Maybe more than any image of the past days since the death of Rev. Jesse Jackson, I have been thinking about the tears in his eyes in Grant Park on the night of the 2008 election as he learned the projected outcome of that election. As a person in the Psalms daily, I have been thinking about the promise of Psalm 126: “may those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.”

Jackson was asked the next day what was behind the tears witnessed the night before. Rev. Jackson offered that he wished that Medgar Evers or Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King could have been afforded a glimpse of that moment when previous sacrifices for civil rights saw the fruit of that night. 

The other image that continues to surface in social media feeds is from 1968. On the evening of April 4, Rev. Jackson was with Rev. Dr. King in Memphis for a sanitation workers’ strike at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, when King was assassinated. More sowing in tears.

In Jackson, we lost a civil rights icon on Feb. 17. He was a pivotal figure in the history of civil rights organizing in Chicago, but also a global ambassador for racial justice within a fabric of economic opportunity and equal protection under the law.

Consider this excerpt from his Rainbow Coalition speech to the Democratic National Convention on July 17, 1984:

America is not like a blanket—one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt.

I write today connecting Jackson’s vision spoken in 1984 with this increasingly authoritarian moment of setbacks in the social safety net, losses of equal constitutional protections under the law, and harassment of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. More sowing in tears.

We know that the text from Galatians 3:27-28 is likely a fragment of an early baptism liturgy: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

I would invite us to prayer, reflection, and action that demonstrates our baptism, by offering the following prayer to the Northern Illinois–Wisconsin Area:

Loving Creator,

Thank you for the sacrifices of those who have suffered for civil rights.
We confess our divisions do not bear witness to your love.
We are mindful of all who grieve anywhere with us this day.
Grant, O God, a renewing love to vivify our baptism.
Make fresh our witness of love that we may practice hope. 
Guide our steps, Good Shepherd, with grace to keep hope alive,
In the power and love we know as Christ. Amen.

The peace of Christ to you.

Dan Schwerin, Bishop
Northern Illinois-Wisconsin Area
The United Methodist Church