Becoming Committed – “Tired of giving in…”
Morning Psalms for the week: 119, 145 (Monday); 34, 146 (Tuesday); 5, 147:1-11 (Wednesday); 27, 147:12-20 (Thursday); 22, 148 (Friday); 43, 149 (Saturday)
Evening Psalms for the week: 121, 6 (Monday); 25, 91 (Tuesday); 27, 51 (Wednesday); 126, 102 (Thursday); 105, 130 (Friday; 31, 143 (Saturday)
Old Testament: Gen. 49:1 – 50:26; Exod. 1:6 – 3:15
Epistle: 1 Cor. 10:14 – 13:3
Gospel: Mark 7:24 – 9:29
Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name? Will you set the prisoners free and never be the same? Will you kiss the leper clean, and do such as this unseen and admit to what I am you and you in me? (Verse 3, “Will You Come and Follow Me?)
Rosa Parks Library and Museum
Montgomery, AL
I imagine everyone has a favorite historical action figure, but mine is Rosa Parks. Miss Rosa was born in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her mother was a teacher and her father a carpenter. She suffered from chronic illness as a child and was repeatedly bullied. After her parents separated, she moved with her mother to Montgomery where she later worked as a seamstress and became active in the Civil Rights Movement. We (and I mean we white people) generally turn Rosa Parks into a romanticized, even non-threatening, hero, imagining her as a diminutive woman whose signature act of defiance was more serendipitous than intentional. But nothing could be further from the truth. Rosa Parks was a disrupter—a powerhouse of determination and commitment who devoted herself to advancing racial justice until her death in 2005 at the age of 92. A keen observer of human behavior, she recalled her grandfather guarding their front door with a shotgun as the KKK marched down the street; she saw the buses passing that carried only white students to school while she and her friends walked. Parks later wrote, “As far back as I can remember, I could never think in terms of accepting physical abuse without some form of retaliation if possible.”
In 1943, Rosa Parks joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and became its secretary. In 1945, despite Jim Crow laws and discrimination by poll workers, she finally succeeded in registering to vote on her third try. She and her husband became early members of the League of Women Voters. Sponsored by liberal white friends, she attended the Highlander Folk School, an education center for activism in workers’ rights and racial equality. She turned that education into her life’s work.
Rosa Parks was not an accidental activist. She is perhaps best known for her role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. Challenging segregation on the city buses had been tried unsuccessfully before, but following her refusal to give up her seat in the “colored section” of a bus driven by James Blake (who had left her standing in the rain 12 years earlier), leaders of the NAACP believed she was the best candidate to see through a challenge in the courts. Of her experience, Parks said, “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
The Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, which I visited in 2022, documents the history of racial discrimination in transportation, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Boycott was a monumental undertaking. Local leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to spearhead the effort; 50,000 protest leaflets were distributed around town; Martin Luther King was recruited to lead the MIA. Under King’s leadership, a one-day Boycott was an astonishing success. In order to continue it, the MIA established a carpool system, with over 200 drivers and 100 pick-up stations. At the center of the effort were African American churches, which held meetings and raised funds to support the Boycott. Not just one person, but a whole community of people who were “tired of giving in.” The Bus Boycott lasted for 382 days, financially crippling the city’s transportation system and drawing national attention. On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court declared Alabama’s racial segregation laws for buses unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.
In No Name on the Street, James Baldwin wrote, “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” Perhaps what Jesus shows us above all is that it is our sacred duty to resist the domination of an empire that relies for its strength on the ignorance of the governed and the disenfranchisement of the powerless. Rosa Parks was tired of giving in. When Jesus caused a riot in the temple, he was tired of giving in. By his own example, Jesus tells us that we, too, must be tired of giving in to injustice in all its manifestations. We, too, must overcome the fear of being uncomfortable, of facing fear and criticism. We, too, must resist the temptation to hide anonymously behind conformist practices or the conventions of the dominant culture. ‘Why are you talking about having no bread,” says Jesus to the disciples in frustration, reminding them to rely on him and not the “yeast” of empire. Through Jesus, wrote Marcus Borg, God becomes an “experiential reality.” God is not to be thought of “as a remote and transcendent creator far removed from the world, but imaged all around us.”
Throughout the stories in Mark, we see Jesus engaging directly and intimately with the marginalized, elevating and celebrating them. His engagement is physical and personal—using dirt and his own saliva to heal, lifting the suffering by the hand, feeding the multitudes of outsiders who come hungry—literally and figuratively—to hear him preach. His frustration with the disciples is often palpable. “Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears and fail to hear?” (Mark 8:17-18) He might be talking to us as well!
Pay attention to this world, says Jesus. Admit to what I am in you and you in me. Serve the needs of justice—not to be seen or recognized as those in power do to expand their influence, but because it is right. Lead when called to do so, but be willing to relinquish your privilege and take a back seat on the bus, ceding power to others who can speak for themselves. Jesus says, “If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their crosses and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mark 8:34-35) Courage, persistence, intimacy, attention, compassion—these are the requirements of a commitment that is “tired of giving in.” The questions for us, surely, are these: What do we see that will cause us not just to bear witness, but to act? How will we use our privilege, our spiritual gifts, and our faith—the dirt and saliva of our lives—for the cause of justice and liberation?
This is me in Montgomery with Miss Rosa and Keelan Adams
of Montgomery Deep History Tours
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