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Let the Trumpet Sound

A White Cleric's Tribute to the Drum Major continued

by Bishop C. Joseph Sprague

Bishop Sprague was asked to keynote the Ohio Wesleyan University and Delaware County Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration in 2007. He delivered this speech at the William Street United Methodist Church. It was published in The Conscious Voice Magazine, in Winter 2008.

Bishop C. Joseph Sprague served in the episcopacy after 27 years as a pastor and seven years as an ecumenical officer. He was elected to the episcopacy in 1996 and was assigned Bishop to the Chicago Episcopal Area and the Northern Illinois Conference until he retired in 2004. He is known in the church and elsewhere for combining biblical scholarship, personal piety, preaching and teaching with social justice ministries and commitment.

II. POVERTY

Mrs. Coretta Scott King identified the following as one of her favorite quotations from her husband’s eloquent pulpit ministry. The Drum major said,

"Any religion that professes to be concerned with (human souls) and is not concerned with the slums that damn them the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion."

For six months prior to the most recent statewide election, black, brown, and white church folks in Columbus, Dayton, East Cleveland, and Lorain conducted countless one-on-one conversations with people, mostly black and Latino, in the poorest neighborhoods of those four cities. Hundreds of house meeting were held in homes, church fellowship halls, McDonalds, libraries, union halls, and community centers. In an organized and intentional effort to confront the cynicism and rich-get-richer while the poor-get-poorer realities endemic to US and Ohio politics of late, nonpartisan church volunteers, trained and mobilized, heard and organized the too-long muted voices of the urban poor. The objectives of this concerted effort were clear and apparent: To increase voter turnout in underperforming wards, so as to build power among forgotten and taken-for-granted voters; and, then to hold them accountable to implement the public promise made.

Interestingly, but hardly surprisingly, the previously disenfranchised citizen in all of these cities identified the same issues and sought similar concrete responses to them. They demanded covenants of commitment rather than rhetorical flourishes from the next Governor and US Senator.

Thus, Ted Strickland and Sherrod Brown have made concrete covenantal agreements with poor and working people about employment, public education, crime and violence, housing and urban blight, health care, and pension security. They did so in public rallies attended by hundreds of people. They will be held accountable by these organized groups of empowered citizens to do what they promised.

As I listened and spoke at these rallies, and then studied the election results of significant voter participation where we had organized, including a 57% increase in voter turnout in the relevant wards in Lorain, I imagined the possibility of the emergence of a new movement for racial, economic, and social justice in Ohio. As I looked at the rainbow coalitions assembled in each locale, I sensed that the spirit of the Lord was trying to turn the tables again, to intervene in the life and history of Ohio.

Feeding that disconcerting, yet hopeful perception were/are Dr. King’s immortal words, how We are all tied together by one mutual garment of destiny. What affects one directly, affects all indirectly. The Isaiah of Israel’s restoration, after the Babylonian exile, admonished those with new feet with which to walk and new hands with which to do, You shall repair the ruined cities ….

So must it be for all people of faith and conscience in Ohio and in this nation; for all who celebrate the Drum Major’s legacy. Who me? Who you? As Everett still reminds us, To ask the question is to answer it.

III. Head & Heart

Two days before the start of the war on Iraq, I was in New York City with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. We were there to meet with Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations. We were there to see if there were any last moment efforts the religious community might mount, with the help of the UN, to abort the scheduled march to war. Obviously, the meeting went for naught. But, in the midst of that highly politicized public event, a telling personal episode unfolded.

En route from the airport to the UN, Jesse asked me about the health of Mrs. Hannah Meadors, wife of retired UM bishop, Jack Meadors. Jack had accompanied Jesse on the hostage freeing sojourn a few years prior and the white former Mississippi bishop and a lead black Trumpeter in the Movement Band had become fast friends. I told Jesse that Hannah’s cancer had returned with a vengeance. She was dying. Without pause, Jesse grabbed the cell phone in the car and called the Meadors. Driving to the UN for the highly politicized public event, Jesse privately talked with and prayed for Hannah at great length. I was profoundly moved. I knew and know Jesse’s public proclivities - his love of cameras and penchant for seizing moments in the limelight. You are always a candidate for best supporting actor—never lead actor - when with Jesse. But, in that private moment, I saw more.

Much, much more. And I told my friend and colleague so. He nodded and replied, Doc taught me, (meaning Dr. King.) that people are what really matter - all kinds of people. Sister Hannah is good people. As Jesse paid tribute to Hannah and Doc, I found myself embracing a new the credo of my life and ministry, derived from the Drum Major’s book, “Strength to Love,” in which, in one of the book’s sermons, Dr. Kings translated Jesus’ admonition to the Twelve, See, I am sending you out like sheep in the midst of wolves; so, be wise as serpent and innocent as doves (Mt. 10.16), to mean that we, who would follow Jesus today, are to be tough minded and tender hearted.

The Drum Major knew and lives the Jesus way - - the way of the paradoxical confluence of head and heart, corporate and personal, prophetic and priestly, political and pious, tough minded and tender hearted. He could confronted and still forgive Bull Connor and George Wallace - - confront and still love JFK, RFK, and LBJ. What the Drum major taught and lived, Jesse demonstrated, as he prayed for Hannah en route to meet Kofi.

I have long believed, and attempted to demonstrate in my life, that there is no disparity between holding a dying person’s hand in prayerful tenderness and lifting a voice of protest in political toughness. It is right to picket and pray. All who would march to the drumbeat of the Drum Major’s rhythmic response to the intervention of the spirit of the Lord are to be tough minded and tender hearted, to exhibit the paradoxical confluence of prophet and priest, of an informed mind and empathetic heart.

Band and fellow travelers, so may it be for us. Thus, this aged white cleric confesses that he still needs to learn to confront neo-con foolishness without dismissing all neo-cons as fools; confront the ill-informed mindset of Islamic, Zionist, and Christian fundamentalism without demanding all fundamentalists as moral and intellectual degenerates. Also, I suspect that given the single-minded fascination today of church and university with institutional enhancement, all of us who are part of these institutions need a new infusion of soul power if we are to tough minded and tender hearted enough to wed grants with gumption - - dollars for maintenance with dedication to justice, and strategies for institutional growth with solidarity with the poor. The legacy we celebrate wedded such variables wonderfully well. Against great odds the Drum Major was wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove, tough minded and tender hearted. Thus, his legacy provides us with not an icon to venerate but a viable and demanding model to follow. Who me? Who you? You know what that Virginia country boy would say: To ask the question is to answer it.

Thus, may our too silent, too compliant 21st century personal and institutional tables be turned anew by the spirit’s tenacious and renewed intervention on our lives and histories so that it may someday rightly be said of us, as can now be said with integrity of the Drum Major, The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., his lead trumpeters and innumerable band members in the Movement, such as Dr. Everett Tilson, They (did) build up the ancient ruins, they (did) repair its ruined cities, the devastation of many generations. As it was with the Drum Major, his Movement Band and fellow travelers, so may it be for us. Amen. END copyright 2007 Bishop C. Jospeh Sprague

Bishop C. Joseph Sprague is a graduate of Ashland College and the Methodist Theological School. He is a recipient of the American Friends Service Committee Courage of Conviction Award, the Rainbow Push Civil Rights/Peace Award, and the William Sloan Coffin Award for Justice and Peace. Sought after as a preacher and a teacher. Bishop Sprague and Diane, his spouse of 52 years, make their home on a small lake in central Ohio with their two Labs. They delight in their four adult children, their spouses and ten grandchildren.