Tuesday 10 March 2009

Once again, for the next week or so I will be using selections from "The Strength of Love" in which M.L. King focuses on this parable: "Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him."

It is also midnight within the moral order. At midnight colors lose their distinctiveness and become a sullen shade of gray. Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong is a matter of what the majority is doing. Right and wrong are relative to likes and dislikes and the customs of a particular community. We have unconsciously applied Einstein's theory of relativity, which properly described the physical universe, to the moral and ethical realm.

We all do a good job at making sure the moral order within which we live our lives fits us. We like to have the world defined by the colors we know and like. Therefore, all sides make arguments as to how the world is to be viewed and judged. Too often though, we do not bring those differing views together to see them side by side. They are left to our own building and support and justification. In such a way, that is how they can be seen as being quite relative. But the task of the followers of Jesus is to bring all of our ideas about right and wrong into the light of the life within the Reign of God. When this takes place, there will be gray...and much of it. But it will be gray only as long as we fail to bring the light of the vision of God's Reign into the picture. In those days of the early 60's sides were able to move away from one another because of race - the color of a person's skin. Therefore, people had differing ideas of what was right on the basis of what they liked to think or learned to think about race. Thanks be to God that some folks were willing to turn on the light of the Reign of God and say "NO" to the notions of the 'right of racism' that were absolutely contrary to God' image being displayed in, with, and under, all the colors of our skin and all the backgrounds of our upbringing. Even at midnight, we can make light shine together.

Connection: When you feel as though you are being pushed into a corner and made to pick this or that as "right or wrong," it may be time to step back and seek help in bringing out the image of God that is meant to be among us. It may bring some much needed discipline into our character.

When you give us the vision of your Reign, O God, we are able to see well beyond the images of life that appear all around us. To often, we settle for what we see and hear within the immediacy of the day. Hold up our heads to welcome in your Reign and bring us into a new vision. Amen.