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Thermometer or Thermostat

Today’s blog post is written by Pastor Jen.

I don’t know how I did this, exactly, but for the second year in a row I was due to write a blog on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

And for the second year in a row, I opened my planner yesterday, looked at my note to “write blog” and groaned a little.

Because what, really, do I have to say about the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or about the work that remains to be done?

It feels tone deaf at best, and hypocritical at worst, as a white person to tell you all about MLK and how we should understand him.

So, for the second year in a row, I will not attempt to do that.

Instead, I will share a thought that other people – BIPOC leaders who I respect and learn from – shared with me yesterday: Which is that, before we do any quoting of MLK, we should re-read his letter from a Birmingham Jail. You can find the full text here, and at many other places on the internet.

It’s especially important for those of us who style ourselves as moderates to do so, and as white Christians, because his words were particularly addressed to white church leaders who criticized his work; who might have agreed with his goals but denigrated his methods.

He writes beautifully in this letter about civil disobedience, about faith, about unjust laws and the way of nonviolence, about a deep love for the church and a deep disappointment in its response.

Perhaps most compellingly, he writes these words that I think deserve our continued reflection:

There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”’ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

So what will it be – thermometer or thermostat?

As anyone in the greater Chicago area (perhaps the entire Midwest) knows right now, we are in a terrible cold snap. So cold that certain things stop working…like my thermostat yesterday.

And let me tell you, when it went from being an effective thermostat to being a thermometer, I got COLD. I got uncomfortable. My sweet dog woke me up because she too was uncomfortable, and demanded something be done about it.

I had to turn that thermometer back into a thermostat – and thanks to God, some electrical tape, and the internet, I’m happy to report that I did.

But I’m not often in the place of being uncomfortable and forced into action like that.

To get back to MLK’s letter, I am one of the people most benefitted by the status quo – white, straight, non-disabled, middle class, college educated. So things as they are work for me, in general.

But they don’t work for a lot of people. And part of our call as Christians is to be the family of God; the body of Christ, and to recognize that when one part of the body is hurt or sick then all of us suffer.

That is when things will change.

When we realize that we’re all affected by injustice, and it hurts everyone. Then we, the comfortable, will be moved to act. I pray that day is soon. That maybe even it is now.

I don’t have much more to say that hasn’t been said many times, more eloquently, and by people with much more credibility and experience than I. But I will leave you with this question, which remains as urgent for us now as ever:

What will we, the church, be: thermometer or thermostat?

yours,

Pastor Jen

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