by Stacey Hilliard | Feb 19, 2023 | Sermons
Transfiguration Sunday is always the Sunday before Lent begins. It remembers the event described in three of the four gospels where Peter, James, and John have a mountaintop vision of Jesus in His glory, standing beside a vision of Moses and Elijah. It comes right before the last days of Jesus’ ministry, which is why we remember it right before the season of Lent.
God willing, I will be with you for many more Transfiguration Sundays to come. You will hear my detailed take on this passage another time. But this week, every time I went to write about Jesus going up on a mountain to pray with his disciples right after telling them about his own coming suffering and death, I kept hearing a well-known, stirring voice saying, “I have been to the mountaintop.”
The mountaintop that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. references in his speech wasn’t the mountain of transfiguration. It was Mt. Nebo, the mountain Moses ascended for his first and only view of the promised land. God told Moses there that he could see it, but would not enter it. Moses died shortly thereafter and did not enter the promised land.
Jesus, likewise, is on a mountain, knowing that his disciples are soon going to have to carry on without him, and all three gospels tell us that in that time of prayer on the mountain, they were granted a vision of Jesus in spiritual form, glowing with divine favor, right along with Moses and the prophet Elijah. Jesus was compared to both during his ministry.
The mountaintop speech of Dr. King was his last. It was given in Memphis on April 3, 1968; the night before his assassination. On the mountain of transfiguration, we are told that Peter, James, and John were given a glimpse of a side of Jesus they had never seen before. The Greek word in Luke simply says it was “another” Jesus.
Dr. King’s final speech shows us another Dr. King. It’s not a sermon, per se, although he makes plenty of Bible references. But it references the work that has to be done once the mountaintop ecstasy is over. Peter wants to build dwellings on the mountain to stay and enjoy the glory. Nope. The work, with all its trials, suffering, and even death wait below. And it’s the willingness to go through those things that purifies the soul to be transfigured in glory.
I wish we had the ability to show video in here—someday—but I am going to play the audio of Dr. King’s last speech. He is speaking to striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, preparing them for an upcoming march. So you’ll hear references to that—including specific brands and companies of the day that he advised them to boycott.
The speech represents “another” Dr. King. The one that made people mad; the one who threatened systems of white power; the one that got results on both a local and national level; the one pounding the pavement right up until the day an assassin’s bullet took his life. He begins his remarks talking about how Ralph Abernathy is his best friend in the world. The following day, Ralph Abernathy would be cradling Dr. King’s bloody head in his hands.
The speech is long, but I invite you, in this Black History Month, on this day when we’re told at least Peter, James, and John got a glimpse of who Jesus really was; to listen and learn who the icon of the civil rights movement really was. Because everything he worked and died for is under threat; including his insistence that working for change must be non-violent. He spoke to striking sanitation workers then. Let him speak to us now. Let us hear the other Dr. King.
by Stacey Hilliard | Feb 13, 2023 | Conversations
Written and submitted by Bernadette Higgins
Who says you can’t learn anything from watching soap operas? Recently, I binged watched the HBO series “The Gilded Age” and I learned of a man named Lewis Latimer. So I immediately went on Wikipedia and this is what I found out.
Born in the seaside city of Chelsea, Massachusetts, Mr. Latimer was born in 1848 to former slaves who had escaped enslavement into Massachusetts. When Lewis was 10 years of age, due to the Dred Scott decision, his father needed to leave his family because he could not prove he was legally free from enslavement. The Latimer family became fractured.
Lewis joined the U.S. Navy in 1864 at the age of 16. After he was honorably discharged, he worked as an office boy in a patent law firm and learned how to use a set square, ruler, and other drafting tools. He did well at the firm becoming a draftsman in 1872. From there he went on to co-patent an improved toilet system for railroad cars, draft the drawings that enabled Alexander Graham Bell to get a patent for Bell’s telephone, develop a forerunner to the air conditioner, and pursue a patent on a safety elevator that prevented riders from falling out and into the shaft.
What got Mr. Latimer a plug on The Gilded Age was his work on perfecting integral parts of the electric light bulb. Nine days after his 33rd birthday he and another man received a patent for a method of attaching carbon filaments to conducting wires within an electric lamp. A few months later, another patent followed, this one for a modification to the process for making carbon filaments which reduced breakage during the production process. (Don’t I sound wicked smart? Kudos to Wikipedia.)
In 1884, the Edison Electric Light Company in NYC hired Latimer as a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigation on electric lights. While at Edison, he wrote the first book on electric lighting, “Incandescent Electric Lighting,” and supervised the installation of public lights in several major cities, including New York and London. He ended his career as a patent consultant to law firms.
Along with a stellar and remarkable career, he was a true Renaissance Man. He married Mary Wilson Lewis Latimer in 1873 and they had two daughters. As a patriot and a veteran of the Civil War, he was a proud member of the Grand Army of the Republic and served as a secretary and adjutant. He wrote a book of poems and various pieces for African American journals, as well as “Incandescent Electric Lighting.” He played the violin and flute, painted portraits, and wrote plays. Mr. Latimer was a founding member of the Flushing New York Unitarian Church. He was active in Civil Rights writing about equality, security, and opportunity, as well as teaching English and drafting courses to immigrants in New York.
I was struck by the grace with which a boy from such challenging, sad, and tragic circumstances grew to be a man of such accomplishment, fortitude, and wisdom. I am glad to know him and thank him for the light by which I write this biography.
by Stacey Hilliard | Feb 12, 2023 | Sermons
The rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation was “Sola Scriptura!” “The Bible alone!” John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, believed Scripture was critically important; but he wouldn’t go so far as to ignore other factors when working out the life and order of the church. As it turns out, that’s a very biblical thing to do. Take a look at how the first followers of Jesus solved a major conflict. It can help us with the conflicts of today.
Technical difficulties prevented us from recording Pastor Anne’s sermon
when she preached it on February 12, 2023, but you can read it here:
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by Stacey Hilliard | Feb 5, 2023 | Sermons
We often joke about church being all about the food. But there’s a way in which that’s true. This Sunday we celebrate Holy Communion. That celebration was a full meal for the house churches Paul and others established early on.
Last week we talked about the problems surrounding where the meat for that meal came from. But that wasn’t the only source of conflict around that community feast. The church in Corinth wrote Paul for advice about the other problem, too, and Paul’s words of censure have made quite a few modern Christians afraid to take Communion
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by Stacey Hilliard | Jan 29, 2023 | Sermons
Paul spends a lot of ink in a number of his letters trying to help the churches he started navigate inevitable conflicts with grace. The conflict this sermon addresses was over food. While the particulars don’t apply to us now, Paul’s solution most certainly does. Read or hear Paul’s advice on living with diversity both gracefully and faithfully.
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