Preaching: Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr.

We fall down and sometimes we are born down. In the history of life’s leaders, life’s transformers is to get up and see beyond the predicament. On the isle of Patmos, left to die, John saw a new heaven, a new earth beyond his predicament.

Jefferson saw a way out. There was a duality of consciousness in his soul. Born in the system that prospered him and pained him. He once said when I think about slavery on the one hand and think God is just on the other I shudder for my country. Three great questions:

Three great questions:
• Vanity asks the question is it popular
• Politics asks the question will it win?
• Conscience and morality ask the question is it right?

Ultimately America has to decide the rightness or wrongness of slavery. Wrong was prosperous but was not right. We search for the authentic ultimately, changeless values.
It is said everything that goes up must come down. That’s the law of gravity and weighty objects. Character and ethical laws must rise higher and eternal truths.

While Jesus hung on the cross he was taunted, yet he hung onto the eternal truths of God.

For example, the balloonists of France gave us the replica of the Statue of Liberty congratulating us on ending the war and ending slavery. For winning the war for unity cherishing freedom is a changeless value. Emma Lazarus remarks, ”Give me your tired and huddled masses who yearned to breathe free….

These values must never change.

Give me your most able and most literate English speaking only, and leave the rest behind, are values that should not be embraced. That’s opposite of the Jesus standard.

We must fight fire with water and fight hate and hurt with hope and healing. These must be changeless walls teeth for teeth, will leave us blind and disfigured.
Erecting walls that keep us unhealthy and separate us emotionally, politically and leave us economically unequal. Because behind the walls are ignorance, fear, hatred, and violence. Building walls between the races, or on the basis of religion or ethnicity, whether in Germany, the United States or Mexico must come down and never go up again. We must build a pathway to citizenship and wholesome relationships, not build walls that degrade and limit. We must adopt changeless values:

We must adopt changeless values:
➢ Walls separating thieves,
➢ One side get’s sunshine, one get’s shadows
➢ We must build bridges and share the sunlight of love and hope.
➢ We must have health care for all based on needs.
➢ We must have health care for the least able, not the well cared for and the most able.
➢ Maximum profits and minimum wages is not a value to be cherished.

When a war is over, whenever it occurs, Isaiah says beat your swords into plowshares and your spears into pruning hooks and study war no more. It further suggests that we should not turn our tools of warfare or our leaders in battles past into objects of idolatry to be praised and celebrated. We must build a peace budget bottom up not a war budget top down. We must not have guided missiles and misguided leaders.

When the war is over there must be a healing, which means taking the glass out of the wound. For complete healing to occur one must remove even the keloid scars that remain. General Robert E. Lee said after the Civil War “Don’t bury me in a confederate uniform or build statues of me. It is an affront to the victors and it interferes with the healing process.”

Lincoln pardoned those who would be traitors to the Union cause or engaged in acts of treason, acts of secession, slavery and sedition, and by extension the human degradation that slavery was and the initiation of Jim Crow laws. Rather than imprison them or subject them to some violent punishment, he chose to pardon them in order to heal and reconcile the nation. Forgiveness and redemption should be changeless values.

We should remove the statutes, the flags, states rights agenda and the Electoral College – all are relics from the Confederate formula of slavery. In 2000 Gore won, but lost because of state’s rights controlling a national election. In 2016, Hillary won but lost – electoral college. We must fight for a democracy built one set of rules, one person, one vote, not one billion one candidate.

We should end the vestiges of a war that has long since ended, as they did in Germany. In Germany, there are no symbols erected to recognize Nazi leaders of the Third Reich. We survived slavery and the civil war. Those who survived the war in generations to come must get on with the healing process. Last week there were those who disagreed.

The President’s inability to call out white supremacists, KKK and neo-Nazis caused many to be embarrassed! Members of Congress, Republicans and pundits were embarrassed by the moral equivalency test.
The question is, are they willing to move past their feelings of embarrassment and sympathy to vote for a new direction and new priorities. They must go from embarrassment to enlightenment. The fight against voter suppression and fake news and voter fraud is the fight of our day. Those who sought to deny the right to vote, now seek to suppress the right.

In 1963 there were those who were embarrassed by the dogs biting marchers in Birmingham but would not vote for the Public Accommodations Bill. In Selma there were those who were embarrassed by the scene of horses kicking marchers, but these same people would not vote for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In the Civil War there were those who fought against secession but would not vote for the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery.
Today we are driven, not by the threat of the mean, the violent and the sick, but by innocent blood of Heather Heyer. We must go from embarrassment to enlightenment. We need to go in a new direction.
The fight against voter suppression and the end of fake news of voter fraud is the fight of our day.

We must face the real news of:
➢ Evidence of consumer fraud by banks, automotive companies and other industries exploiting the least able to pay.
➢ Student loan debt is greater than credit card debt.
➢ The banks and auto dealers were bailed out with a fine, but the fines did not repair the damage done to the victims.
➢ Jim Crow resisted any plan to repair damages done by slavery or to alter the bonds left as a vestige of slavery.

We must act to:
➢ Erect a monument of affordable and accessible education for all students.
➢ End the scam of temporary workers who work without benefits and are recycled into poverty.
➢ Eradicate the notion that more guns make us more secure and more war leads to peace.
➢ We must not merely globalize capital and technology, but we must globalize human rights and even the playing field for the world’s workers.
➢ We must globalize women’s rights, worker’s rights, children’s rights, student’s rights and environmental security.

We must not be merely embarrassed in the face of division and hate. We must change the conditions. We have unfinished business in the New South. Yet we have made remarkable progress. We are not driven to change today. We are not driven by those who open and carry guns. We are not driven by their tiki lamps. We are driven rather by non-violence, and the power of the innocent blood of Heather Heyer. Honor and suffering are redemptive. Rainwater will not wash away the power of blood, nor will bullets erase away her memory. She is now in the lineage of Rosa Parks., the 4 little girls in Birmingham, Schwerner Goodman and Chaney. The jail cell of Mandela, the innocent blood of Dr. King. Heather is in that lineage. That lineage has led to remarkable progress.

➢ When we changed Virginia, we elected an African American governor, Doug Wilder
➢ The U.S. elected an African American president, Barak Obama
➢ And without voter suppression and manipulation we would have a female president. In the New South, when walls are down, you can host the Olympics in Atlanta. You can have economic development along I-85 from Raleigh to Atlanta. Virginia can play North Carolina with multi-racial teams. Virginia can recruit Ralph Sampson and North Carolina recruited Michael Jordon.

In the New South, when walls are down, you can host the Olympics in Atlanta. You can have economic development along I-85 from Raleigh to Atlanta. Virginia can play North Carolina with multi-racial teams. Virginia can recruit Ralph Sampson and North Carolina recruited Michael Jordon.

Raleigh to Atlanta. Virginia can play North Carolina with multi-racial teams. Virginia can recruit Ralph Sampson and North Carolina recruited Michael Jordon.
When the walls came down South Carolina became the number one producer of tires; and Nissan, Honda, BMW and Toyota moved south. When walls come down, Alabama and Clemson can play each other in the championship games. Uniform colors take prescience over skin color and direction takes priority over complexion.
Those who are embarrassed by presidential resistance to denouncing hatred and bigotry must choose a new direction where hatred, bigotry, and fear are less likely.

We must choose a new direction were hatred, fear, and bigotry are less likely. The good news is when we replace walls with bridges we win. The innocent blood of one woman shook the White House, shoo the Congress, it made business leaders dissolve boards, it made world leaders join in and speak out. We have a light that can dispel darkness.

• We can pray together.
• We can build multi racial coalitions together.
• We can vote together.
• We can remember in November together.
• Heather cannot vote, but we can vote for her.
• We can choose the right side of history together.

The Scripture has a clear formula for healing in II Chronicles 7:14. “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves, pray, seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then they will hear from heaven and heal the land.”

The key is humility, not pride and arrogance. It’s humility and a new direction that will heal the land. We reluctantly support freedom but are slow to support equality or a commitment to repair the damage done the result of the bonds of oppression.