The Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock: Rough Place Made Smooth

Please be seated.  To Bishop Budde, Dean Hollerith, Canon Hamlin, to all of the clergy gathered, sisters and brothers: “How good and how pleasant it is for brothers and sisters to dwell together in unity. It is as the precious ointment upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard that went down to the skirts of his garment. It is as the dew of Hermon. There God commanded the blessing, even life forevermore”. (Psalm 133:1-3)

I cannot adequately express to you how deeply honored I am to stand in this holy place on this special weekend. I am mindful of the fact that my predecessor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, Martin Luther King Jr., preached his final Sunday morning sermon in this place. And he talked to us about remaining awake during a revolution. And here we are on this Juneteenth weekend, still reckoning with the complicated nuances of our grand and glorious American story. It’s good to be here. It’s an Episcopal church. You invited a Baptist preacher. With all due respect, we call Episcopalians the “frozen chosen”. I see you’ve got a gospel choir back here. We’re trying to work it out together. We’re trying to work it out. So I’m going to get on with the sermon, but I’m going to ask you to meet me halfway, because in my church, they talk back to me while I preach.

And so let me, let me practice that. We call it “call and response”. If I say something that you agree with, just say “amen”. If I say something that you don’t agree with, but you’re still praying with me, or if I say something rather that, that you agree with, but it’s a tough saying, it is hard, it challenges us, just say, “have mercy”. I know this is a sophisticated crowd, but I’m trying to help you to understand the tradition. There’s one word, have mercy. You got that? Now, if I say something that you don’t agree with at all, but, but you know, we’re all here together trying to get through this together. Just say, “Lord, help”. Can we practice that? All right. This corner over here. You’re the Amen corner.  All right. All the way on the right, on my right. You’re the “amen” corner. All right, the folks in the middle, you’re the “have mercy” people, folks over here, you’re “Lord help”. All right. Let’s, let’s try, let’s try that. Our God is a great God. The wrath of the Lord is terrible. Wouldn’t it be great if this Baptist preacher preached for three more hours? All right, we are ready.

In the book of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 40, God speaks a word of hope to a broken people. A people physically and politically exiled, spiritually and emotionally exhausted. It’s such a tough time that God tells the prophet, “Comfort my people, speak tenderly to my people”. And then he talks about a voice crying in the wilderness. “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God”. And then he offers up these words, words so beautiful, words so sublime, that they cut right through the political noise and the nonsense of the day. He offers the kinds of words that prophets and poets provide. I love them and I lift them up on this Juneteenth weekend. Isaiah chapter 40, verse 3. “Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low. The crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together”.

I submit that that is God’s vision for the land. God’s vision for the land. “Every valley shall be exalted. Mountains and hills made low. The crooked places shall be made straight. The rough places smooth. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together”. It is a kind of moral topography. A justice centered geography. You got it? God’s great vision for the land. And so I submit to you that, that in God’s vision for the land, first of all, valleys are exalted and mountains and hills are made low. In other words, in God’s vision for the land, there is equity. There is equity because the high become low and the low become high. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. If valleys are exalted and mountains are healed and hills are made low, there is a kind of leveling of the playing field and we can get some equity in the land.

I know that’s become a dirty word among some governors these days, but the scripture says that in God’s vision there is equity. I know that that may not sound like good news to some because when you become accustomed to privilege, parity and equity might feel like oppression. Is that what the current backlash is all about? It is kind of unabashed bigotry that we are seeing emerge in our country? The stirring up of stereotypes that make it difficult for us to clearly see one another? Age old racial and religious resentments, divisions that blur our vision? Meanwhile, the highs sit very high and the lows sit very low. I submit to you that we need a new vision. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. We need a new vision.

We saw it just a few weeks ago when there were those in that place where I work up the street, who decided that they were going to play a kind of brinksmanship with the whole economy. And right in the center of that debate was, what are we going to do with all of those struggling poor people? You remember, they were saying that we gotta get work requirements for TANF and work requirements for SNAP. And if you listen to the media, you would think that work requirements weren’t already in place. Maybe news for some, but those programs already have work requirements. But they held all of us hostage and in the center of that debate were the poorest of the poor, the most marginalized members of the human family. I don’t know about you, but I think that there’s something unseemly about using the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak as pawns in a cynical political game. Somewhere I hear God say, “Woe to those who crush the poor “. Somewhere I hear Jesus say, “I came to preach good news to the poor and in my vision for the land, valleys are exalted, mountains and hills are made low”. In other words, there is, there is equity. We need some more equity in the land. But in order to get some equity, I submit to you that we also need some integrity.

They, they know better. I mean the folks, the folks who are pretending actually know better.  But we need some integrity and the prophet gives us some help again in this moral topography, in this spiritual geography. The prophet says, “crooked places are made straight”. There are too many crooked places, too many crooked places in our politics, too many crooked places in our national life. My friend Bryan Stevenson is right, “In America’s criminal justice system, you are better off to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent”.  Crooked places.  And while we celebrate Juneteenth, don’t forget about what has happened to us over the last three years. The realization of this new national holiday to be sure is the result of the work that many have been doing for years. But don’t forget the context in which it happened. It was a kind of reckoning with our age-old demons. As we watched a black man by the name of George Floyd have his life literally choked out of him over a discussion about $20. I want you to think about that. George Floyd, surrounded by those sworn to serve and protect, had his life literally squeezed out of him with a knee on his neck over a debate about a few dollars. Meanwhile, Wall Street bankers destroyed billions of dollars of household wealth through mortgage fraud and almost sent the whole American economy over the cliff. And not one banker went to jail. It’s because there are too many crooked places, crooked places, crooked places.

And that’s why I’m so honored to do the work that God has enabled me to do and the people of Georgia allow me to do on their behalf. I really do believe in democracy. I have a robust understanding of human sin. I think democracy is about the best we got. Democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea. This notion that each of us has within ourselves a spark of the divine. And if we have within us a spark of the divine, then we ought to have a vote. We ought to have a voice in the direction of the country and our destiny within it. We need democracy to check against the worst impulses in human nature. Reinhold Niebuhr put it this way. He said, “Humankind’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but our capacity for injustice makes democracy necessary”. If the people’s voices can be heard, we have a chance of making crooked places straight.

Let me see if I can make it plain for you. According to a Fox News poll. Mark this moment, you won’t hear me say that often. But according to a Fox News poll, 87% of Americans believe that on this issue of gun safety that keeps plaguing our national life and killing us so that we’re not safe in malls, not safe in schools, not safe at the barbershop, not safe anywhere. 87% of Americans believe that we ought to have universal background checks and still we can’t get it done in the Congress. And increasingly there’s a divide between what the people want and what they’re able to get out of their government.

I submit to you that that is a democracy problem. That is a moral problem. It is because the people’s voices have been squeezed out of their democracy, replaced by dark money. This is what happens. This is what happens when you have the best politicians that money can buy. That even when the people are in relative agreement, there are differences notwithstanding, there is this growing divide between what we want and what we are able to get from our government.  Crooked places. That’s why I stood up a while ago and thank God every now and then you get a victory. I was able to successfully get a cap on the cost of insulin to no more than $35 an out-of-pocket cost for folks on Medicare. I was trying to get it for everybody. I’m gonna keep fighting. Insulin shouldn’t be expensive. It was invented 100 years ago. The patent was sold for $1. And we have Americans rationing their insulin, getting insulin from people who have dead relatives with insulin left over in the land of the free? Crooked places. That’s why I’m going to keep standing up and may we renew our commitment this Juneteenth weekend.  May we renew our commitment to keep standing up until crooked places are made straight. And don’t you give in. Don’t you give in to despair and cynicism. Don’t you dare give up. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. We have to keep bending that arc and every now and then when you feel weak, know that not only in God’s vision for the land is there equity. Not only is there integrity, but the prophet reminds us that there is also possibility. He puts it this way. He says, “Rough places are made smooth.” I know it’s dark right now, but our God has a way of making rough places smooth.

I’m a testimony. My life is an iteration of the American dream, but it is an expression of God’s great possibility. When I was born, Georgia had two effective senators who brought good things home to our state, but they were arch segregationists. We were represented by two arch segregationists. When I was born, a year after Dr. King’s death, one of those senators said, “We love the Negro in his place and his place is the back door”. Well, today I sit in his seat. Rough places made smooth.

The other senator was so effective that there was an entire Senate Office Building. There are only three, one named after the other Georgia Senator. My office is in his building, and after I got reelected, after I’ve won my fifth election, I’m not bragging, I’m just telling you, after I won the fifth time, they said, “You’ve got more seniority now, you can move to another office, maybe to another building. You get a bigger office somewhere”. I said, “Well, I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m going to stay right here in this building. No, keep me in the building named after the Georgia Senator. After all, I’m from Georgia, but also his statue is right down the hall from my office.  I want you to keep me in this building so that I don’t ever forget. Every now and then I like to pass by his statue and look back over my shoulder and say “How you like me now?””

Rough place made smooth.  Arc of a moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. And we have to keep bending that arc. My mother was born in Waycross, Georgia. You know where that is? It’s way across Georgia. But because of the work of the righteous, the octogenarian hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton and somebody else’s tobacco, picked their son to be a United States senator. Rough places made smooth. Then finally, the prophet says, “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together”.  In God’s vision of the land, in God’s moral topography, there, there is equity, there is integrity, there is possibility. But finally there is inclusivity. “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” I used to read this text and I thought that what it meant was that the glory of God is so grand, so omnipresent, so extraordinary that when God’s glory is revealed, all flesh cannot help but to see it.  Nowadays, I read it in the reverse. I think the prophet is actually telling us how to see the glory of God. The way to see the glory of God is to get together.  All flesh has to get together in order to understand what God actually meant. Toni Morrison in that great book, Beloved, she says, “Over there, they don’t love your flesh.  Love your flesh. Your flesh.”

All flesh has to get together. And in a real sense, as I close, and nobody believes a Baptist preacher when he says “as I close”, but as I close, that’s the story of America. That’s the story of Juneteenth. It’s about all flesh getting together. I was in Texas yesterday, great place to be on Juneteenth weekend, and I was thinking about those slaves in Galveston, Texas, getting the word finally on June 19th, 1865, that they had been set free. Think about that. The Emancipation Proclamations signed as an executive order two and a half years earlier, but it took two and a half years for the reality of what was on paper, to be made flesh in their actual lives. And isn’t that the story of our country? Our complicated American story? It’s about the disconnect between our ideals and our actual lives and the work we must all do together in order to live out the reality of that promise. That’s the story of America. Our nation was conceived in liberty, but it’s taken all of us to know what liberty means to see the glory of God.

Somebody has wondered aloud how the great patriot, Patrick Henry, might have responded when he said, “Give me liberty or give me death”, if he had heard his slave respond by saying, “Me too, give me liberty or give me death.”  White sisters and brothers landed on these shores. They thought that they had arrived at the meaning of liberty. But then black folks spoke up and said, “Wait a minute, me too”. Self-congratulatory men thought that they understood what liberty looked like until women had to stand up during the women’s suffrage movement and had to stand up and say, “Me too. We need to show you what liberty actually looks like”.  We Christians have been largely unconscious of our religious bigotry and the ways in which we have been inhospitable to those who embrace other ways to the center. Until Jews and Muslims and Hindus and others began to stand up and say, “Wait a minute, we too belong. We too are a part of this freedom caravan.” Well abled folk ignored the ways in which we locked out those who were differently abled and they had to stand up and say, “We too are a part of the American story.”  We waxed eloquently about equal protection under the law while not providing that to our gay, lesbian and transgender sisters and brothers, and they had to rise up and say, “We too belong to the country. We too belong to the church.”

All flesh has to get together in order to see the glory of God. And as I close, I get tired sometimes.  I too can be given to cynicism. I have to fight against despair, the fatigue that exhausts not just the body but the soul, but when I’m struggling, I look up.  And as a preacher, I’d love to tell you that when I look up, I see something amazing and revelatory. the finger of God riding across the milky deep. But the truth is all I usually see is birds flying by. But I love, I love to see the birds fly by, because some of them have the good sense to fly in a V formation. That’s how geese fly. Geese fly in a V formation and the one out front that seems to be getting all the glory is actually working the hardest, because you can’t lead the people unless you love the people. You can’t send people where you’re not willing to go. The one out front is actually working the hardest. But what I like about geese is that every now and then, the one out front grows tired.  And when he grows tired, he just moves to the back of the formation, and she moves up and takes his place. And geese do that without a church schism. They do it without engaging in voter suppression or geese gerrymandering. Geese do that without threatening to shut the whole geese government down because they understand that my individual location is not as important as our collective destination. So let’s stand together this Juneteenth weekend. Let’s stand together. Let’s work together. Let’s fight together. Let’s struggle together. Let’s pray together. Let’s stay together until God’s vision for the land comes alive.