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When I was growing up in Birmingham, I was fortunate enough to take classical guitar lessons from David Walbert. Not only was he an accomplished guitarist, his family had been heavily involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and I interviewed his parents at one point about their experience. They were present for protests in Selma the day before and after Bloody Sunday. David’s father was known to throw in Gospel tunes in his sets at the local country clubs, and he was even later inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
There were a lot of difficulties the Walberts faced, including the Klan placing burning crosses in their yard. I’m not sure I realized just how much their involvement in the Movement upturned their lives, though, until my senior year in high school.
At this point, I was a less than stellar guitar student. I had finished my college applications and was exhausted. There was one lesson where I apologized for my lack of practice and mentioned I had “senioritis” David told me, “Yeah, I wouldn’t understand what that was like.” Curious, I asked him why not. He told me that he was done with school well before he graduated because he had been shunned by many as a “communist” for his own personal involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
What David and his family did was the right thing to do. History has made that clear for all of us. Yet it came at a high and personal cost to David’s relationship with those who should have counted him as friend. David sadly is not alone in paying this cost. That is what we hear in our lessons today.
We see very clearly in our Tanakh, our Old Testament, readings how we are supposed to be in this world. David in the Psalm speaks of God’s desire that we live a “blameless life” in the Lord’s name and that we do “what is right” and speak “the truth from [our] heart.” The Prophet Micah says this in a slightly different way by asking “Shall I come before [the Lord] with burnt-offerings?… He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”
Yet the world does not like this from us. As Paul tells the Corinthians this morning, “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing”. The wisdom of the church is derided and despised by the world, as Paul shows us. Jesus too warns His listeners that people will “revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”
In spite of this cost, these are the people who have God’s favor. Jesus, throughout His Beatitudes, references those who the world sees as weak: the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, the hungry, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, and the reviled. All these are the ones God loves. All these are the ones Jesus blesses.
Paul too points out that “God chose what is weak in the world” doing so in order to “shame the strong.” What God values is not the same as what the world holds dear. We are called to follow God’s standards and not human ones, as Paul makes clear.
Being what God values means the world will revile us. As Jesus says, “in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” In the same way, the world despised Jesus and even put Him to death.
While following God has a cost in this world, when we look to Heaven, God’s realm, Jesus calls on us to “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in Heaven.” We may not have others on our side, but God will have our backs, and that is the only thing that matters.
Standing up for what is good, true, and just is never easy. The world won’t allow it to be so. Yet God gives us the one thing the world cannot: Hope in the Resurrection. Through God we are transformed to be how we always wanted to be, deep within our hearts. Through God, we receive the Salvation we could never attain for ourselves. Through God we can have peace and harmony in ourselves and with each other in the way we never truly see in this world.
Siding with God is never easy in this world. Yet it is what is right. If what we desire is the admiration and fellowship of others, then God’s Way will seem foolish, as Paul declares. Yet if we desire to be good, just, and merciful, then God’s Way is the only Way for us, and for that we can be glad indeed.