The Rev. James M. Lawson died on June 9 at the age of 95. The son and grandson of Methodist pastors he received his local preacher’s license in 1947 when he graduated from high school. During his lifetime, James Lawson cast the seeds of God’s kingdom as he studied and taught nonviolent resistance. Stories about Rev. Lawson’s commitment to spreading the seeds of the kingdom of God tell of a person who challenged the decades of segregation that shaped the realities of the society of his day and the generation in which I grew up.
Jailed multiple times in several states, once for praying on White House grounds, Lawson cast the seeds of God’s kingdom on both fertile soil and rocky ground. During one early imprisonment, he prophetically wrote about his future, “I’m an extreme radical which means the potent possibility of future jails. My life will be rather exciting, and (will) offer security only in the sense of service to God’s Kingdom.”
Lawson enrolled in Vanderbilt University’s Divinity School where he led the first nonviolence workshop in 1959 in a Nashville church basement. Expelled from Vanderbilt University’s Divinity School in 1960 for organizing lunch counter sit-ins and other nonviolent protests in opposition to racial injustice, stories about Lawson casting the seeds of God’s kingdom include a story about a student who was confronted and told that he was either going to be beaten or killed, to which the student responded by saying, “I can’t keep you from killing me, but I can assure you, you will not make me hate you, and I will continue to love you.”
After the US Supreme Court ruled in 1960 that segregation in rest rooms, waiting rooms and restaurants was illegal, Lawson helped the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) test the Supreme Court Ruling by organizing Freedom Riders, groups of white and African American civil rights activists who travelled in buses from Washington, D. C. to New Orleans. The Freedom Riders faced threats and violence as they travelled south, so much so that Martin Luther King urged the Freedom Riders to call off their protest several times as he was worried about their safety. Casting the seeds of God’s kingdom, the Freedom Riders attracted huge publicity as the US Government finally ordered all interstate bus companies to end segregation at interstate bus stations and in late 1961 ordered the end of segregation in airports, railway stations and bus stations.
Casting the seeds of God’s kingdom, Lawson helped coordinate the Meredith March in 1966 after James Meredith, the first African American to enroll at the University of Mississippi, began a solitary walk on June 6, 1966, intending to walk from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi to call attention to racism and continued voter discrimination in the South. Shortly after beginning his march, Meredith was shot by James Norvell, a white gunman. In response, Lawon helped several civil rights activist groups to continue to march on behalf of James Meredith and by the end of the march on June 22, 1966, the number of marchers had risen to approximately 15,000 in Jackson, Mississippi.
While serving as pastor at Centenary Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, James Lawson cast the seeds of God’s kingdom by playing a major role in the Sanitation Workers’ Strike when on February 12, 1968, 1,300 African American sanitation workers began a strike to demand better working conditions and higher pay after two workers were crushed to death after a truck malfunctioned and the city refused to provide compensation to the deceased workers’ families. Lawson developed an organizing strategy for the strike that confronted the mayor and members of city hall. In reflecting on the leadership of James Lawson, union leader Jerry Wulf said, “They feared Lawson for the most interesting of all reasons – he was a totally moral man, and totally moral men you can’t manipulate and you can’t buy and you can’t hustle.”
To which I would add, perhaps they feared Lawson because he was fulfilling his prophetic call to scatter the seed of God’s kingdom.
In today’s scripture reading from Mark 4:26-34, Jesus tells two parables about the seed of God’s kingdom. Although the two stories about God’s kingdom are different, they both are messages about the difference that God’s kingdom makes for our world. In both parables, seeds define the reality of God’s kingdom.
In the first parable, seeds define the reality of the Kingdom of God through trust in God’s presence as the person who scatters the seed sleeps and rises night and day as the seed sprouts and grows even though the person does not know how.
In the second parable, hope defines the transforming reality of God’s presence of God as the mustard seed grows into the greatest of all shrubs and provides a nesting place so the birds of the air can rest in its branches.
Trust and hope in God are the seed of God’s kingdom. May God bless us as we sow these seeds through our faith in Jesus.
Seeds of God’s Kingdom
by Pastor Marc Brown
June 16, 2024
Accompanying Scriptures: Mark 4:26-34
Fort Hill United Methodist Church
Order of Worship for June 16, 2024
Scripture Lesson Mark 4:26-34
The Good News “Seeds of God’s Kingdom”
Music “Hymn of Promise” Hymn #707
Prayer
Blessing
Closing Music “Let the Word Go Forth” by Lani Smith
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