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Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Real Faith in the Real World, a ministry of Normal First United Methodist Church in Normal, Illinois. Let's listen to hear what Pastor Kathy King Nobles has to say today.

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As you just heard, our civil rights trips are history trips. We step back into the history of our country, to the 1950s and 60s of the civil rights movement, and also the history of the forced migration of 13 million African persons. And then from those stories, the threat of enslavement really goes further back than that because it's part of our faith story as well. Slavery is in the Bible. And as much as we want to avoid it and distance ourselves from it, the truth is that it's part of our faith story as well. And we find the most well-known biblical enslavement stories spanning four centuries over the first five books of the scriptures, beginning in Genesis all the way through Deuteronomy, with the story of freedom culminating in the book of Joshua, as you just heard. That's a chunk of the Old Testament stories of grueling labor, harsh punishments, unrelenting terror, abuse in all kinds of forms, stories of wondering where is God, and eventually stories of liberation and freedom. So the enslavement of the Israelite people spanned 400 years. So that would have been multiple, multiple generations. And it was Moses, we remember, whom God used to lead them towards freedom. But like Martin Luther King, Moses didn't reach the promised land. And as we heard, Joshua was the one who completed the work that was begun. And there's that familiar refrain in the book of Exodus that we see in African American spirituals: let my people go, let my people go. Pharaoh, one of the powerful leaders, refused again and again, and ten plagues were sent to wear him down. And eventually, eventually, after centuries of enslavement and 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites reached the Promised Land. So it's no wonder that these are the stories, that these stories from the Old Testament are the stories that the Africans found to be so meaningful and to give them hope and courage and strength. It's no wonder that these biblical stories were the basis of the songs that they sung in the fields around their tables in the churches while they marched. But even claiming these stories took acts of courage for them and perseverance. In the book The 1619 Project, which was kind of our textbook, in the section titled Music, the author wrote this when enslavers made the Bible available to the enslaved persons, which they rarely did, but when they made it available, they would often cut out or remove the book of Exodus with its stories of divine justice, of the Lord delivering them from bondage. The enslaved people, though, many of them became familiar with those stories, even without the Bible itself. And so they built those stories into their sermons, into their worship, into their music, and they incorporated those songs or those themes into the songs that they would sing in the fields, in the churches, in their homes. They sang while they worked, connecting the scriptures, even though many of them were never allowed to learn to read. These Bible stories became the core of the Negro spirituals, and they passed them down through the centuries, songs that we still know today. The stories of the Israelites living steadfastly through their own enslavement were the stories that not only kept the enslaved persons going, but also propelled the civil rights movement and were very much a part of their marches. So in Montgomery, Alabama, 1955, you know the story. Rosa Parks is arrested when she refuses to give up her seat on the bus. Four days later, thousands, thousands of people gathered at Holt Street Baptist Church in what would turn out to be the first of many mass meetings throughout the next year. And they gathered to organize the Montgomery bus boycott to fight for equal access to the buses. In a tour at Holt Street Baptist Church, I was struck by the video footage of a jubilant, passionate singing happening there in the crowd. Singing was always a part of those meetings. Preaching was always a part of those meetings. And in this particular footage, we saw Martin Luther King preaching at this first gathering in that sanctuary where we were standing. The crowd had gathered to learn about the upcoming bus boycott, the what, if you will, of their bus boycott. What were the details that they needed to know to make this boycott successful? But they were also there to learn the why and the how. Why were they being asked to sacrifice so much? And how were they going to sustain it for as long as they needed to? The why of the bus boycott, their why was because the buses were segregated and it wasn't fair. The how? How were they going to do it? Well, they were going to do it the same way they'd done everything else through walking and singing and praying and meeting together. Meeting after meeting, they were going to pour themselves into one another to give themselves strength and perseverance. And all of this helped build the perseverance they needed to sustain the bus boycott for over a year when the buses were finally desegregated. This was one of the foundations, I believe, and one of the geniuses of the civil rights movement. Mass meetings with inspiring music, passionate preaching, and foundational faith stories that reminded them that God had been faithful before and that God would be faithful again. What also was one of the foundational strengths of the movement was the contributions of thousands, thousands of people whose stories haven't been told, whose stories haven't been remembered. And so on this third trip for me, I decided I wanted to zero in on one of less known stories. What did they contribute? Who inspired them? And as we visited that first museum and the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, the first exhibit was a rotating exhibit of Byard Rustin, whom we now know was one of the main architects of the Civil Rights March or the March on Washington in August of 63. And so I spent most of my time in that museum just learning about Byard Rustin. But today on Mother's Day, I want to focus on Byard Rustin's relationship with his grandmother because he credited his grandmother with helping him be the person that he was. Not unlike so many other mothers or grandmothers, Byard Rustin's grandmother, Julia Rustin, was a force of love, and she was determined that her children, that her family, would be educated and that they would help other people. She was this dominant presence in her life. Julia Rustin had been formed and shaped by the Quakers, and she lived by these core beliefs. The oneness of the human family. Think about that. If we lived with that belief, the oneness of the human family, seeing the divine in every person, in every person, and speaking truth to power. The story was shared that young Rust young Byard recalls attending church one Christmas Eve with his grandmother. The sanctuary was filling up. There were people coming in that didn't normally come to worship. But it wasn't until the town alcoholic walked in that people began to whisper amongst themselves. And Bayard Rustin, a little boy, pointed to his grandmother and showed her that, look, this man came into the sanctuary. And as a grandmother often would do, she hushed him and turned his attention to the service. And then when they got home, she talked to Byard about the kind of courage this man must have had to come into a place where maybe people weren't going to be quite so kind to him. Just think about how much courage that took him to walk in there, knowing that others would be pointing at him. Just think about how strong he must have been. She was able to help Bayard see the humanity in that gentleman and the respect that he deserved. And that night, that conversation, and no doubt countless others stayed with Bayard, forming his compassion and his conviction and his quest to make life better for others, which he clearly did through all of the work that he did in the civil rights movement. His life is one of many that is worth learning about. This trip, like the previous two, was a history trip, but it was so much more. It was a trip that teaches us about faith, a trip that shows us how faith can give us the courage to face the most difficult challenges in life. And it's a trip that shows us that the work of the kingdom of God is not just about a few people that make the headlines, but it's about thousands of people over and over, over and over again, who are steadily working to help make life better for others. And so my prayer continues to be for those who traveled and all of those who hear our stories, that we are all changed and molded and shaped and formed a little bit more closely into the people that God is calling us to be. Let's pray. Oh God, we thank you for your call upon all of our lives to reflect your love and to show your respect and graciousness to others. Amen.

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Thanks for joining us for this episode of Real Faith in the Real World. We hope that this message helps you grow in your understanding and sparks new insight on your journey of faith. If you found this episode helpful, don't forget to subscribe and share. And as always, if you have questions and want to dive deeper into today's topic, please feel free to reach out to us by going to normalfumc.org, click about normal first, and click contact to leave us a message. We would love to hear from you. And until next time, keep seeking, keep questioning, and keep growing.