A Spirit Of Gentleness
Stories
Object:
A Story to Live By
A Spirit of Gentleness
My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.
Galatians 6:1
In his review of Philip Yancey's book Rumors of Another World, Keith Parkins cites an extraordinary story about the spirit of gentleness that pervaded South Africa after Nelson Mandela was released from prison:
Desmond Tutu (see No Future Without Forgiveness and God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope For Our Time) understands grace and forgiveness better than most. As apartheid drew to an end and Nelson Mandela (see The Long Walk to Freedom) was released from Robben Island, Mandela could have called upon the blacks to rise up and seek vengeance on the whites. He did not; he showed grace, and appointed Desmond Tutu to head the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
There was an understandable desire for justice, retribution; instead the path of forgiveness and reconciliation was chosen. The rules were simple: the perpetrators had to tell the truth, the whole truth, and their victims were given the opportunity to forgive. Many of the atrocities were truly horrific. A policeman called van de Broek told of how he and his fellow officers shot an 18-year-old youth, then burnt the body. Eight years later they went back, took the father, and forced his wife to watch as he was incinerated. She was in court to hear this confession and was asked by the judge what she wanted. She said she wanted van de Broek to go to the place where they burned her husband's body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial; van de Broek agreed. She then added a further request: "Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real." Spontaneously, some in the courtroom began singing "Amazing Grace" as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand, but van de Broek did not hear the hymn. He had fainted, overwhelmed.
(Click on http://www.heureka.clara.net/books/grace.htm to read Keith Parkins' full review. The original story, "Love made van de Broek faint," appears in Rumors of Another World by Philip Yancey [Zondervan, 2003].)
Shining Moments
Healing
by Robert Murdock
O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
Psalm 30:2
In the fall of 1999 I went into the hospital, supposedly for just a couple of days, only to find out that I had a much more serious problem than I had realized.
I prayed for help. The help came in a different form than I expected. I was told I needed open-heart surgery, which I really didn't want to have at that time. I was physically run-down and mentally mixed-up. The surgeon preferred that my mind be clear before surgery. I knew that I had to go home for that, although the doctors did not advise it.
The morning I was to go home, I woke to a sunny day. However, all I could see was fog and haze. I couldn't hear, either. But this fog cleared up my confusion. The Lord came to me in the fog and made me see that I had to have the surgery, but first I had to go home. The Lord made up my mind for me.
Even though the doctors were reluctant to release me, they let me go because I was so determined. I was at home for two weeks and never had a single worry about the surgery. Being at home made me realize that I was in the Lord's hands.
Two weeks later, when I returned to the hospital on a Tuesday morning for the surgery, I felt no fear. I knew I was in God's hands. At some point between the time of the surgery and when I woke the next morning, I had the most beautiful vision. I was in a very bright place, so brilliant that I can't describe it in words. I was looking down upon my family. They were gathered all around me, and I beamed at them with joy. We were all together. It was perfect. I felt as if I was floating on a cloud. The words of a song came to me: "He touched me and made me whole."
Wednesday, when I awoke, I had only chest tubes and a catheter remaining from the surgery. I felt I had been healed. I had no pain, and I never took pain medication. I was up and walking the same day. The next day, all of the tubes were removed and I was moved out of intensive care. The nurses were amazed. They sensed my healing had been extraordinary. Before my surgery, they didn't think I would be out of the hospital until Christmas. As it turned out, I returned home the day before Thanksgiving.
Since this experience, my faith means so much more to me. Death is nothing to fear. I wonder why I was so scared of the surgery before. Every day it is important for me to read the Bible and pray. The life we live today and eternal life are completely linked. No one can tell me, after this vision, that there is no eternal life. Not a day goes by that I don't think about it. The memory of that vision comes back every day.
Robert Murdock is a retired farmer who lives with his wife, Mary, on their farm in rural East Troy, Wisconsin. They have four children and six grandchildren, who are the family's seventh generation on the farm. Robert and Mary are members of Little Prairie United Methodist Church.
Good Stories
Neither Pro-Life nor Pro-Choice
by John Sumwalt
For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!
Galatians 6:15
It is the first Monday in October. A large crowd has gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court building in the nation's capital. They have come to express their opinions about abortion. One side is shouting, "The first human right is the right to life." The other side replies, "A woman's body is a woman's business." One side is waving placards with pictures of coat hangers and the words "Never Again." The other side is waving placards with pictures of human fetuses and the words "Adoption, Not Abortion."
As the day wears on, they direct their shouting more at each other than toward the court. Their voices become louder and more shrill. Then, with fists clenched and death in their eyes, the two sides face off; they move toward each other with banners waving and placards held high like crusaders of old, pitched for battle. Before any of them can strike a blow, a stranger appears suddenly between the advancing lines. He holds out his arms and shouts, "Peace! Be still!"
Immediately the crowd is quiet. Both groups lay down their placards. He motions for them to sit down, and they sit on the steps and wait, looking toward the stranger with hopeful, expectant eyes. He looks first to those who are sitting on his right. "I am told there is one among you who is married to one from the opposing side."
A man stands and says, "I am he. And there is my wife," he says, pointing to a woman who is now standing among the protesters on the stranger's left.
"Come here," the stranger says, motioning for both of them to step forward. The woman and man come and join hands as they stand before the stranger. "Why are you here?" he asks them.
The man speaks first. "I am here because of a story told to my by my father. He was one of the first of the allied soldiers who entered Dachau and saw heaps of human corpses: men, women, small children, and babies. It was their eyes that haunted him, he told me, that pleaded with him in his dreams, that caused him to declare with every waking breath: 'Never, never again!' When I think of this holocaust of abortions that is occurring in our nations, I see the eyes of thousands of unborn children who will never see the light of day and I must cry out, 'Stop the killing now!' "
Then the woman speaks. "I am here because of the way my mother died. I am the youngest of 12 children. Our mother died when I was one year old. She became pregnant again soon after I was born. The doctor told her that if she had another child, she would die giving birth, but that there was nothing he could do to help. There was a law against abortion. So mother made arrangements to go to an illegal abortionist. She waited on a street corner. A car came by, she got in, they blindfolded her and drove her several blocks to the house where abortions were done. When it was finished she was left alone, in a back room. She bled to death during the night. Thousands and thousands of women died the way my mother died before abortions were made legal in this country. We can never go back to the way it was. I am here to speak for her -- never, never again!"
When she finishes the stranger looks at the two of them and says, "How is it that you are able to remain married?"
They look at each other, smile, and speaking together, say, "We love each other."
"You are a light in the darkness," the stranger says. "As long as you love each other, there is hope for the world." Then he raises his eyes and looks out on the crowd. "I bid each one of you to make friends with someone who believes differently about abortion. And when you have found each other, go together into the world and bring me all of the children who have no one to love or care for them, and all of the women and men who have suffered because of miscarriages or abortions and still weep for what they have lost."
The people go off into the world, two by two, pro-life and pro-choice together, to seek the ones they have been told to find. And they soon return with thousands of men and women who are still grieving for what they have lost, and thousands of children who have no one to love or care for them.
The stranger raises his arms high over the crowd and smiles as he blesses them. "Go to each other. Love and care for one another."
The women and men move toward the children, and the children run to meet them. The children jump into their waiting arms, and the men and women hug them to their breasts.
Scrap Pile
Declarations of Freedom
by Thomas Jefferson
(from the Declaration of Independence)
In Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen states of America:
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness....
For a full transcription of the Declaration of Independence, click on http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/declaration_transcr....
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by Frederick Douglass
(from an 1852 Independence Day speech, "What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?")
Fellow Citizens: Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I therefore called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to Him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour.
Frederick Douglass, a former slave himself, became a celebrated leader of the 19th century Abolitionist movement. Click on http://www.redandgreen.org/speech.htm for the full text of this speech, as well as an informative chronology of his life.
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by Martin Luther King Jr.
(from "Letter from a Birmingham Jail")
April 16, 1963
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are), and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you know forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
For the full text of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," click on http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.....
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by Kent Winters-Hazelton
(from the sermon "Freedom")
Galatians 5:1
Throughout its history, the Presbyterian Church has regularly sided with the principle of freedom of conscience. I don't know if anyone here this morning was on the Session back in 1729, but there was a big debate going on in the church at that time. The issue was whether ministers had to agree with all the doctrines of the Westminster Confession of Faith in order to be ordained. Some ministers felt that there were statements in the Confession that were not essential to belief, such as whether the world was created in six days. Some felt, as Henry van Dyke later said, "We should not make essential to belief what Jesus did not declare to be essential." So the General Assembly voted what was called "The Adopting act of 1729," where they accepted the Westminster Confession of Faith as the rule of faith for the whole church. But they also allowed one to have a "scruple" on a particular belief and still be ordained. They left it up to the local Presbytery to determine if the scruple dealt with an essential tenet of belief. ("Historic Principles, Conscience, and Church Government," adopted by the 195th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, published by the Office of the General Assembly, pg. 2.)
The proposed amendment from the General Assembly is a reflection of this Presbyterian belief of freedom of conscience. It would neither require nor restrict the ordination of lesbian and gay candidates for deacon, elder, or minister of the Word and sacrament. It would return to the Presbyteries the responsibility for ordination of ministers, and to the Session the responsibility for deacons and elders. In each case, the standards for ordination which have long been accepted in the church would be the guide. These standards state that persons set aside for ministry should be "of strong faith, dedicated discipleship and love of Jesus Christ."...
Finally, one last comment. It came during the prayers of the people in the opening service of worship. The leader was praying for those ministers who had passed away during this past year and was saying, "Grant them rest from their labors." Only that is not what I heard her pray. I may have been the only one among the 3,000 in worship who heard this, or perhaps she did make a slight slip of the tongue, but what I heard in her prayer was "Grant them rest from their labels."
I thought, "Ah-ha! If only God could grant us rest from our labels: gay or married, straight or single; pro-ordination, anti-ordination; conservative, liberal, or neo-middle-of-the-roader. If only we could lay our labels down and do what God has called us to do."
For freedom, Christ has set us free.
Excerpted from a sermon preached at Claremont Presbyterian Church in Claremont, California, July 1, 2001. For the full text of Kent Winters-Hazelton's sermon click on http://www.witherspoonsociety.org/freedom_a_sermon.htm.
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New Book
The third book in the vision series, Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives (edited by John Sumwalt), will be released in June by CSS Publishing Company. Among the 60 contributing authors of these Chicken Soup for the Soul-like vignettes are Ralph Milton, Sandra Herrmann, Pamela J. Tinnin, Richard H. Gentzler Jr., David Michael Smith, Jodie Felton, Nancy Nichols, William Lee Rand, Gail Ingle, and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the classic movie The Sound of Music.
Other Books by John & Jo Sumwalt
Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle C
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
You can order any of our books on the CSS website (http://www.csspub.com); they are also available from www.amazon.com and at many Christian bookstores. Or simply e-mail your order to orders@csspub.com or phone 1-800-241-4056. (If you live outside the U.S., phone 419-227-1818.)
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Looking for just the right story for this Sunday's sermon or Sunday School class? There is a large selection of stories on the StoryShare website (http://www.csspub.com/story.lasso). Click on "samples" to see two of our weekly editions.
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We invite you to forward this offer to all of your friends who are looking for good stories.
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StoryShare, July 4, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2004 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
A Spirit of Gentleness
My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.
Galatians 6:1
In his review of Philip Yancey's book Rumors of Another World, Keith Parkins cites an extraordinary story about the spirit of gentleness that pervaded South Africa after Nelson Mandela was released from prison:
Desmond Tutu (see No Future Without Forgiveness and God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope For Our Time) understands grace and forgiveness better than most. As apartheid drew to an end and Nelson Mandela (see The Long Walk to Freedom) was released from Robben Island, Mandela could have called upon the blacks to rise up and seek vengeance on the whites. He did not; he showed grace, and appointed Desmond Tutu to head the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
There was an understandable desire for justice, retribution; instead the path of forgiveness and reconciliation was chosen. The rules were simple: the perpetrators had to tell the truth, the whole truth, and their victims were given the opportunity to forgive. Many of the atrocities were truly horrific. A policeman called van de Broek told of how he and his fellow officers shot an 18-year-old youth, then burnt the body. Eight years later they went back, took the father, and forced his wife to watch as he was incinerated. She was in court to hear this confession and was asked by the judge what she wanted. She said she wanted van de Broek to go to the place where they burned her husband's body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial; van de Broek agreed. She then added a further request: "Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real." Spontaneously, some in the courtroom began singing "Amazing Grace" as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand, but van de Broek did not hear the hymn. He had fainted, overwhelmed.
(Click on http://www.heureka.clara.net/books/grace.htm to read Keith Parkins' full review. The original story, "Love made van de Broek faint," appears in Rumors of Another World by Philip Yancey [Zondervan, 2003].)
Shining Moments
Healing
by Robert Murdock
O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
Psalm 30:2
In the fall of 1999 I went into the hospital, supposedly for just a couple of days, only to find out that I had a much more serious problem than I had realized.
I prayed for help. The help came in a different form than I expected. I was told I needed open-heart surgery, which I really didn't want to have at that time. I was physically run-down and mentally mixed-up. The surgeon preferred that my mind be clear before surgery. I knew that I had to go home for that, although the doctors did not advise it.
The morning I was to go home, I woke to a sunny day. However, all I could see was fog and haze. I couldn't hear, either. But this fog cleared up my confusion. The Lord came to me in the fog and made me see that I had to have the surgery, but first I had to go home. The Lord made up my mind for me.
Even though the doctors were reluctant to release me, they let me go because I was so determined. I was at home for two weeks and never had a single worry about the surgery. Being at home made me realize that I was in the Lord's hands.
Two weeks later, when I returned to the hospital on a Tuesday morning for the surgery, I felt no fear. I knew I was in God's hands. At some point between the time of the surgery and when I woke the next morning, I had the most beautiful vision. I was in a very bright place, so brilliant that I can't describe it in words. I was looking down upon my family. They were gathered all around me, and I beamed at them with joy. We were all together. It was perfect. I felt as if I was floating on a cloud. The words of a song came to me: "He touched me and made me whole."
Wednesday, when I awoke, I had only chest tubes and a catheter remaining from the surgery. I felt I had been healed. I had no pain, and I never took pain medication. I was up and walking the same day. The next day, all of the tubes were removed and I was moved out of intensive care. The nurses were amazed. They sensed my healing had been extraordinary. Before my surgery, they didn't think I would be out of the hospital until Christmas. As it turned out, I returned home the day before Thanksgiving.
Since this experience, my faith means so much more to me. Death is nothing to fear. I wonder why I was so scared of the surgery before. Every day it is important for me to read the Bible and pray. The life we live today and eternal life are completely linked. No one can tell me, after this vision, that there is no eternal life. Not a day goes by that I don't think about it. The memory of that vision comes back every day.
Robert Murdock is a retired farmer who lives with his wife, Mary, on their farm in rural East Troy, Wisconsin. They have four children and six grandchildren, who are the family's seventh generation on the farm. Robert and Mary are members of Little Prairie United Methodist Church.
Good Stories
Neither Pro-Life nor Pro-Choice
by John Sumwalt
For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!
Galatians 6:15
It is the first Monday in October. A large crowd has gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court building in the nation's capital. They have come to express their opinions about abortion. One side is shouting, "The first human right is the right to life." The other side replies, "A woman's body is a woman's business." One side is waving placards with pictures of coat hangers and the words "Never Again." The other side is waving placards with pictures of human fetuses and the words "Adoption, Not Abortion."
As the day wears on, they direct their shouting more at each other than toward the court. Their voices become louder and more shrill. Then, with fists clenched and death in their eyes, the two sides face off; they move toward each other with banners waving and placards held high like crusaders of old, pitched for battle. Before any of them can strike a blow, a stranger appears suddenly between the advancing lines. He holds out his arms and shouts, "Peace! Be still!"
Immediately the crowd is quiet. Both groups lay down their placards. He motions for them to sit down, and they sit on the steps and wait, looking toward the stranger with hopeful, expectant eyes. He looks first to those who are sitting on his right. "I am told there is one among you who is married to one from the opposing side."
A man stands and says, "I am he. And there is my wife," he says, pointing to a woman who is now standing among the protesters on the stranger's left.
"Come here," the stranger says, motioning for both of them to step forward. The woman and man come and join hands as they stand before the stranger. "Why are you here?" he asks them.
The man speaks first. "I am here because of a story told to my by my father. He was one of the first of the allied soldiers who entered Dachau and saw heaps of human corpses: men, women, small children, and babies. It was their eyes that haunted him, he told me, that pleaded with him in his dreams, that caused him to declare with every waking breath: 'Never, never again!' When I think of this holocaust of abortions that is occurring in our nations, I see the eyes of thousands of unborn children who will never see the light of day and I must cry out, 'Stop the killing now!' "
Then the woman speaks. "I am here because of the way my mother died. I am the youngest of 12 children. Our mother died when I was one year old. She became pregnant again soon after I was born. The doctor told her that if she had another child, she would die giving birth, but that there was nothing he could do to help. There was a law against abortion. So mother made arrangements to go to an illegal abortionist. She waited on a street corner. A car came by, she got in, they blindfolded her and drove her several blocks to the house where abortions were done. When it was finished she was left alone, in a back room. She bled to death during the night. Thousands and thousands of women died the way my mother died before abortions were made legal in this country. We can never go back to the way it was. I am here to speak for her -- never, never again!"
When she finishes the stranger looks at the two of them and says, "How is it that you are able to remain married?"
They look at each other, smile, and speaking together, say, "We love each other."
"You are a light in the darkness," the stranger says. "As long as you love each other, there is hope for the world." Then he raises his eyes and looks out on the crowd. "I bid each one of you to make friends with someone who believes differently about abortion. And when you have found each other, go together into the world and bring me all of the children who have no one to love or care for them, and all of the women and men who have suffered because of miscarriages or abortions and still weep for what they have lost."
The people go off into the world, two by two, pro-life and pro-choice together, to seek the ones they have been told to find. And they soon return with thousands of men and women who are still grieving for what they have lost, and thousands of children who have no one to love or care for them.
The stranger raises his arms high over the crowd and smiles as he blesses them. "Go to each other. Love and care for one another."
The women and men move toward the children, and the children run to meet them. The children jump into their waiting arms, and the men and women hug them to their breasts.
Scrap Pile
Declarations of Freedom
by Thomas Jefferson
(from the Declaration of Independence)
In Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen states of America:
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness....
For a full transcription of the Declaration of Independence, click on http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/declaration_transcr....
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by Frederick Douglass
(from an 1852 Independence Day speech, "What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?")
Fellow Citizens: Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I therefore called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to Him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour.
Frederick Douglass, a former slave himself, became a celebrated leader of the 19th century Abolitionist movement. Click on http://www.redandgreen.org/speech.htm for the full text of this speech, as well as an informative chronology of his life.
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by Martin Luther King Jr.
(from "Letter from a Birmingham Jail")
April 16, 1963
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are), and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you know forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
For the full text of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," click on http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.....
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by Kent Winters-Hazelton
(from the sermon "Freedom")
Galatians 5:1
Throughout its history, the Presbyterian Church has regularly sided with the principle of freedom of conscience. I don't know if anyone here this morning was on the Session back in 1729, but there was a big debate going on in the church at that time. The issue was whether ministers had to agree with all the doctrines of the Westminster Confession of Faith in order to be ordained. Some ministers felt that there were statements in the Confession that were not essential to belief, such as whether the world was created in six days. Some felt, as Henry van Dyke later said, "We should not make essential to belief what Jesus did not declare to be essential." So the General Assembly voted what was called "The Adopting act of 1729," where they accepted the Westminster Confession of Faith as the rule of faith for the whole church. But they also allowed one to have a "scruple" on a particular belief and still be ordained. They left it up to the local Presbytery to determine if the scruple dealt with an essential tenet of belief. ("Historic Principles, Conscience, and Church Government," adopted by the 195th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, published by the Office of the General Assembly, pg. 2.)
The proposed amendment from the General Assembly is a reflection of this Presbyterian belief of freedom of conscience. It would neither require nor restrict the ordination of lesbian and gay candidates for deacon, elder, or minister of the Word and sacrament. It would return to the Presbyteries the responsibility for ordination of ministers, and to the Session the responsibility for deacons and elders. In each case, the standards for ordination which have long been accepted in the church would be the guide. These standards state that persons set aside for ministry should be "of strong faith, dedicated discipleship and love of Jesus Christ."...
Finally, one last comment. It came during the prayers of the people in the opening service of worship. The leader was praying for those ministers who had passed away during this past year and was saying, "Grant them rest from their labors." Only that is not what I heard her pray. I may have been the only one among the 3,000 in worship who heard this, or perhaps she did make a slight slip of the tongue, but what I heard in her prayer was "Grant them rest from their labels."
I thought, "Ah-ha! If only God could grant us rest from our labels: gay or married, straight or single; pro-ordination, anti-ordination; conservative, liberal, or neo-middle-of-the-roader. If only we could lay our labels down and do what God has called us to do."
For freedom, Christ has set us free.
Excerpted from a sermon preached at Claremont Presbyterian Church in Claremont, California, July 1, 2001. For the full text of Kent Winters-Hazelton's sermon click on http://www.witherspoonsociety.org/freedom_a_sermon.htm.
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Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
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Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
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StoryShare, July 4, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2004 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
