Horsefly
Any type of persistent, annoying insect such as this horsefly can be a "gadfly." (Photo by Christopher Randall Brown, CCL 4.0 Wikimedia Commons)
2 Samuel 11: 26-12, 13, Psalm 51: 1-12, Ephesians 4: 25-5:2, John 6:35, 41-51
August 5, 2018
“I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience...” (Ephesians 4: 1, 2)
It may be just me, but whenever I run onto the word “patience” in a theological or ethical text, red flags go up.
I have traced my reaction back to the first time I read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail. He had a problem with his white clergy brothers who kept telling him: Be patient, brother, be patient.
Dr, King was arrested and jailed in Birmingham, AL on April 12, 1963, on the charge of leading a political protest. While in the slammer, Dr. King began writing his letter on scraps of paper and the margins of a newspaper.
His most devastating critique was for the “white moderate” Birmingham pastors who assured him they were on his side but that he was moving too fast. Dr. King was coming to the conclusion that “the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom was not the White Citizen’s Counselor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate...more devoted to ‘order’ than justice....who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.
“For years I have heard the word ‘Wait!’...This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’...’Justice too long delayed is justice denied.’”
To this day, we white moderates and/or liberals should be stung by Dr. King’s scathing analysis.
How many times have we cocooned in our white (straight) privilege and refused to be guided by the urgent testimonies of those who are victims of our comfortable status quo?
- Why have the witness of the survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL failed to move our legislative leaders?
- Why do Annual Conferences discuss “The Way Forward” with panels that do not include even one LGBT speaker?
- Why do we not demand penalties for an Administration that has separated and then failed to reunite children and their parents at the Mexican border as per court order?
I guess we’re just more patient when the suffering is not ours.
*****
In his letter, Dr. King showed us what real Biblical patience is all about.
The Biblical patience to which we are called is not passive but persistent and political, pushy and impolite, biting and buzzing.
Dr. King called for his followers to embody this patience by being ”non-violent gadflies.”
( A gadfly is usually defined as “any of various flies (such as a horsefly) that bites or annoys livestock.”)
I’ve been around a horse barn a time or two and know how relentlessly annoying horseflies can be. They are classic “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”
May it be so for us.
The Rev. Bill Steward is substituting for the Rev. Bill Cotton, the originator of MEMO for Preachers. To receive MEMO by email, contact Rev. Cotton at revcottonhill@hotmail.com.