Pentecost 12, Jonathan Myrick Daniels commemoration, Aug. 16, 2015 (full size gallery)
The week had overtones of life of death and the normal flow of life. Dutchy’s memorial service was attended by 125+ on Thursday, Aug 13. Ironically, on the day, Elizabeth Long gave birth to Scarlett Joy Long, Alex and Elizabeth’s 4th child. We had an orange lily in honor of her today on the altar.
Roger and Eunice left the day before on Aug. 12 for Staten Island to help with the Staten Island clothing distribution for the 4th year. They helped to provide life for those in the community in terms of school clothes. According to Eunice, 1295 people were served.
We had a lightly attended service today – only 25. We welcome Dave Fannon and his son back to St. Peter’s after his wife’s funeral on Thursday. Boyd and Barbara brought their 6 year old granddaughter Olivia. They are celebrating their 47th wedding anniversary this week as well as Boyd’s birthday.
Finally a martyr, Jonathan Myrick Daniels was remembered this week at the 11am service. The term "martyr" means someone who bear witness to us all all.
Rather than celebrating the Pentecost 12 liturgy and following the leadership of the Diocese of Virginia, we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the martyrdom of Jonathan Myrick Daniel. This happened on Aug 20, 2015 outside a store in Haneville, Alabama where he saved a black girl Ruby Sales from the bullet that struck him. There is a walk from Selma to Haneville this weekend with Bishop Johnston in attendeance.
The liturgy was about him particularly the Gospel reading, the Magnificat – Luke 1:46-55. Mary’s song is one where a young girl rejoices that despite being lowly "the humble and meek" she will be have a part of redeeming mankind. She understands that she is now personally caught up in the larger story of God acting on God’s passion for the plight of the weak, the hungry, the oppressed, the lowly. She is now to be a partner in God’s work of liberation and redemption. She knows that God consistently uses the least likely, the least powerful, to be instruments of God’s will.
Daniels’ life showed a pattern of putting himself in the place of others who were defenseless and in need. The pattern was evident even at VMI, where as an upperclassman he was known to have compassion on and defend first-year cadets as they endured the brutal hazing of the VMI “Rat Line.” During seminary he went beyond the call of duty in his field work study in Providence RI he gave up his entire weekends to tutor black children.
His decision to go to Selma, though it perhaps took some people by surprise, was really just his compassion expanding in a greater circle. When the initial fervor of the Selma marches faded and most of the white northerners had returned to the safety and routines of their homes, Jonathan looked at the local poor black activists still fighting and risking their livelihoods and lives, and realized he could not abandon them.
The bulletin provided music for Daniels. The opening hymn, "Tell out, my soul" was a paraphrase of today’s gospel, The Magnificat. The hymn of praise "Rejoice, ye pure in heart!" calls us to rejoice as we go through life following the way of the cross. “If you believe and I believe,” a prayer of trust in God and hope for freedom, was sung by prisoners in South Africa during the days of apartheid, another struggle for freedom. The communion hymn reflects on God’s call for each of us, and contains this particularly fitting phrase, “I will break their hearts of stone, Give them hearts for love alone.” The closing hymn, "I, the Lord of sea and sky" was particularly fitting for Jonathan. He considered himself a “soldier of the cross” and did not shy away from the dangers he faced in the ministry to which God called him.
The bulletin is here and the readings. The sermon’s subject was also about Daniels and the example of compassion. His story as a martyr does bear a witness to us.
"Today we remember and give thanks for the life of Jonathan Myrick Daniels. Jonathan appears in this book, Holy Women, Holy Men. The people who live within the covers of this book are those whose lives and actions have pointed to God’s work and God’s glory in this world. Bishop Shannon has asked the churches in the Diocese of Virginia to remember Jonathan on this day, to bring Jonathan out from his resting place in this book into our midst, to be alive once again with us, to speak with us, and to challenge us to be people of compassion in the unique ways that God calls to each of us to be."
"What I found fascinating about Jonathan’s story is not that he went to Selma, like so many others did after witnessing the brutality of the police against peaceful protesters, and heeding Dr King’s request, but that once there, Jonathan realized that if his life was to make a difference in the civil rights movement that he must stay, to share in the day to day lives of the black people who were second class citizens, without rights and without respect, simply because they were black."
"Jonathan wrote in his journal about the hatred and disgust he felt for the people carrying the guns and the tear gas and the water hoses that they used against the protesters. But as time went on, Jonathan realized that he could not carry this hatred for those on the other side.
Here’s his entry about the day his feelings about “the enemy” began to change.
“I think it was when I got tear gassed leading a march in Camden (AL), that I began to change. I saw that the men who came at me were themselves not free. Even though they were white and hateful and my enemy they were human beings too. I began to discover a new freedom in the cross, freedom to love the enemy and in that freedom to live and to try to set him free.”
"Jonathan was experiencing compassion for the enemy, to feel the enemy’s pain, to enter into the enemy’s point of view, and to realize that the enemy was held prisoner by fear and hatred, and being driven by these fears into violence toward the enemy"
"How do we become people of compassion? The first thing we must do is to acknowledge our hatred and “our profound reluctance to turn an enemy into a friend.”
"The next step is “to try to make an impartial, fair-minded assessment of the situation in the cause of peace…to try to wish for your enemy’s well –being and happiness; to try to develop a sense of responsibility for your enemy’s pain.”
“Once you realize that your enemy is suffering, you look into his own eyes and see a mirror image of your own distress….and then you realize that he too deserves compassion.”
"Jonathan had this to say about this freedom from hatred. “I had realized that as a Christian, as a soldier of the cross, I was totally free, at least free to give my life if that had to be, with joy and thankfulness and eagerness for the kingdom no longer hidden from my blind eyes.”"
"The results of Daniels’ death were far reaching and led to a reshaping of the national legal and political landscape."
"Jonathan leaves us with a challenge today. “The more I got involved I knew I must try and witness to the gospel in the quest for a just society. We too may set our faces to go to Jerusalem, as he has gone before us. We go to preach good news to the poor and to proclaim release to the captives and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. We go to stand with the captive and the blind and the oppressed. We go in active non-resistance, not to confront, but to love and to heal and to free.”
“We go in active non-resistance, not to confront, but to love and to heal and to free.”
"When we undertake such a journey of love, we too, can grow into the compassionate people that God calls us to be."
Commentary on the Pentecost 12 readings, Canon Lance Ousley, Diocese of Olympia
What does it mean to worship truly? There could be great liturgical debates about this, even denominational debates about this. But scripture is pretty clear that true worship comes in the form of service to those in need. Justice-doing is integral to our true worship and it authenticates what we do liturgically, whatever style we practice on Sunday mornings. Without integrating our liturgical expression with actions of social justice in the world our Sunday morning celebration becomes offensive to God (see Amos 5:21-24). This authentic integration of word and practice is stewardship of the knowledge we have been given in faith. And, by the way, it teaches and forms true stewardship in the hearts of our community eliciting responsive giving of ourselves and our resources for this expression of worship feeding the world with God’s love.
The difference between wisdom and knowledge is that wisdom is acting upon the knowledge that we have been given. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians speaks to the integration of our faith with the way we live our lives, "not as unwise people, but as wise." In the verse immediately following our text he states, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ."
Jesus wanted more for the people he was serving than merely to fill their bellies. Jesus also wants to fill their hearts transforming them more and more into the fullness of what it means to live in the ways of God. And so, Jesus gives his flesh and his blood for the life of the world. Those who are wise will take it in and be transformed by him to live their daily lives in true worship serving the world around them giving true food to those who are hungry and true drink to those who are thirsty.