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[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: When a news story dominates the headlines -- be it a
mass shooting, a natural disaster, or some other catalyzing event -- it tends to motivate
people to spring into action. A lot of good can get done that way. But then the TV cameras
move on, life returns to normal for most of us, and the chance for lasting change quickly
slips away.
That's why it's been so inspiring to see the activism sparked by the Newtown massacre
and other instances of gun violence continue and even grow. I see it as a case of vast
numbers of Americans saying simply, "Enough! Enough of this." And refusing to allow the
inaction of our legislators frustrate them into surrender.
One great example of this refusal to give up will be on display this weekend in New
York City, as the Middle Collegiate Church observes Martin Luther King Day and honors
Dr. King's principles of nonviolence on Sunday by literally turning a gun into a plowshare.
Now, I want someone other than myself to talk about how that's done, and so I'm very
happy to be joined by the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, who is the Senior Minister at Middle
Collegiate. Dr. Lewis, welcome to State of Belief Radio!
[REV. DR. JACQUI LEWIS, GUEST]: Thank you so much! I'm so glad to be here. Thanks
for asking me.
[WG]: Tell us about the events planned for this Sunday the 19th.
[JL]: Well, every year for 30 years now, the Middle Collegiate Church has done an amazing
celebration of Martin Luther King's life. My predecessor Gordon Dragt and me, both of
us, were really deeply impacted by King's assassination - he's about 20 years older
than I am, but I was about 9 when King was killed, and felt really called to ministry
around a ministry of reconciliation and justice. And Gordon had that same kind of experience.
And so Middle Church just really believes in honoring this day, honoring King's legacy.
We've also been deeply committed to anti-gun violence. You know, I grew up in Chicago,
so shootings on playgrounds and shootings in alleys and shootings in city streets really
marked my childhood. That violence just stunned me. And when the shootings happened at Newtown,
when the shootings happened in Aurora - and quite frankly, when Trayvon Martin was killed
- our congregation got really activated around how every single life that is cut down by
gun violence, unnecessarily, is a life too many; and that we really need to turn our
attention to it.
So we were looking for something to do - last year at this time we organized with PICO a
big, anti-gun violence sabbath, where some 450 congregations participated on King's
Day weekend: Jewish congregations, Muslim congregations and Christians. And PICO was
going to be doing such a sabbath again this March. But this weekend, we decided to invite
a man named Mike Martin, whose URL is called raw tools.org, and Mike lives in Colorado
and so got very activated around the Aurora killings, and he literally takes rifles and
guns and just saws them with his electronic equipment, and beats them and reshapes them
into quote-unquote ploughshares that are pieces of art. So we're so excited that he's
going to be able to be with us in worship in the morning; we'll present the gun as
a symbol of the violence we do with guns and also with poverty and as we leave children
behind, and doing a teach-in all afternoon. He's going to keep working on it, and about
four o'clock we'll have the piece of art - the ploughshare - that we're going to
make a gift to Mayor DiBlasio's office.
[WG]: That's great. Are you doing a sermon, as usual, on that Sunday?
[JL]: Oh, absolutely! In fact, our gospel choir is singing a freedom song medley and
an African song about freedom; our Middle Church choir is doing spirituals in honor
of Dr. King's Day; we're going to close with "Precious Lord," which is actually
the song that - I don't know if you know the story, Rev. Gaddy, but when King was leaning
over the balcony down in Memphis, he said to the musician that was going to accompany
him that evening, "Play 'Precious Lord' for me tonight. Play 'Precious Lord,'
and play it pretty." So we're going to close our worship with that, and one of our
artists, Titus Burgess of "Little Mermaid" and "30 Rock" is going to sing an original
composition, "Love is an Action," a song that he was inspired to write because of King's
amazing legacy.
[WG]: My goodness. Well, what are you going to say?
[JL]: That's a great - thank you, let me pre-preach a little bit. You know, reverend,
this text about turning swords into ploughshares is so important to the Hebrew people that
both Micah and Isaiah quote it. It's a beautiful metaphor of turning the tools we have for
making war into tools for peace. And I was working on my sermon earlier this week, and
one of the things I realized is that we, each of us, is a tool that can be a tool for making
war or making peace. And the Jewish concept of "Shalom" is not just about the absence
of war; it is about wholeness and healing it is about justice and everyone being treated
with dignity; it is about everyone having enough. So I'm going to talk about how we
can be tools so that we can make sure that there is Shalom in the land; that every child
has a safe place to learn and grow; that they are guaranteed the right to life because we
manage gun control in our nation; that every mom that wants to has an ability to learn
along with their child and earn a living wage, so they can send them off to college; that
students that have been to college can have their debt pardoned and be able to go to school
and grow and be successful citizens; that immigrant families are put back together as
opposed to ripped apart - I'm going to try to talk a 360 peace plan.
[WG]: That's great. What then is going to follow in that teach-in session?
[JL]: We're going to first hear some music from our babies - because we think our children
are the future - and they're going to sing some music they've been working on about
freedom and justice. We're going to do a talk about how race is underneath many of
the social issues that impact us, and we're focusing on five issues: we're focusing
on gun violence, criminal justice, economic inequality, education disparity, and healthcare.
So we'll do a little talk about the interrelatedness of those issues. Some of our artists are going
to do a dramatic reading of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, a short version
of that. And one of our dancers is going to do an improv to that.
And people all over the country will be able to livestream that at middlechurch.org, that
first hour and 15 minutes or so of teaching. One of our seniors from the Gray Panthers
is going to talk about human rights as we close that first hour and 15 minutes, and
we're going to give people instruction so they can go have this talk in their own faith
communities or in their own community centers. We'll give them questions that they can
use for the conversation, and those questions will be on our website. So we're having
a teach-in that's not just about Middle Church, but we hope that it becomes a city-wide
event, and that people from around the country will join us.
[WG]: Well, that's wonderful. Jacqui, do you get the sense that we may be turning a
corner as a society - that we're beginning to reach a critical mass of people no longer
willing to stand by in the face of this ever-growing injustice and inequality?
[JL]: I really do. I'm an eternal optimist - maybe a pathological optimist, I don't
know - but I really do believe that in the main, most people are people of good will,
and most people share a dream - rooted in the American dream, but not limited by the
American dream - that we can hold hands together and be brothers and sisters; that there's
enough resources to share so that everyone has enough; that the unique particularity
of racial, ethnic identity and *** orientation and gender are gifts from God, and that we
can celebrate those gifts. And I think that most people are looking for a way to do that.
There's such a narrative of fear, in our country, for the other. And I do believe that
we have gotten tired of that story, and we're ready to write a new one. And that the new
one is rooted in the old one, and the old story is - the psalmist says it this way,
each of us is fearfully and wonderfully made. The writer of Genesis says we're all created
in the image of God. There is some old story that the prophets Isaiah and Micah are reminding
God's people of, and many of us in pulpits this Sunday are going to preach love and justice
and acceptance, and I hope that we'll preach it all year long; that we won't wait for
big days like King Day to do so.
[WG]: Yeah. You know, you and Middle Collegiate Church have a long history of working for
social justice, and I want to ask you about some of your other ongoing initiatives that
the church is involved in, because you speak with such moral authority, and not all of
our listeners know you and understand where that authority comes from. And I want them
to know that we're not just talking about preaching; we're talking about doing. And
so tell us some of the ongoing initiatives that your church is involved in.
[JL]: Thank you so much for that generous question. People can find out about us at
middle church.org. I think our website tells the story of our history. My predecessor was
the place - the pastor - for a community dying of AIDS in the 1980's. This Middle Church
was the place where Jewish people and Black people and Christian people and White people
brought their families to mourn and grieve. One of the Middle Church members started a
thing called the "Celebrate Life Meal" in 1985, so the people living with ***-AIDS
could come and have a hot meal and social services, and have dignity. To be treated
with respect, and un-stigmatize the disease in those days. We've been doing gay unions
for as long as that - since 1985 - in this place, honoring couples.
I remember when I first got here the Marlboro Man - the original actor, the Marlboro Man
- his name's Ken, and his partner, Rudy, celebrated their 55th anniversary in this
place. And we did their funerals in this place. A Navy Lieutenant and an actor who had to
be underground in California and pretend like they dated women - and we honored their relationship,
and so many other relationships. We worked tirelessly for marriage equality until it
was law; and when it was law, we did three marriages on the next Sunday in our sanctuary.
One of my colleagues and I were walking through City Hall watching couples do their blessings
and just blessing them when the law was passed.
We have worked for racial justice for decades, and every year we offer a conference for people
who are trying to learn how to grow multiracial congregations, because we believe that all
churches should embrace the diversity of God's people in their midst. And we need tools and
skills in order to do so. So racial justice, economic justice - we've been feeding people
for 25 years, first in the Celebrate Life Meal, and now with a thing called the "Soul
Food Truck" that two of our members donated so that we could serve hot meals to the people
who are hungry in Thompkins Square Park every Sunday.
We believe that God has called us to be doers of justice, and so this is what we do.
[WG]: That's where the enthusiasm, that's where the sense of authority comes from - it's
all of one piece, and you are a person who can preach what you do, and that's a great
thing.
Let me ask you one other question about Sunday - it sounds like such a great day - but I
want to ask you if you had your way, what do you want people who participate on Sunday
- what do you want them to feel or think when they leave after this is all over?
[JL]: That's wonderful. One of King's - I am a Kingphile, I love his writing. You
know, so much more than just the "I Have A Dream Speech," just a great writer. But
that expression of us being inextricably connected together, inextricably connected in this kind
of human web of life - that he gets, actually, from Howard Thurman and other writers - I
want people to leave feeling that when a chid is hungry, their stomach will growl. When
a child is shot to death, that they grieve. When a kid can't get a job when they graduate
from college and can't begin to have a successful life because they're just burdened with
debt, that they actually feel grief. I want us to feel like we are human family, and that
there is no issue too great that we can't work on it together. That we can learn about
them, become educated about them, and create strategies to heal our own soul, and to heal
the world.
It's ambitious. But it is not beyond us.
[WG]: The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Senior Minister at Middle Collegiate Church in New York City.
Jacqui, I've got to ask you one other question. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything
we've talked about, and it may not be important to anybody but me, but why do you spell "Jacqui"
J-a-c-q-u-i?
[JL]: Why do I do that? Because I was a fourth-grader in Chicago in a classroom full of Jackies.
And I thought, "Man, what's up with that?" Everybody was Jackie, and my nine-year-old
mind turned to, "Well, it's got a 'q' in it anyway!" So I just started writing
it that way, and it makes me feel a little bit less among the crowd.
[WG]: Well, that's great!
Well, this Sunday, January 19th, the community in which Jacqui Lewis is the pastor, the Senior
Minister, Middle Collegiate Church in New York City, is celebrating of the Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr. with a graphic enactment of the biblical call to beat swords into plowshares,
and then continuing Dr. King's legacy of opposing both violence and injustice, they'll
be offering a workshop that will be helpful to all who attend.
Dr. Lewis, I can't tell you how much of a pleasure it is to talk with you, and to
listen to some of your vision, and to learn what your congregation has been doing in such
a - not just impressive, but effective way for hurting people. I appreciate your taking
the time to talk to us today on State of Belief Radio, and I hope we can talk again.
[JL]: I hope so. Thank you so much for the kindness of giving us this space to talk about
this, and your listeners can find us at middlechurch.org. Thank you.