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On seemingly small events, history hinges, pivots and moves. On this Palm Sunday, we remember that some 2000 years ago Jesus rode on a borrowed colt into Jerusalem. Poor people--the blind, the hungry, the naked and the sick--tore branches from the trees and marched with him, shouting, “Hosanna!” Within days, because Jesus confronted all that was powerful in both religion and politics, he was crucified, dead, and buried in a borrowed grave.
We gather this morning to remember what, at the time, must have seemed a very small moment in human history. The Roman soldiers crucified Jesus at Golgotha, just outside of the holy city. Scholars and archaeologists tell us that Golgotha was, besides being a rock in the shape of a skull, the garbage dump of Jerusalem. The powers of religious myopia and political evil that crucified Jesus thought they were throwing into the trash the pesky problem of God’s inclusive, world-transforming, life-giving love, never to be bothered again. It was a small event for them; troublemakers like Jesus who threatened the religio-political order were crucified daily.
We are here today because from that garbage dump, God transformed the world and our human history forever. We still gather to give thanks that we have different lives because of what God did in the garbage.
Yesterday, April 4th marked the 41st anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His death is not a small event in our recent history, but what took Dr. King to Memphis, where he was shot, resulted from a small historical moment we barely notice. He was there to support the families and the cause of two garbage collectors, Robert Walker and Echol Cole. They had been crushed in their own garbage truck as it sped through a white Memphis neighborhood during a fierce storm. Their driver, by city regulation, could not stop and take refuge in such a neighborhood. The only place for Cole and Walker to protect themselves from the storm was back in the garbage. Something went wrong, the compressor engaged, and they were crushed.
Echol Cole and Robert Walker don’t even rank an entry in egalitarian Wikipedia. [This has now been corrected by a parishioner; I couldn’t figure out how to put them in.]
A strike began after their gruesome death. Some weeks later, a protest march was organized, and Dr. King came to Memphis to participate, support the strike and bring attention to the two garbage men who died. Marching, all wore a placard: “I Am a Man,” meaning, I am a man and not a piece of garbage.
Over Jesus, his crucifiers hung a placard to mock him: “The King of the Jews.” But the placard God has hung on the cross for us still to see is this: “I am a human being, not a piece of garbage.”
From the garbage dump of Golgotha, God confronted a world that believed human dignity could be measured by wealth, success and power. From the garbage, God proclaimed that the weak will be powerful, the poor will be rich, and the last will be first. In the garbage, God proclaims still from the cross that human dignity is a gift from God, bestowed by the gift of life itself. All that I am, all that you are, that is precious and beautiful is known to God, and will be a part of God’s universe forever. Nothing, not the cross, or assassins, or addictions, or corruptions, armies or bullets, will every destroy the dignity within.
His advisers friends and supporters begged Martin Luther King not to go to Memphis, but when he did, he brought the reality of God’s unflinching gift of human dignity to the tragedy of Echol Cole and John Walker. And when he returned to Memphis a second time to march, he was killed by the same force of hatred and evil that killed Jesus. But, his human dignity was not destroyed, nor the dignity he struggled to bring to all of God’s creatures.
This past week, President Obama stepped onto the world’s stage in his European trip. Whether we like or dislike our President, agree or disagree, voted or not for him, I would think that every American except the incorrigible wags would be proud of our nation’s accomplishment to elect an African American as President.
The reality of his presidency will not be a small historical moment. That reality is not disconnected from the historical reality that Martin Luther King was killed while preparing to march for the cause of human dignity. From that tragedy, we can draw a line to two men, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, who died in the garbage on a stormy night.
And, on this day when we remember that “Jesus died for us,” we remember how he died, in the garbage, to secure the dignity that Echol Cole and Robert Walker, as well as you and me, have for eternity.
Now, this is not a sermon about a historical past, but a sermon about your personal future. Look down into your life right now. Are you standing in the garbage of your own making, or in the garbage that others have put you in, or maybe some of both? On Palm Sunday, we proclaim that God’s intention is that we rise out of it rather than believe we are condemned to it.
We are human beings, loved by God, and not garbage. Might we have the grace to accept this gift, and the strength and faith, as Dr. King embodies, that until every human is out of the garbage, none of us are fully free.
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