{"id":4419,"date":"2025-01-19T21:46:14","date_gmt":"2025-01-19T21:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2025\/01\/19\/if-i-fall-based-on-micah-66-8-and-matthew\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T17:58:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T21:58:29","slug":"if-i-fall-based-on-micah-66-8-and-matthew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2025\/01\/19\/if-i-fall-based-on-micah-66-8-and-matthew\/","title":{"rendered":"If I Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf I Fall\u2026\u201d based on Micah 6:6-8 and Matthew 5:1-16<\/h1>\n

January is National Mentoring Month, and so this year for Human Relations Day, we decided to look at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in context \u2013 along with the people who inspired him, and the people he inspired. Thus, I opened a lot of articles on the people who served as Dr. King\u2019s mentors and I have three things to say based on that: OH MY GOODNESS were those impressive men; thank goodness for Ghandi and his witness to the powers of nonviolence that these mentors heard loud and clear; and finally \u2013 what an extraordinary group of superbly well educated men of color!<\/p>\n

In the end though, I found myself more interested in Dr. King\u2019s co-mentoring relationships. Perhaps that would be more normally construed as his collaborators. The key, I think, is to remember that Dr. King was the best known leader in the Civil Rights movement, but he was by no means alone. Dr. King worked side by side with Ralph Abernathy, and the impacts on the movement of Coretta Scott King and Juanita Jones Abernathy was also enormous. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was working tirelessly as well, with its wise leaders and faithful on the ground workers. Movements, it turns out, involve a lot of PEOPLE. No one person is a movement, nor can a single person lead a movement alone. Movements are the embodiment of \u201cwe\u2019re in this together.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was a woman by the name of Fannie Lou Hamer:<\/p>\n

Born in Mississippi in 1917, Hamer was a working poor and disabled Black sharecropper who joined the Civil Rights Movement at the age of forty-four. In 1962, her life changed dramatically after attending a mass meeting at a local church. The gathering had been organized by activists in SNCC. The speakers that night highlighted how ordinary citizens could transform American society with the right to vote, a message that resonated with Hamer. She went on to become a field secretary for SNCC and assisted Black people in Mississippi and beyond with voter registration.<\/small><\/p>\n

This was dangerous work. In June 1963, Hamer was returning from South Carolina with a group of other activists. They stopped in Wynona to grab a bite to eat. Hamer\u2019s colleagues encountered resistance from the owners of the caf\u00e9 who made it clear that Black people were not welcome. The police arrived. And when Hamer exited the bus, an officer grabbed her and started kicking her. After Hamer and her colleagues were arrested, they received brutal beatings from the police officers who also instructed prisoners to do the same. Hamer\u2019s injuries left her with kidney damage, a blood clot in her eye, and worsened a physical limp that she would carry for the rest of her life. However, Hamer was undeterred and continued her efforts to expand Black political rights.<\/small><\/p>\n

…In April 1964, she joined forces with several other activists to establish the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the MFDP. The group challenged the Mississippi all-white Democratic party. In August of 1964, only months after the establishment of the MFDP, Hamer and others traveled to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to attend the Democratic National Convention.<\/small><\/p>\n

…The experience in Atlantic City transformed Hamer. Although she encountered resistance, she persisted and delivered the most well-known speech of her political career before the Credentials Committee at the Convention. Hamer used her speech to describe the acts of racist violence Black people faced on a daily basis in the Jim Crow South. She told the stories of shots being fired at the homes of those who supported voting rights, and she told the story of what happened to her in Wynona. As she reflected on the painful experiences that Black people face in the South, Hamer could not help but to question America. In her words, is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives are threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America?\u201d1<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

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She was a woman who was inspired by Dr. King, and then inspired Dr. King. They were even known to disagree and push on each other. That is, she was a full collaborator with him in the movement towards freedom. One of many famous quotes by Fannie Lou Hamer is, \u201cIf I fall, I\u2019ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I\u2019m not backing off.\u201d Another great one, one I think we\u2019re going to need in coming days is, \u201cThere is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people.\u201d Finally, \u201cNobody\u2019s free until everybody\u2019s free.\u201d<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t heard of Fannie Lou Hamer in my education, I didn\u2019t learn about her until Shirley Readdean\u2019s daughter Cyndee co-directed \u201cFreedom Summer.\u201d I\u2019m so glad I did learn about her, because she was a living force for good, and I needed to know.<\/p>\n

The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, with their commitments to freedom for all people, to transforming oppression, and to doing so through non-violence carefully followed the Way of Jesus, and the calling of God. We hear in Micah famous words:<\/p>\n

[God] has told you, O\u00a0mortal, what is\u00a0good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your\u00a0God?<\/p>\n

It is awe-inspiring how well the Civil Rights Movement embodied this. Dr. King and others preached goodness for oppressors, including in Dr. King\u2019s sermon \u201cLoving Our Enemies\u201d:<\/p>\n

Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That\u2019s the time you must do it. That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It\u2019s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system..2<\/a><\/p>\n

As they worked for justice, as they walked with God, they embodied kindness on the deepest levels \u2013 calling for true love for those who harmed and oppressed them.<\/p>\n

Beloveds, this is a reminder we need. There is no one in the world that we are allowed to discount the humanity of \u2013 no one we seek to defeat. We want to change systems, we want to bring freedom, we want to care for the vulnerable, but we aren\u2019t going to get to the kin-dom of God any way but through love \u2013 EVEN for those who do immense harm.<\/p>\n

No one ever said following Jesus was easy.<\/p>\n

Not even Jesus, whose famous Sermon on the Mount blesses those who are struggling with hopes that it will not always be this way. But not with the power to oppress those who oppressed them. The Jesus movement is nonviolent and loving \u2013 it isn\u2019t passive, it isn\u2019t willing to let injustice stand, but it is COMMITTED to being nonviolent and loving.<\/p>\n

Jesus showed us that the nonviolent love of God could change the world. So too, did the Civil Rights Movement. Today, so too does the Poor People\u2019s Campaign.<\/p>\n

Dear ones, in the days to come, I am going to hold on to Fannie Lou Hamer, especially her words, If I fall, I\u2019ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I\u2019m not backing off.\u201d Whatever comes at us, if we respond with a commitment to justice, to goodness, and to being with God \u2013 we can bring good out of ANYTHING. (Eventually.)<\/p>\n

May we follow the lead of those who call us to love, to justice, and to nonviolence. They have already shown us the power, we simply get to follow in the way and trust in God. Thanks be to God. Amen<\/p>\n

1<\/a> Keisha N. Blain, \u201cFannie Lou Hamer Embodied Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s Vision of Courageous Black Leadership\u201d March 02, 2022, found at https:\/\/www.beaconbroadside.com\/broadside\/2022\/03\/fannie-lou-hamer-embodied-martin-luther-king-jrs-vision-of-courageous-black-leadership.html<\/a>, on January 15, 2025.<\/p>\n

2<\/a>https:\/\/kinginstitute.stanford.edu\/king-papers\/documents\/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-dexter-avenue-baptist-church<\/a><\/p>\n

Rev. Sara E. Baron\u00a0
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady\u00a0
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305\u00a0
Pronouns: she\/her\/hers\u00a0
http:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/\u00a0<\/a>
https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FUMCSchenectady<\/a><\/p>\n

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January 19, 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf I Fall\u2026\u201d based on Micah 6:6-8 and Matthew 5:1-16 January is National Mentoring Month, and so this year for … Continue reading If I Fall<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[34,38,28,39,33,1367,1368,1265,1369,425,76,403,77,56],"class_list":["post-4419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","tag-fumc-schenectady","tag-progressive-christianity","tag-rev-sara-e-baron","tag-thinking-church","tag-umc","tag-christian-nonviolence","tag-fannie-lou-hamer","tag-first-umc-schenectady","tag-if-i-fall","tag-justice","tag-mlk","tag-nonviolence","tag-rev-dr-martin-luther-king-jr","tag-schenectady"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4646,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4419\/revisions\/4646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}