Advent 10

The Second Wednesday of Advent, December 10, 2008

Isaiah 6:1-13 

Then I heard the Lord saying, Whom shall I send?  Who will go for me?  And I answered, Here am I; send me.   

An amazing thing happened in May of 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama.   

The civil rights movement was a few years old and losing steam.  The bus boycott in Montgomery that began with the arrest of Rosa Parks had united blacks and achieved the right to sit in any seat on the bus; but integration and voting rights were not coming easily, and blacks in Birmingham were discouraged and afraid.  The movement, begun with such joy and dedication was dying. 

And with good reason.  “Troublesome” blacks were likely to lose their jobs, be evicted from their homes, or be kicked off the land they tenant farmed; andthat was the least of it.  Beatings, jailings, and murder also loomed outside the church where night meetings were held. 

So when an impassioned Martin Luther King asked, “Who will go for us?  Who will march for justice?” guess who finally answered, echoing Isaiah.  Guess who said, “Here am I; send me.”  It was Black youth.   

Black teenagers and children marched.  By the hundreds.  They walked out of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church two abreast and singing, and marched down the street.  The waiting police were confused as line after line of children emerged from the church.  Finally they loaded them into buses and took them to jail.  The young people were exuberant.  But the next day, when more than 1000 new children emerged from the church, singing, the police were prepared, equipped to disperse them.  Police dogs were set upon the singing young people, and fire hoses knocked them down and rolled them “like tumbleweeds.”  

But a horrified nation took note.  The movement began to grow; it grew so large that Congress finally passed the civil rights legislation of 1964. 

This is the season when God asks, “Whom shall I send?  Who will go for me?”  Again a child will say, “Send me.” 

And this child will save us all.