Getting into Good Trouble by Rev. Julie Lombard
Sermon | August 9, 2020 | Rev. Julie Lombard
John Lewis was a courageous one. One who was always in the struggle, he used his right to make claims on what he found okay and not okay, what he saw as helpful and not helpful. He spoke up and out again injustice of any kind throughout his life. He made it his life’s work as an American who knew this country needed him.
The share-cropper’s son first started practicing lifting his voice to the chickens he cared for on the farm where he lived as a boy. As a child, he wanted to be a preacher, but the universe had other plans.
Born in 1940, Lewis would have 80 years to leave his mark on us. Like all of us, he never knew the duration of his life and all he would do to change our world. From an early age he was inspired by those who stood against injustice – his heroes were Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.
He intimately experienced injustice as a child when he was denied a library card because of his race. He wrote to MLK expressing his desire to be the first African American to attend a local college and his frustration when he was not admitted. He went on to study elsewhere and from then on he was fondly known to King as ‘The Boy from Troy’.
The boy from just outside Troy, Alabama was taught by his parents to keep a low profile and to not make any trouble. This is “the talk” many people of color have with their children. I imagine George Floyd and countless others have had their parents say this message to them.
Lewis didn’t believe that silence was the way to disrupt the norm. He spoke memorably about the importance of righteous resistance or what he referred to as getting into “good trouble, necessary trouble.” He claimed his philosophy was simple, “When you see something that is not fair, not just, stand up, say something, and speak out.” 1
He believed in the power to lift one’s voice and in the need to bring about change by non-violent means. He’s remembered as a giant in our nation’s civil rights movement and the youngest of the Big Six civil rights activists who organized the 1963 March on Washington. In 1965, he led the civil rights voting march over Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. There, his skull was fractured by state troopers on what became known as “Bloody Sunday”. The searing images of such brutality helped to galvanize national opposition to racial oppression and embolden those in Washington to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
“The American public had already seen so much of this sort of thing, countless images of beatings and dogs and cursing and hoses, but something about that day in Selma touched a nerve deeper than anything that had come before.” Lewis wrote in his memoirs. That bridge became a touchstone in his life, out of his work done at lunch counter sit-ins, or with the Freedom Riders, or with the Big Six and MLK.
He was arrested 45 times for his involvement in these peaceful protests, not only as a young man, but also while he served in the U.S. House of Representative where he was known as ‘the conscience of Congress’. At age 78, he told a rally he’d do it again to help unite immigrant families separated by the current administration. Lewis said, “There cannot be peace in America until these young children are returned to their parents and set all our people free. If we fail to do it, history will not be kind to us. I will go to the Border… get arrested again. If necessary, I’m prepared to go to jail.” 2
After Floyd’s death in Minnesota, Lewis asked, “How many young Black men will be murdered?” He believed we’re one people, one family. And that we live in the same house, not just the American house but the world house. He urged protesters seeking justice to be non-violent, because “there something cleansing, something wholesome, about being peaceful and orderly.”
He was well aware of the invisible signs buried in the hearts of Americans still. Gone were the white only signs, but the tether holding African Americans back to that era remains. He said, “Too many of us still believed our differences define us instead of the divine spark that runs through all human creation.”
He vowed during his March on Washington speech: “By the forces of our demands, our determination and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them together in an image of God and democracy.” 3 His words would later be over shadowed by MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
Unfailing friendly and humble, Lewis received many honors: in 2010 President Obama awarded him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977 President Carter appointed him to lead ACTION – a federal volunteer agency, in 1981 he was elected to the Atlanta City Council and in 1986 he won his seat in Congress which he serve until his death. He spent much of his career in the minority, often losing battles, such as trying to stop the war in Iraq to his defense of young immigrants. He refused to attend the current President’s inauguration, saying he didn’t consider him legitimate because Russians had conspired to get him elected. Lewis said about racism, “We have to try to stand up and speak up and not try to sweep it under the rug.”4
Today, I promised to honor his life but I believe we honor him when we continue his work, rather than to enshrine it. We must also listen to the new voices of those seeking justice now. In honor of Lewis, I’ve spotlighted the voices of today’s black leaders and what they are asking of us, as UUs, as allies, as members of the Beloved Community.
We heard the wisdom of two UU Black leaders – Aisha Ansano and Rosemary Bray McNatt in our opening words, chalice lighting, and our reading. These are people we can look to within our own denomination.
There are many more Black voices worth listening to. Vogue suggests we listen to the Harlem-born activist, Tamika D. Mallory. She recently spoke in Minneapolis of the protests sweeping our country. She said, “We cannot look at this as an isolated incident. The reason buildings are burning are not just for our brother George Floyd. They’re burning down because people in Minnesota are saying to people in NY [and] CA, in Memphis, [and] to people across this nation, enough is enough. We are not responsible for the mental illness that has been afflicted upon our people by the American government, institutions, and those people who are in positions of power.” 5 She became a member of the National Action Network at age 11. you probably know her best as the co-founder of the Woman’s March in 2017. She’s also a vigorous advocate for gun control.
Patrisse Cullors is another voice to tune into. After the injustice that happened to Trayvon Martin in 2013, Cullors co-founded Black Lives Matter – a global movement dedicated to fighting racism worldwide. It’s a movement that Lewis was fond of. Today, Cullor is teaching a course on social justice at Prescott College in AZ and continues to speak out on social media.
Another person to listen to is Janaya Khan’s powerful sermon on Instagram on the project of whiteness. “I once said privilege is not about what you’ve gone through, but what you haven’t had to go through,” 6 reads the caption from the sermon. Khan is the co-founder of BLM Canada and an international ambassador for the BLM Network.
I’ve only offered a handful of folks lifting their voices in the Lewis tradition of making good trouble. Now it is our turn to contemplate how we must side with love. When I marched in my first BLM march this summer in NH, I weighed whether or not I should join the crowd during a pandemic. I overslept and it would have been easy to stay home. But I thought of all those who have no choice. I got out of bed, arrived late, masked up, and joined the 1000 people who marched in NH’s largest city. Shortly afterwards, I marched again, this time at the state capital with 2000 masked peaceful protesters.
I experienced the joy Lewis felt about these peaceful protests. It’s time to lift our voices with the peaceful protestors and join with the Beloved Community that works to make a more just world. It’s time to get into good trouble.
May it be so. Amen.
- https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/remembering-john-lewis-civil-rights-icon-and-teller-of-truth/ 08/06/2020.
- https://apnews.com/083abd15ff068cd5c2f95be561aac444/ 08/06/2020
- ibid
- ibid
- https://www.vogue.co.uk/news/article/educational-black-voices/ 08/06/2020
- ibid