Jan 15
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From the first Book of Samuel: In the night, God calls to Samuel. Samuel thinks it’s his mentor, Eli and goes to him to ask what he wants. Three times. God calls to Samuel. Samuel thinks it’s Eli. And then Eli does what? He gets what’s happening. He Makes the Connection. This is holy. Even God who searches us out and knows us and understands our secret thoughts from afar, even God can’t seem to make the connection to Samuel without Eli.
From the gospel according to John: Jesus calls Philip who becomes one of his disciples. Philip in the course of an ordinary day runs into his neighbor, Nathanael. And then Philip does what? Makes the connection. Philip says to Nathanael, this is the one who we’ve been waiting for for a thousand years. Moses, the prophets – talking about this guy. Come and see. So think about it; even Jesus the Great Communicator, needed his friends to make the ask. Which leads to the connection. This is very holy stuff, this connectivity when we connect the dots.
So how are the dots connecting in your life? And are you a dot connector for others? What do you notice? I’ll tell you how connectivity is working in my life. Pretty good, it’s different for me now. For one thing, I never dreamed in my 65th year that I would be turning into a coffee shop hanger outer since I don’t even drink coffee. Due to the construction of course, we don’t have enclosed offices so I meet people at the river to walk and talk or at Flavors or Starbucks or in your office or outside the Cathedral Bookstore or wherever. I like that.
And I certainly didn’t see myself, a priest of the church and an introvert, very happily cubicled up in with three other people. But it’s good. When I am here – it is so very easy to have a meeting. You just stand up and look over the partition and there you are meeting.
Nor did I in my wildest imagination see myself working on online projects for a major part of my work – bible studies and Lenten and advent devotionals and so forth. Huge dot connecting for me in this. And who knew I’d be a facebook friend since until a couple of years ago I thought that putting the words facebook and friend together was simply ridiculous. Facebook . I don’t understand why but it works for me with my extended family and friends around the country. Or why pastoral connections often begin there on facebook. Or why my heart just warmed when I posted that Carroll was helping our friend, Mary Margaret Oliver, down at the legislative session – why it just thrilled me that dozens of you and other friends from Scotland to Hawaii responded to say how great that is – Mary Margaret and Carroll. I don’t know why but Facebook is not a barrier for me to get with people. Facebook is a means certainly not an end for connection.
So I didn’t see any of those things coming, and if I had, I certainly would not have seen myself liking it!! And yet I do. For there is for me this new connectivity, this new connecting the dots.
This weekend we remember Martin Luther King so I think about the connectivity going on then – in the fifties and sixties. Different technology, same connecting the dots Holy Spirit. In Montgomery, 1955, Rosa Parks wouldn’t stand up to give her seat to a white man. Now you may not know how that system worked. White people got on the bus and filled it from the front. “Colored” people got on the bus and filled it from the back. When the two groups met – connected – the bus was full. And then, when the next white person got on the bus everybody knew what should happen – all connectivity is not holy -. Everybody on the first black row were supposed to get up and stand so the white person could sit down in solitary splendor.
But on this particular day, Rosa Parks didn’t get up. Do you know why on that day she didn’t get up? She connected some dots. Four days earlier, a speaker came from Mississippi who had started a boycott against gas stations without colored bathrooms, not asking for integration just colored bathrooms. Well the speaker had come to Montgomery to talk at Martin Luther King’s and Rosa Parks’ parish - Dexter Avenue Baptist Church - to tell his story and to talk about the recent brutal murder of Emmett Till, a fourteen year old boy. And you need to google Emmett Till if you do not know that story. And so the Mississippi speaker and his gas station boycott and the barbaric murder of a child, Emmet Till, and the indignity of Montgomery bus practices were all connecting in Rosa Parks’ mind when she decided not to get up. Connectivity. And when Rosa Parks connected the dots and made a choice for justice, she changed the world.
For a whole new deeply spiritual and interior connectivity of courage and endurance swept through the black community in Montgomery like a holy spirit wildfire, like a kind of fierce contagion. So that within a few days, in solidarity with their sister, Rosa Parks, no black people rode the bus. Now that was holy stuff. Connectivity. And in 381 days it changed Montgomery and it set the stage for Martin Luther King to lead the civil rights movement that connected the freedom and justice and black and white dots that changed the world.
Now, let those with ears hear this next part. Martin Luther King would be the first person to tell this story on himself and his fellow black clergymen. For the truth is Rosa Parks and a Pullman Car porter named E.D. Dixon were way, way out in front of the preachers who had to be talked into supporting the boycott because they were afraid of the repercussions. And Martin Luther King kind of got the job of being the clergy leader for the boycott because he was the brand new kid in town – get this - he was 26 years old - and he said later he didn’t totally know what he was getting into.
So Rosa Parks and E.D. Dixon – they connected him. And then a racist, murder-threatening phone call to his home convicted him. When he hung up from the terrifying call, and he shook in fear and wanted to quit, he audibly heard the voice of God saying Martin, I will be with you. “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you. Even to the end of the world. And Dr. King said my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.” And he did, didn’t he? So – going back to our dot connectors - Eli and Philip and Rosa Parks and eventually and mightily, Dr. King – they all have something in common – connectivity – they connected the dots for others to connect with God. For you know down deep - the way, the truth and the life – why that pathway is always lit by human connections. It is through each other that we see the light to connect the dots.
So that was a while ago - 56 years ago. Is there a holy connection to all this for you and me today? I would bet my life that the possibility of holy connectivity will happen somehow, somewhere today for every single one of us. We will see and be seen. We will listen and we will speak. We will act and we will be acted upon and we will respond. We will make choices. And something holy will or will not pass among us and out there. Jesus bet his life, suffered his death, and rose from the dead to live in us and through our connections. Connect the dots for yourself and for others. And most of all for the One who searches us out and knows us and understands our thoughts from afar off. Connect the dots. amen