Timothy J. Clarke - The Walk of The Believer: Walk In The Light

Last week, you’ll remember, Sister Brigitte, that we looked at in this same contextual environment, verses one through five of Ephesians 5, where the Apostle Paul puts pen to paper and challenges the church to walk in love. In fact, Paul says to them, Bishop, that we are to be imitators of God as dear children. Because of that, as we imitate God, we are to walk in love. So, another way of saying that is that to love is to be like God. John tells us in 1 John, chapter 1, that God is love. Therefore, if we’re going to be imitators, the Greek word for imitate literally means to mimic someone. It is to watch someone do something and then act as you see them acting. When I was a boy, long ago, we used to play a game called Simon Says. Don’t leave me out here by myself, like I’m the only old head up in here! In Simon Says, we would stand in line, and someone in front would say, «Simon Says, touch your head with your right hand,» and you would touch your head with your right hand. «Simon Says, put out your left foot,» and you would put out your left foot. They would do that about four, five, or six times, and then say, «Put out your right hand,» and if you did, they would say «disqualified» because they hadn’t said «Simon Says.» The whole purpose of Simon Says is to mimic the one giving you permission and setting the parameters. I’m preaching, and y’all don’t even know it! That’s what the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 5 in the opening passage of that pericope; he says, «Be imitators, be mimics of God.» Whatever you see God do, you do it! One of the ways we most resemble God, favor God, is when we love. One of the ways we most act like God, look like God, and resemble God is through love. Today, I’ll talk more about this later in the service. Today is the actual birthday of the Apostle of Non-Violence, the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Somebody ought to clap about that! I’m not going to let time cause us to forget Dr. King. We’re not going to do that. We won’t relegate him to the ash heap of life or the dust of antiquity. Without that man’s voice, power, life, and labor, our nation and our lives would be drastically different today. We ought to celebrate him! We ought to applaud him and remember him. Today is his birthday, January 15, 1929. He was born on Sweet Auburn in Atlanta, Georgia. The King, who could have been anything he wanted to be—brilliant, scholarly, articulate, dynamic, loquacious, and forceful—chose to be the pastor of a little church down there in Alabama, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. There, at the fulcrum of time, he became the voice of the conscience of this nation. That King would always say, «Don’t let anybody drag you so low that you start to hate them, for hate is a burden we cannot bear, and it is an expense we cannot afford to pay.» I feel like preaching up here today! I know there’s a lot going on in our world—still a lot of injustice, inequity, unfairness, bias, prejudice, and racism. But beloved, you and I must resist the urge, the tendency, the temptation to fall into the quagmire and quicksand of hatred that pollutes us, poisons us, and hinders us from being all that God has created us to be. We must rise above it! Somebody say, «Rise above it!» Yes, they do wrong, but we must rise above it. We’ve been maligned and marginalized, but we must rise above it. We’ve been mistreated, misrepresented, misaligned, and rejected, but we must rise above it. One way we do that, beloved, is by refusing to give in to the demon of hatred. I had lunch one day last week with two pastors of the AME Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the church of Richard Allen. I asked them both, since they are prominent pastors in that denomination, if they ever hear from Mrs. Pinkney. Some of y’all might not know who that is—the widow of that preacher.