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To Wait for God 2/4/06

To Wait for God
Rev. Jeff Barton
at the Forest Grove United Church of Christ
February 4, 2006

“Woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! … I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessing.”

I’ve been thinking about baseball and how Jackie Robinson was given much and deserved credit for making the civil rights movement of the late 1950’s and 1960’s possible and credible. When Rick Burke (on Martin Luther King Sunday here at Forest Grove UCC) mentioned Robinson’s remarkable place in American history, I had already thought that I’d tell a bit of his story on this first Sunday in African-American History Month. Because while most of you know that Jackie Robinson was the first black to integrate the baseball major leagues, I bet few of you know that he was an active member of a Connecticut Congregational United Church of Christ and a speaker to the General Synod of the UCC. And, I believe, God is Still Speaking through the story of women and men like Jackie Robinson; still speaking to proclaim a good news for people of every age, every tongue, and every race.

Then, at the same time I learned of the passing of Coretta Scott King this week, I also noticed the back of the bulletin you have in your hands, which indicates that today begins “UCC Women’s Week.” So, I’ve done a little extra study, and want to share a bit about Jackie Robinson, and a bit about Rachel Robinson as examples that bear consideration for those of us who, at our best, want to serve God by letting our concern be less about ourselves and more about those who need and deserve the blessings of the gospel that we are called to proclaim.

After all, that is the text from Corinthians for me – and maybe for you – to ponder. Paul was willing to subjugate his preferences so that the good news would flourish. He was able to be like his neighbors as he traveled around the eastern Mediterranean cities for the sake of his neighbors. He didn’t ask slaves to become free and thus receive God’s blessing. Instead, Paul became as a slave for the gospel’s sake. He didn’t ask Jews or Gentiles to be like him. Instead, Paul became like them to share the good news that he had found in his own Christian conversion. It is said, “no one can be all things to all people.” But with a sense of his own integrity to a higher and deeper purpose, that’s exactly what Paul tried to do so that some might know the life abundant and renewed that he had found in his experience of Jesus the Christ.

This image from Paul is hard for most of us to make a real connection to. Most of us live in a mode of daily operation that is less about “all things to all people” and much more of “to thy own self be true.” And I’ll admit, I don’t want to lose the piece of the personality and relational puzzle that is about self-realization and being faithful to who and what God has called us to be. Still, so much about doing one’s “own thing” is about selfishness rather than about integrity. Too much about being our true self is about being number one rather than about being a part of a covenant community. And woe to me, and woe to you, if and as we let our agendas get ahead of the good news for all creation in the best of the Christian story that we are called to receive and to share.

I hope and pray most of you know something about Jackie Robinson. He was, in 1947, the first African-American ballplayer in the major leagues when he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The number 42 is now retired in every ballpark in honor of Robinson, and in a reminder that baseball once could not fully be the American game when it systematically excluded Americans because of the color of their skin. But there was a waiting to be endured.

Robinson wasn’t a young rookie when he suffered racial slurs from teammates and from opponents. He had been in college, worked for the National Youth Administration, played semi-pro football, worked in the defense industry, served in the Army, coached college basketball and played baseball in the Negro Leagues before going to the minors in the Dodger organization. Robinson was not by temperament a friendly and good-natured fellow. He was a competitor first and foremost. He was concerned for justice and didn’t mind making a stir when he felt he was being wronged. Many of you know about the racially motivated court martial he endured in his Army years.

Still, when Branch Rickey signed Robinson, the story goes that Rickey insisted that the whole “first Negro in the big leagues” deal depended less on his obvious and extensive baseball and athletic talent and more on Robinson’s willingness not to fight back. When roughed up in a play at second, Robinson was asked to walk away. When sworn or spit at, Robinson was called to ignore it. When prejudice and bigotry would assault him, Robinson was required to turn the other cheek. Nothing more could be illustrative of the text today than Robinson in his first couple years with the Dodgers.

His Dodger teammate, Duke Snider, was quoted by Maury Allen:

“Jackie was the keenest competitor I ever saw in baseball. He knew that the future of blacks in baseball depended on … those promises to Rickey about behaving … That wasn’t Jackie. Jackie was an all-out, no-holds-barred kind of player. That was his nature. That’s why those early years had to be so tough on him, when he had to take all that garbage.”

Paul, in the letter to the Corinthian church, urges them to be, like him, and like Jackie Robinson. Be like you must be to make the case, to win a neighbor, to put the other first. Because if the focus was about Paul, then it wasn’t about the higher calling or about the better blessing of the gospel. Just as if, in 1947, the focus was about Robinson, then the integration of baseball, and by extension, the integration of society would have suffered and the blessings for all Americans would have been even more delayed. Woe to me and you and to us all.

It’s not easy to wait. It’s especially not easy to wait for those things which are deserved, which have been earned, and which are only fair and right and just. When you and I have occasion to wait for God’s time, for God’s justice, for God’s blessing, we know how difficult it is. I wonder, do you ever think about how frustrating it has been across history for God to wait for us? I suppose that God is still waiting for some among the contemporary church to welcome and include the gifts and leadership of women? And waiting still for the church to welcome and affirm neighbors in need of the gospel regardless of their race, their orientation, or their trappings of education, accumulation or perspective.

Did you know, that in baseball retirement, Jackie Robinson was a tireless civil rights advocate as well as a successful businessman? He was also a newspaper columnist who wrote on both the little and the big picture of human experience and race relations. Robinson was a leader in the NAACP and a politically savvy celebrity. He was an active Republican in the Nelson Rockefeller / Jacob Javits wing of the party. When Hubert Humphrey failed to make way in the 1960 primaries for the Democrats, Robinson choose to support Nixon over Jack Kennedy, who had not been rejected by the Jim Crow southern Democrats as had Humphrey. Robinson took a lot of grief for his stand, from the NAACP and even from his wife, Rachel. But he believed that Negro-Americans needed to be in shared effort and conversation in both political parties.

Jackie Robinson was living the lesson of the text this day. Being with all people so that the waiting of God for us might be shortened and that good news might become a blessing. And, Robinson lived not only to see his election into the baseball Hall of Fame, but to actively and publicly support Humphrey against Nixon in 1968 when his own Republican party had become the haven for the southern segregationists who had turned their backs on the Democratic led Civil Rights legislation. Equal Rights and Voting Rights did come to pass, in large part due to the example a more reasonable nation came to accept after the integration of baseball helped bring about a greater diversity of everyday American life. Good news and blessings. Realized, in part at least, after waiting for God’s teaching, God’s healing, God’s new and better vision of the world we are to serve.

Lest you think that Jackie Robinson didn’t need to wait for teaching and healing, there is much more to his story worth investigating. Robinson was a southern born lad who was raised by a single mom in the greater Los Angeles area. His love and life partner, Rachel, was the northern Californian raised daughter of educated business parents, both of whom had careers of their own. So Rachel got her degrees in nursing and kept a career that Jackie would have preferred her not to have followed. After Jackie’s death, in 1972, Rachel became the driving force and daily leader of the Jackie Robinson Development Corporation, and the founder of the Jackie Robinson Foundation. Countless thousands of young people have benefited from the proceeds of the Corporation and the scholarships of the Foundation. Rachel Robinson has been a woman of courage, determination, competitive spirit and the larger good just as certainly as was her husband.

And Rachel Robinson is also a witness to the truth and the promise of our faith that if we are genuinely concerned about everyone in our community, we cannot allow God to wait for change forever. We can, we might, we must use all the blessings of the gospel we receive to proclaim the good news to all creation. For as we wait on God, there is no end to the ways we can add our hearts and voices to the proclamation of the gospel of Christ for every woman, every man, every youth and every child.

Waiting for God is not a passive activity. It is a competitive patience, not angry but always passionate for peace, equality, justice, hope and possibility. The Robinson’s are not the only examples worth noting, not even among our UCC faith family. But they are a story that should not be ignored, especially by a “God is Still Speaking” community that recognizes that full racial, economic, orientation, ethnic or gender justice is still good news that can be further expanded to the glory of God.

Noted NPR broadcaster and author Scott Simon has written:

“By the time he was elected to the Hall of Fame, reporters were more likely to ask him about the Voting Rights Act than how to hit right-handed pitching. Jackie Robinson agitated for overturning segregation, stimulating black investment, hiring black managers, and giving youngsters greater opportunity. He ferociously opposed racial separation, anti-Semitism, and being told to go slow in the march for justice.”

In the turbulent 60’s, it was a ferociously wise and restless UCC layman named Jack Roosevelt Robinson who helped turn the destructive conflagration of despair and fear and anger toward a new epiphany of an American society where ever more are tempered in the furnace of racial justice and cultural diversity. In the decades since, the nurturing care and leadership of Rachel Robinson have burnished Jackie legacy to a gleaming polish in which we can all – red, yellow, black and white –see ourselves together. This is an increasingly bright blessing of a Spirit that is holy and good.

May we all learn from the Corinthian letter. May we be inspired from all those who, like Rachel and Jackie Robinson, have shown us in their lives what active and faithful waiting for God might achieve. Let us dare to put aside what our selfish natures might prefer so we can receive and share the blessings of Christ’s good news – for ourselves and for all the world that God so loved. Amen

A nice word about Jeff, former Interim minister at our congregation in Forest Grove, Oregon can be seen here.