To whom do you listen? To whom do you really listen? Well, let’s see. If I were to answer that question and be brutally honest, I would have to admit that I most often listen to those who share my prejudices. After all, I want those prejudices affirmed by others and I want to gather information for my cause. And besides, hearing the other side often just makes me angry, and I do not need that.

In Iowa, the conservative radio talk shows and religious programs are popular among many in the rural and western areas of the state. As I drove around the state I studiously avoided those stations. One of the pastors there however, made it a habit to listen. He believed that it was very important to know what his folks were hearing. It did not change his mind, of course, but it did give him some understanding of others perspective. I admired him greatly for his commitment to this. But, I am sad to say I never grew enough to be able to follow in his footsteps.

I also most often choose to listen to those whom I think have the appropriate credentials. Credentials come in many forms. They might include degrees from prestigious institutions, resumes with clout, life experience, and even age. Unfortunately, in this culture, even color or language or personal looks and charm may qualify or disqualify someone. I try very hard to fight the latter prejudice, so embedded in me by my culture that it is sometimes hard to detect. And for persons of faith, there is another credential one looks for: does the person have a call from God, or how is God working through this person?

When he appeared on the American stage, he raised the hackles and the ire of all whom held prejudices against his kind and against his message, His credentials were impeccable. O he might have been a little suspect as he was a bit young, short in stature and rather round of face. Not at all like the imposing figure of his father, the tall, large chested pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. But he did have credentials.

Martin Luther King Jr. had the credential of life experience. His early life was unremarkable. As a child, he was a healthy, vital, fun-loving boy with many playmates. He played sports with great energy and enthusiasm so that some said you took a chance at getting hurt if you played football or basketball against him. Because of their church connections and financial interests, his grandfather and later his father were members of the ruling elite of Atlanta’s Afro-American community. He played with both black and white children until he was six and they went off to separate schools. But then, when he went across the street to compare notes after school, he was greeted by the mother who informed him that they could not play any more. She said, they were white and he was colored. He cried, and rushed home to ask his mother about it.

Once in a downtown department store, he was slapped by a white woman who shrilled, "The little nigger stepped on my foot." The flashes of proud and unafraid protest he witnessed in his father at such racial affronts were not lost on him. Once, when the senior King was stopped by a traffic policeman who addressed him as "boy" he pointed to Martin on the seat beside him and snapped, "That’s a boy. I’m a man." Another time he stalked out of a store with martin when a shoe clerk insisted they move to the rear to be served, rumbling, "We’ll either buy shoes sitting here or won’t by any shoes at all." In summer jobs, Martin was depressed by the debasement of black employees, and quit.

He had the credential of vocabulary and the eloquent use of language. As a child, Martin was very impressed not only with his father’s language in sermons, but also with the guest preacher’s who visited that church. After hearing the splendiferous rhetoric of one such preacher, Martin announced to his mother: "Someday I’m going to have me some big words like that." As time went on, Martin would be surprising his teachers by producing such grand responses as, to a casual inquiry as to how he was doing, "Cogitating with the cosmic universe, I surmise that my physical equilibrium is organically quiescent." He was even able to use this skill to extricate himself from fights.

Martin Luther King Jr. had the necessary educational credentials. His father insisted that his son become a minister. But Martin went off to Morehouse College, with notions of escaping his father’s ministerial predestination. After forays into other fields of study, in the summer before his last year, Martin set his face toward ministry. Upon graduation the following year, he struck out for Crozer Theological Seminary, a small Baptist school, in Chester Pennsylvania. At this point, he seemed intent on acquiring an intellectual freight to match his already voluminous vocabulary. He became a ferociously diligent student soaking writings of all the major theologians, studying intently all the major religions. He even spent some time reading Karl Marx but eventually dismissed his theory. He graduated from Crozer as valedictorian, with the highest grade average in his class and a scholarship for further studies. He then entered a doctoral program at Boston University. After collecting there a more than respectable intellectual capital for his ministry, he decided to return to Atlanta and accepted a call to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

It was now, 1954. In November of 1955, Coretta, his wife, gave birth to their first born son. And on a cold, dim, Thursday afternoon, December 1, 1955, a forty-two-year-old seamstress named Rosa Parks, refused to move to the back of the segregated bus, and she was arrested. That quickly set off the determination within the black community to boycott the city’s segregated bus system. He was asked to help but was hesitant at first. But he did agree. Soon he was the primary speaker at gatherings and the leader of a movement. His words, no, his compassion, no his faith, began to shake a world of oppression and injustice to its core. And still, many would not listen. Elaborate schemes of illicit connections were invented to discredit him. We watched as the non-violent protesters were met with inhumane violence and Martin was torn apart by the sufferings of the people. And still he spoke:

"There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being thrown across the abyss of humiliations, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair."

"I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are a Christian people…but the great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right…And if we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong! If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was a utopian dreamer…"

"Let Justice roll down like waters…"

" I have a Dream that one day…"

God’s word, spoken from a man that all the credentials and still, they would not listen, we would not listen.

The problem is, I think, that we are always learning to recognize God’s call. And yet while we are still learning, we are often required or challenged to respond. And so we fall back on what we know, what has held us up in the past, that is our narrow concept of reality and our prejudices about how to keep that reality in place. And we forget to listen. We forget to listen for God’s word and God’s call. And part of our prejudice or concept of reality is that people who look different from us, young people, people who have not been one of us long enough, people who challenge the status quo, certainly are not to be listened to.

Can you imagine being Eli, in our Bible story today? Here is this respectable priest. His sons will follow in his footsteps and become the priest, or faith leader. Never mind they are not terribly respectful or faithful, that is the order of things. Then this woman shows up on his doorstep, drops off the kid, says she prayed that God would give her a son and if so she would give that son to God, so here he is. Raise him please. Then this kid starts hearing voices. It must have been a difficult and painful experience when Eli began to realize that he and his sons needed to move over and make room for this child God was calling.

Or can you imagine being Nathanael? You have just opened your mouth with a major insult: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" when this street preacher asks you to drop everything and follow him. And you realize who he is.

Yes, sure, we hear God’s word through prayer and meditation. But we also hear God’s word through the words and actions of others. And so, we need to put our fear, anxiety, and prejudices aside and listen for God. And the scriptures today remind us that God is no respecter of the world’s status symbols and power structures. God’s message can come to us through a child, through an uneducated street preacher and a bunch of fishermen who follow him around and an African American from the south. And we can often tell if their words are from God, for they center around love, justice and peace, and they call us to hear the cries of God’s people.

God is constantly present in our lives and in the world, like a lamp burning through the night. We have but to tune our hearts and minds to recognize God’s bright calling to live in ways that reflect God’s steadfast love. And now, as in 1955, God really needs us. Amen