Andrew and Peter, Vernon and Martin - The Rev. Bob Olmstead

Andrew and Peter, Vernon and Martin

Rev. Bob Olmstead

"One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, 'We have found the Messiah'...He brought Simon to Jesus..." (John 1:40-42a)

The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, is a congregation of solid Black citizens. In the late 1940s and early 1950s their pastor was Rev. Vernon Johns. He was a well-educated "Negro" pastor, and his congregation looked to him for the hope and solace of the gospel.

They also wanted him to have social standing in their community, and they were glad for his advanced degrees. This was the era of rigid segregation in Alabama, and the people of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church hoped that having a well-educated pastor might open a few eyes and bring greater dignity to the Black Church in their southern community. Their stature was measured to some degree - they felt - by his stature.

But Vernon Johns was not content to put up a good front. He was a courageous and outspoken voice for justice in Montgomery. He was a sassy dreamer. He saw a better day ahead and urged his congregation to take actions. He believed economic boycotts were a means of making folks take notice. He personally boycotted white grocers. He planted a garden, put on his farmer's clothes and sold his own homegrown fruits and vegetables. He provided an alternative to white grocers who treated blacks with little respect. He meant to be a model for other Montgomery, Alabama, Blacks.

The people of his congregation did not sign on to his program of boycotts. They knew how easily they could lose their jobs, be falsely accused of crimes, or subjected to violence. His people asked Rev. Johns to tone down his rhetoric.

When a white policeman raped a member of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church the congregation was enveloped by the paralyzing fear that marked the lives of African Americans living in the South during those decades. But Vernon Johns went to the police station and called for a line-up of white police. He insisted that the girl was entitled to the protection of the law. The other white police was not altogether unsympathetic, but they told him that he could not buck the system and warned him of the wrath of the Ku Klux Klan. The chief of police told Rev. Johns there was a place for him in Montgomery - if he would learn his place.

Johns had had too much of being kept in his place. When police and shopkeepers called him ‘boy’ he answered, "there is no boy here." He was secure in his own manhood; he was outraged by wrongs; he was a critic of his own congregation because they were willing to tolerate so much indignity and accept so much injustice.

He tried to enlist members of the congregation in direct confrontations with the system of segregation and the pattern of degradation. One day a member of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church witnessed another Black man being beaten by a Montgomery policeman. He stepped up and said 'enough'. He pushed the policeman to one side to stop the beating. Other police shot and killed him.

The congregation blamed Rev. Johns for the murder of one of their own. Their pastor's call for reforms had led to violence and death and could only lead to more of the same. They asked him to preach a conciliatory sermon.

Rev. Johns posted his sermon title that week on the church signboard. It read: "When It's Safe for Whites to Murder Blacks." The congregation was unhappy. The police were unhappier. The Klan burned a cross in front of the parsonage. When Sunday came Rev. Johns went ahead with his sermon. He reminded the congregation of the injustices of Southern segregation, how it assaulted their dignity and threatened their lives. He knew - they all knew - that the flaming cross on the parsonage lawn was warning of a lynching - meant to frighten them into submission. Instead he urged them to take action.

He never got to finish the sermon. A white police escort removed him from the church in the middle of it. He was held in the police station most of that Sunday afternoon. When the police released him they told him that no one was going to have to make a martyr of him. One said cryptically, "Your congregation has seen to that."

While Rev. Johns was being held in jail the Board of Deacons of his church unanimously voted to fire him.

He would never have another pastorate.

Rev. Vernon Johns was a mature man. The Dexter Avenue Baptist Board of Deacons went looking for a younger man to be their next pastor. They sought someone who was well educated but still "teachable". They found and called a young man of twenty-six who already had his doctorate. His name was Martin Luther King, Jr.

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This morning we heard the brief account of Andrew, one of the least known of the twelve disciples. If Andrew is mentioned at all in the Gospels his name is linked with one of the others, usually with his brother Simon, who became known as Peter, and in whom Jesus found the leadership needed for the future of his Church.

What did Andrew accomplish? He brought his brother to meet Jesus.

Andrew was ahead of his time. He was a disciple of John the Baptist, but when Jesus walked by Andrew trailed after the new young rabbi. He watched Jesus carefully. Then he went and got his brother, Simon, who was still busy as a fisherman. Andrew's only recorded words are those he said his brother: "We have found the Messiah."

Andrew brought Simon to meet Jesus. Jesus recognized a leader and gave Simon a new name: Peter. From then on the story is Peter's.

Andrew was instrumental, though largely unheralded. Peter gets the credit.

Vernon Johns was instrumental, though largely forgotten. Martin Luther King gets the credit. Their preaching and their behavior was almost identical. Their courage was unsurpassed. Their faith was fulfilled in action. Within two years of coming to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church Martin Luther King, Jr. was leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Then came Selma . . . and the March on Washington . . . Time Magazine Man of the Year . . . the Nobel Peace Prize . . . the words "I have a dream..." rank with "Four score and seven years ago..." in American memory.

Would we be celebrating Martin Luther King's birthday this weekend if it were not for Rev. Vernon Johns?

We'll never know that.

He paved the way; he helped ripen history for the moment a Martin Luther King, Jr. could step forward and harvest the fruit.

Andrew paved the way for Simon Peter.

Vernon Johns paved the way for Martin Luther King, Jr.

Few of us are called to fame and national prominence, but all of us are called to do what's right, to pave the way for those who come after us, to help ripen the fruit of God's future.

The time is right for us (I mean us here at First UMC) to take more assertive steps to welcome gay, lesbian and transgendered people into our fellowship.

The time is right for us (I mean us as Americans) to learn how to make peace as successfully as we make war.

With this past September 11 in mind, someone said recently that Martin Luther King offered his body as a target, not as a weapon. What an important distinction!

Let me remind you of some of Martin Luther King's words (and of the spectacular service planned for our sanctuary this afternoon at 3:00). Speaking of the Church, and of those of us who call ourselves Christians, King said,

"We are called to be thermostats that transform and regulate the temperature of society, not thermometers that merely record or register the temperature of majority opinion... How often the Church has had a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds... The time is always right to do what is right... Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precede the crown we wear. To be a Christian one must take up his [or her] cross, with all of its difficulties and agonizing and tension-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its mark upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering."

On another occasion he said,

"Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."

You may think nobody is watching or that your meager efforts will make no difference. You may think it will be a long and difficult time before things are better. But I'm telling you, the time is always right to do what is right.

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The materials on Vernon Johns were provided by permission from Rev. Judith Stone, Grace United Methodist Church, Saratoga, California; from a January 19, 1997 sermon.