"Liberators" A Service for Martin Luther King Day

The Rev. Carol A. Huston, Community Unitarian Church at White Plains, January 18, 2009

Reading
From “Where Do We Go From Here?: Chaos or Community? (1967)

“All over the world like a fever, freedom is spreading in the widest liberation movement in history. The great masses of people are determined to end the exploitation of the races and lands. They are awake and moving toward their goal like a tidal wave. . .

“These developments should not surprise any student of history. Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself. The Bible tells the thrilling story of how Moses stood in Pharaoh’s court centuries ago and cried, “Let my people go.” This was an opening chapter in a continuing story. . .

“Nothing could be more tragic than for men to live in these revolutionary times and fail to achieve the new attitudes and the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands. In Washington Irving’s familiar story of Rip Van Winkle, the one thing that we usually remember is that Rip slept twenty years. There is another important point, however, that is almost always overlooked. It was the sign on the inn in the little town on the Hudson from which Rip departed and scaled the mountain for his long sleep. When he went up, the sign had a picture of King George III of England. When he came down, twenty years later, the sign had a picture of George Washington. As he looked at the picture of the first president of the United States, Rip was confused, flustered and lost. He knew not who Washington was. The most striking thing about this story is not that Rip slept twenty years, but that he slept through a revolution that would alter the course of human history.

“One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. . .”

Sermon
Traveling in Colombia I saw a lot of man on a horse statues. You know the kind. You see them in Europe as well. Horse at a prance. A sword extended in the hand of the man – all men. In Colombia the statue was usually Simon Bolivar – every city and town has one because he was local to Colombia, but also seen as the most important force for liberation from Spain for the entire northern half of South America during the early 1800s. A leader in battle and a political leader as well. The George Washington of that part of the world. All those statues are out there, for the benefit of those who might have slept through that particular revolution.

But just as George Washington did not do all the work of liberation here, neither did Simon Bolivar. I learned about another liberator in Villa de Leyva, a village about a four hour drive north of Bogota. His name was Antonio Narino. And the act for which he is remembered? Translating and distributing Tom Paine’s Rights of Man. Born into a Spanish aristocratic family, Narino, had the educational cosmopolitan background that would allow him to observe the liberation movements in the North American Colonies and in France. A framed portrait of Benjamin Franklin hung in Narino’s house and he followed the writings of Tom Paine (that citizen of the world during the revolutions of his time). In 1794, when he was in his late 20s, Antonio Narino was certainly awake to those revolutions as well, and he translated Paine’s “Rights of Man” into Spanish and distributed it to other young liberators. For that he was jailed and exiled to Europe for a period of almost 20 years. With two or three prison escapes along the way, he went back to Colombia as something of a fugitive, but he was there to offer some battlefield leadership and elected political leadership as well, and he has his share of man on a horse monuments in Colombia, but his first weapon was the pen not the sword. He is remembered for bringing the ideas of liberty to Colombia.

What is a liberator? Dictionary definition: one who sets others free physically; one who seeks to release others from social constraints. And what makes a liberator? It seems to me that there is a special quality of self-awareness and pride—you need to value who you are, not try to be another. The liberator can own his or her personal identity and use that to encourage others. En-courage – courage is certainly part of any leadership for liberation. Intelligence and ability to perceive strategy is also important. The tools are often military, but they can also be intellectual or spiritual.

Perhaps that image of the man on a horse, of military liberation keeps us from using that term as much as we use the other word “liberation” for the efforts around us. We speak of black liberation, of women’s liberation, and those movements have been led by liberators. We celebrate the birthday of one of those this weekend.

Martin Luther King brought forth ideas of liberation and political change that still ring true today. Selma was a battlefield– no swords, no horses, at least on King’s side, but it was a battle of will and bodies, none the less. It demanded careful strategy, the self-control to stay to the mark of non-violent resistance, and of course, it demanded courage of soul and body.

There are many liberators. Women’s Liberation Movement – Susan B. Anthony, to Gloria Steinem, to Maya Angelou. For reminders about the Gay Liberation Movement, I hope that you will run – do not walk – run to see the film called Milk, which will give you a full picture of the work of liberation as it was carried out by Harvey Milk in the 1970s – when he became the first openly gay elected official in the world. He knew how to meet the people and the issues. He knew how to use his mind and his presence and he was not afraid to put his body on the line as well. There is a current feeling to the story, sad to say -- because there is still work to be done in the realm of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender liberation. But then all liberation movements go on and on.

Simon Bolivar and Antonio Narino brought Colombia liberation from Spain, but other oppressors stepped into that rugged landscape to take over. In the 1960s, Martin Luther King wrote: “The decisions affecting the lives of South Americans are ostensibly made by their governments, but there are almost no legitimate democracies alive in the whole continent. The governments are dominated by huge and exploitative cartels that rob Latin America of her resources while turning over a small rebate to a few members of a corrupt aristocracy. . .” The domination of the American banana growers gave way to the drug cartels, which are in turn passing away. Colombia is safer than it was 10 years ago. But the citizens still have a sense of oppression by an uncaring, heavy-handed government. Liberation is not complete, no matter how many statues of Simon Bolivar dominate the landscape. As Tom Paine said, as Antonio Narino would have read – “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” Liberation should not be seen as a one-time completed delivery of blessing. Liberation is on-going, in need of constant work.

Martin Luther King delivered a plan and empowerment for a particular stage of liberation for African Americans. At his death that liberation was far from complete, but enough people were awake, aware, and changed by Martin, that the liberation could continue at some level. I was thinking about and talking with you even last spring about the direct line from Birmingham and Selma to the campaign and now the election of Barack Obama. On this Sunday before the inauguration of this particular president, I think it is important to ask what it means to see him become president. Obviously there is great weight in the fact that a person of color will lead our nation. But I want you to consider in what way Barack Obama might be a new liberator on the scene, not only for African Americans but for others as well. It certainly feels that he is. The hope vested in him by young people, by progressives, by citizens of other nations, even by people who did not vote for him in this country is enormous. When Chet Coddington died at age 93, he was proud of the fact that one of his last acts of will and intention was to vote for Obama in a swing state (Ohio, where he had moved to be close to his family). Chet was a life-long New York Republican, but in Obama, he found a leader worthy of his respect and the last of his energy. Obama seems to bring us hope for change. Inspiration. Liberation.

But the reminder I want to bring today is that liberation does not come as a one-time completed package. Simon Bolivar did not deliver Colombia from oppression for all time. Martin Luther King brought us a certain distance, and no more. Barack Obama will do the same. Liberation is on-going, the work of all the generations.

In the past year, some of you heard the Ware Lecture that Van Jones delivered at General Assembly last summer. Jones is a black community organizer whose mission is to advocate for the creation of “green jobs” to be made available to black and other minority workers. He is a liberator as well, and I commend to you an article about him which appeared in last week’s New Yorker (“Greening the Ghetto,” January 12, 2009). The article quotes Jones as saying this about that other current liberator: “I love Barak Obama. I’d pay money just to shine the brother’s shoes. But I’ll tell you this. Do you hear me? One man is not going to save us. I don’t care who that man is. He’s not going to save us. And, in fact, if you want to be real about this – can y’all take it? I’m going to be real with y’all. Not only is Barack Obama not going to be able to save you—you are going to have to save Barack Obama.”

So, if we people have to do the saving, how then is Obama a liberator? I say that the liberator sets the issues. Gets us going in the right direction. En-courages us. The liberator WAKES US UP! And the liberator also gives us work to do. Simon Bolivar and Antonio Narino did not do the work of liberation by themselves. Martin Luther King set the goals and pattern – and the African Americans of those cities and the allies who joined them actually did the work. Obama will work hard and think clearly – I trust him to do that – but all the rest of us are going to have to think and work and fight for change as well. It is not going to be easy with wars raging and with new questions and paradigms for the economy emerging. But for the first time in a while there might be something real for us to do, rather than sit to the side and bewail the direction of our nation. There will be work to do. And liberation is never complete.

And so – are you awake?

Are you ready to work – votes, ideas, flexibility? To “achieve the new attitudes and the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands” – as MLK said?
Do you understand that it will take forever to find true liberation?

So be it.