They name the realities, do these prophets, Amos and Hosea, Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King, the realities are called out, sobbed and spoken and shouted. It is not so much that they prophesy as in foretelling, though often the prophets do that, too, but it is that they point to the present brokenness, we encounter on our way to the futures alternative. “See, look here!” they shout. We must see it before we can participate in making it right. Langston Hughes wrote “Kids Who Die” in 1938… And could have written it last night. Prophets cry out, “Rise up! Rise up! See what is.”

It seems like a simple first step, just to see, but sometimes it takes a prophet to remind me that I tend to see what I want to see, and easily learn what confirms my experience and the benefits of power. But the prophets are relentless in their clarion calls and their insistence on a new way. Racism is not just a social justice issue. It is the daily demoralizing dangerous living reality that eviscerates hope, limits opportunity, and quite literally demeans and destroys black and brown lives that matter. And if I say and believe, as I do that “Racism hurts all of us,” –it is imperative that I take in to my consciousness in a visceral way the ways that racism affects those lives and their livelihood every moment and very directly. And on this MLK Sunday, but not only on this day, but on any given Tuesday or Friday in August or April, I want to awaken my dangerously asleep and oblivious soul. Now, in our global society today, is a liminal and pivotal time for many of us to examine our biases, to learn and unlearn, to change. An opportunity for us to turn and go a different way.

The “I have a dream” speech’s beauty notwithstanding, some of MLK’s greatest writings are not as well known. You may have heard me quote the following words in my July 4 sermon last summer. In his lifetime, MLK did not hesitate to repeat his own sermons on various occasions, but here I am only repeating his quotation, and not mine. Here is what he said in his speech to the Western Michigan University in 1963:

“All I’m saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we’re caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. In other words, if these problems are to be solved there must be a sort of divine discontent all over this nation… Modern psychology has a word that is used a great deal and it is the word “maladjusted.” Certainly, we want to avoid the maladjusted life within our personalities. But I say to you, my friends, there are certain things in our nation and in the world to which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all people of good‐will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self‐defeating effects of physical violence. In other words, I’m about convinced now that there is need for a new organization in our world. The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment ‐‐men and women who will be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos who in the midst of the injustices of his day could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.’”

He was not adjusted. But the truth is, that I am, for a lot of the time. I am adjusted to barely notice discrimination, bigotry, economic disparity, environmental racism and the madness of the prison industrial complex. But I want to enroll in the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment, and want to chafe in my comfort and be shaken awake though it is painful to listen and learn and pay attention. It is hard work. It is essential work. Life-sustaining and valuable work.

These many layers of culturally-sanctioned and sustained violence, racism, and economic injustice can feel overwhelming. What to do, where to start, or where to continue in the good work? For years already many of you have been working diligently in education, politics, relief work, advocacy. Many of you have been relentlessly and personally touched by the awful effects of racism. The way has been long and I believe that together we may renew our energies and commitments to justice and encourage one another–first by waking up to one another’s experiences through deep listening, reading, praying, meditation, letter writing, marching, showing up, and working to let go of our own fear of doing it wrong as we are trying to wake up to what is–to be creatively maladjusted, right here in Gainesville. Right here in Alachua County. It is high time, past time.

The other day I was reading the transcripts of the order of business from the first years of the General Synod meetings of our mother denomination, the United Church of Christ. That sounds nerdy, I know. But here’s the interesting part: The national UCC leadership wrote in 1963, “We call on our members to uproot intolerance, bigotry and prejudice within our own living and to replace them with good will and the determination to strike down immediately the barriers which divide people on account of race.” What caught my attention was the focus on the phrase, within our own living, as well as the move to action in the culture. At the next synod in 1965 the major address that year was given by MLK and then many ministers and laypersons took to the streets with him. The year that Robert Moss was the general minister and president, he closed the synod’s final session with the words that appear in your bulletin just under the title of our worship theme. I was struck to the core by these words. He was a prophet, too, when he said to the delegates: “The urgency of the world’s agenda has pressed in upon us. And we have addressed ourselves to the real issues of our day, giving no more time than was absolutely necessary to matters concerning the internal life of the church.” May it be that here and now as UCG, we are so creatively maladjusted that we feel in our guts the urgency of the world’s agenda and address ourselves to the real issues of our day, giving no more time than absolutely necessary to matters that concern ourselves. It is my conviction and that of many of you that in this time and in this place UCG can be a place where we may learn and teach active, intentional transformation of the mind through anti-racism education. That we may work through programs and plans and action items to equip families and youth and older people, too, to open our compassionate hearts to listen to hear and to walk in solidarity with one another in helping to rectify disparities and relieve desperation. What if we choose to be a creatively maladjusted community that teaches and acts for transformation of our minds that results not in attempts at rescue or easy solutions, but rather in empowerment, true peace, and equal opportunity. May the prophets who have gone before us rest in peace from their labors, but may their love never die, but be reborn, stronger and greater in us. Amen.