Do Whatever He Tells You January 14

For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her vindication shines forth like the dawn and her victory like a burning torch. Isaiah 61:1

“Do whatever he tells you.” John 2:5

Piety

Let us pray: Jesus, too often we are silent in the face of overwhelming injustice. Even today, two thousand years after you walked the Earth, we are in need of prophets to issue a modern wake-up call for us to conquer poverty and injustice. Please continue to send us messengers like Dr. Martin Luther King – messengers who refuse to be silent, messengers committed to obeying God’s laws, messengers who work hard to inspire us to Christian action. These modern messengers will help us rally more people to change the world of today and continue to build your Kingdom here and now. Amen.

Study

“Do whatever he tells you.”

Listen to your Mother. It’s one thing to be told the right thing to do. However, God knows that is not enough. So God gave his son the power to perform miraculous signs that would help people to believe in him and obey God. Then and now, we need signs and reminders of such obedience and commitment.

Meditating on the requirements of obedience to Christ and God’s laws is so appropriate on this weekend when there are dozens of events throughout the region marking the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr. King led the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s in order to restore a biblical sense of justice and obedience. He was committed to non-violence and used direct action to protest unjust civil laws because these were inconsistent with the demands of universal, moral laws.

Dr. King used the technique of civil disobedience as a way to underscore his moral obedience to God’s higher laws and commandments. He refused “to be silent” in the face of injustice. Just as Mary in today’s reading urges the workers at the wedding to “Do whatever he tells you,” Dr. King was acting out of his sense of obedience to God. From his cell in Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about this call:

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators"' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated."[1]

Action

For his actions in the south, fellow clergymen labeled Dr. King an extremist. He also addressed this charge in his “Letter.”

Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that an men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we viii be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime---the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jeans Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.[2]

For what are you willing to be an extremist?

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[1] http://www.thekingcenter.org/prog/non/Letter.pdf

[2] http://www.thekingcenter.org/prog/non/Letter.pdf