stock, to re-assess how we hope to
live our lives. We, all of us, have aspirations of career and family, perhaps
a little fame and fortune, a portion of health and measure of respect and last,
but certainly not least, a long life. In the final analysis, the way of life
we adopt, consciously or not, will also say much about that which is ultimate
for each of us. Simply put, in biblical terms we will live or we will die.
The questions that await our appraisal are as simple as they are complex: How
should I live my life? What is the ultimate ground of my existence? How do
I relate to the central issues of our time? When the powers of this world -
my job, my government, my privilege - make unprincipled demands upon me, expecting
me to surrender or retreat, how do I respond? Have I found something worth
living for, a way of life for which I am ready to die?
As human beings, we pride ourselves on the acquiring and preserving of things
that have meaning for us. In fact, it is possible to become so obsessed with
holding on to something we cherish, something good that we lose it. It was
a heart-wrenching lesson that I learned twenty-five years ago. I was a college
student. My superficially constructed world was falling apart; life had lost
its meaning. My sweetheart, my girlfriend, my woman, my baby, my love had terminated
our relationship. She dumped me, kicked me to the curb - me! I cried, begged,
pleaded with her not to go. I lost all my manly dignity, but in the weeks and
months to follow - in the lonely solitude of the hours, in the hapless company
of friends, in the refuge of my dorm room, there in the luminous darkness -
I learned a lot about myself and it wasn't very pretty. Our text for this morning
puts it this way, "For whoever would save their life will lose it." Simply,
profoundly, without fanfare, Jesus says that if you really want to save your
life, you must give it away. My self-absorbed lifestyle had led to the death
of our relationship. I was full of myself back then, young, gifted and black;
handsome, erudite, and chauvinist to the bone; a leader on my college campus,
a prime catch for any woman, an African prince among men. I was not so thankful
to God back then, but I am very grateful today for that sister who twenty-five
years ago taught me a few lessons about the meaning of love and life. Today,
not only is she my teacher, but my friend, my love and my wife!
Life-styles are not the exclusive domain of individuals of course. Countries,
and institutions too, develop ways of living that in the long run tend to preserve
or destroy them. When hanging chads and dangling dimples matter more than the
citizens whose rights were denied at the ballot box and a president is elected
who really was not; when the litmus test of patriotism is the embrace of militarism
and donning the stars and stripes; when executives can sell stock options while
employees are left with no option but to enter the ranks of the downsized,
outsourced, denigrated and aggrieved; when we speak about reality unrealistically
to hide our hypocrisy and sacrifice our convictions on the altar of conformity
then I cannot help but wonder if perhaps, in the final analysis, the United
States has chosen not to live. For life, good life, healthy life, godly life,
saving life, the life of we the people and e pluribus unum, which is our sacred
life held in common requires nothing less than the way of radical democracy
- an unfettered citizenry, inclusive community, compassionate society, responsible
government, unity born of diversity, civility born of courage, justice born
of equality, hope born of faith, a renewal of the body politic from sea to
shining sea.
Forty years ago, shadowed by the reality of death, King described America as
an extremely sick nation. Today, fueled by the same fires of white privilege
and black rage, white supremacy (whose mantra was "the only good nigger
is a dead one") and black self-and-other hatred, ours is a culture of
death that exterminates young black women and men in alarming numbers and thinks
nothing about it so long as the violence is contained. Tragically, many black
youth now accept the bleak inevitability of their demise. In a society rife
with inequalities - of religion, region, education, race, gender, class, social
status, sexuality, age, and opportunity - dying black youth are the window
onto the spiritual trauma that effects an entire generation if we would only
see and hear. Be forewarned, if it has not already arrived, it is coming soon
to a neighborhood near you. For many but not all black youth (and other youth
too), there is only one rejoinder to anonymous social power and its commensurate
hounds of misery, a retributive philosophy that redounds unto oneself, the
gangsta mentality, the thug life. Nihilistic and unorthodox, thug theology
trumps all notions of redemptive life or death. For cynical black youth, the
response of the faith community to death's dominion falls somewhere between
little to none at all; and theological education is more inconsequential still.
Hidden in plain sight, hard-core rap and hip-hop life is alienated from the
transcendent mortality so powerfully represented by King but perverted by the
faithful. The legendary rapper, Notorious B.I.G., he himself shot to death
in a contract killing, deified urban theodicy in his 1994 album and song of
the same name, "Ready to Die."
Here is just a sample (with expletives abridged to protect the innocent·):
My s· (stuff) is deep Deeper than my grave
"
G" I'm ready to die and nobody can save me
"
F" the world, my moms and my girl·
So die MF die - yes I'm ready.
And so, we recall the words of the book of the record, "Those who lose
their life for my sake will save it." The man whose name we have invoked
here today looked at us, his church, his country, his people and saw that the
way of life we had chosen was taking us down the road that leads to destruction.
The spirit of the Lord upon him, Martin challenged us, loved us; he is speaking
truth to us still. And what his way of life says, and that of the Nazarene
too, is what most of us already know but do not want to hear. The consequence
may be a Memphis, a balcony, a grave. For some, there may be a Golgotha's Hill,
a cross, a crown. Few among us would rationally or willfully choose such a
way to live. In the face of human exploitation, we become creatures of habit,
preferring privilege to principles, the comfortable over commitment. Surrounded
by the world's vast inequities, we would excuse ourselves, saying that as individuals
there is nothing we can do, we have no choice. And yet, if we would say that
we love God, love others, love ourselves, it is urgent that there be ever more
of us who would dare to become risk-takers, who would dedicate ourselves to
the implications of this radically prophetic way of living.
Here and there, across the land, there are scattered individuals and groups
who have already dared to answer the call of this way of life, some prominently
but most quietly and anonymously. It is a scandalous way, where the first are
made last and the last first. It is a revolutionary way, where the weak are
made strong and the victimized become victorious. It is a prophetic way, where
the rough places are made smooth and the crooked straight. It is a righteous
way, where swords are turned into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.
It is an inclusive way, where affirmation of the parenthood of God and the
kinship of all peoples takes place. It is a visionary way, that invites each
of us to mount up on wings like Medgar and Malcolm and Martin and Mandela and
Tupac and seek justice, that summons us to hear Fannie Lou and Rosa and Septima
and Queen Nzingha and Sister Souljah and not faint. It is a joyous way that
causes the faithful to tremble and be made glad. It is agape's way, the way
of love that enables us to cling to a harrowing faith that we shall find a
way to live together in this rainbow nation and world and not perish apart
as fools. It is the way of Jesus, the way of Martin, the way of freedom, the
way of the people of God. Letting go of our lives that we might gain them.
Losing our lives that we might save them. Ready to die · for life more
abundant. Allelujah. AshŽ. Amen.