I’m filling in for Pastor Meehan again while he is on sabbatical leave, I’m Gary Rueter, retired pastor. I’m just finishing a four part series of sermons on my favorite psalm, 103. In the third part of that series I focused on the Lord’s benefit that says, “The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.”
As I reflected on that passage a quote came to mind that I attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr. who said in a sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C on March 31, 1968, that “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
More study revealed that this was a reworking of an earlier statement in 1853 by the abolitionist minister Theodore Parker. His statement is more nuanced and avoids the magical thinking that could emerge from focus on MLK’s paraphrase. If the arc of the moral universe will inevitably bend toward justice, then we don’t have to work toward that justice because it’s inevitable. King could not have meant this because his life’s work was activity toward justice.
The longer version of Parker’s statement carries this nuance. “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.”
In an essay about this, Mychal Denzel Smith, author of invisible Man, has these thoughts: “Parker’s sermon, however, forces us into a more active role. He starts by admitting that he does not ‘understand the moral universe,’ which King’s more declarative statement elides. He is less sure of that universe’s contents and of where it may lead, since the ‘arc is a long one’ and his eye ‘reaches but little ways.’ Unable to ‘calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight’ he is left to ‘divine it by conscience.’ This could still be read as somewhat passive. Parker is not reaching out to bend the arc himself; rather, he is envisioning what it must look like through his own seemingly enlightened conscience. As an abolitionist and Christian, of course he is sure the arc bends toward justice, or else his work and faith must both be called into question. But his uncertainty about the moral universe is what makes his strong faith a necessity. For Parker, there is no guarantee, that he sees clearly, of the moral universe doing as he wishes. It is only through his own conscience, and thereby his own actions, that justice will be achieved.”
This reasoning accords well with the deduction in my sermon that the way that the Lord works righteousness and justice is through us, through the work of the Holy Spirit to move us to hear the outcries and to see the bloodshed that highlight the presence of oppression and then to work with others in groups and organizations that work against that oppression and help the arc of the moral universe to bend toward justice. God gets this benefit done through us and others who seek to follow God’s will.
You are loved. Gary Rueter, PT Sabbatical Pastor