He was wounded for America’s transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. We come to celebrate John Lewis.Īnd so, let us be clear: When President Lyndon Baines Johnson picked up his pen to sign the voting rights bill into law, what he etched in ink had already been sanctioned by blood - the blood of the martyrs the blood of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, two Jews and an African American who were murdered in Mississippi the blood of Viola Liuzzo the blood of John Lewis. Howard Thurman said, “By some amazing but vastly creative spirituality, the slave undertook the redemption of a religion that the master had profaned in his midst.” John Lewis’s ancestors met a man named Jesus in the brush arbors of Alabama and Georgia and Mississippi, and John Lewis received that faith and took it with him across that bridge in Selma and every other bridge. How did he do it? The great-great-grandson of slaves, he received a spiritual power, born of suffering, a moral audacity that transcended human station and called upon the human law to more closely align itself with the law of love. On a bridge in Selma, he stared down bigotry and brutality and tyranny, and won. We celebrate John Lewis.īeaten and battered, but never bitter and always unbowed. We are summoned here because in a moment when there are some in high office who are much better at division than vision, who cannot lead us so they seek to divide us, in a moment when there is so much political cynicism and narcissism that masquerades as patriotism, here lies a true American patriot who risked his life and limb for the hope and the promise of democracy. And I rise simply to ask: In this call to celebration, what is it that has summoned us here and calls us to slow down, to linger for a little while, with so much swirling around us? We celebrate John Lewis.Īt a time that there is so much going on in our world, the news cycle is packed and moves at a dizzying pace, yet for the last several days, it is as if time stood still while the nation takes its time to remember him.
WARNOCK LEGACY TYRANNY HOW TO
He loved America until America learned how to love him back. He became a living, walking sermon about truth-telling and justice-making in the Earth. But as his life took shape, instead of preaching sermons, he became one.
WARNOCK LEGACY TYRANNY TRIAL
And at age 16, he preached what we Baptists call his trial sermon in a little country church. A farm boy, he used to preach to the chickens. And as we gather in this house of God, we are reminded that as a teenager, he actually wrestled with a call to ministry. RAPHAEL WARNOCK: We praise God for John Lewis. But first, Reverend Raphael Warnock gave the opening remarks as he presided over the funeral. In a minute, we’ll hear the words of President Obama and civil rights legend, Reverend James Lawson.
King nicknamed John Lewis “the boy from Troy” when they first met in Montgomery in 1958. The funeral took place at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, once led by Martin Luther King Jr. Bush’s inaugurations and was an early outspoken critic of the Iraq War. Interestingly, John Lewis boycotted both Donald Trump and George W. President Donald Trump was notably absent. President Barack Obama delivered the eulogy. Bush and Bill Clinton each spoke at the service, and remarks from Jimmy Carter, who doesn’t travel due to coronavirus, were read aloud. Thursday’s service marked the end of a homegoing journey that began over the weekend in Troy, Alabama, where he was born, carried his body onward to Selma, over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and Washington, D.C., then to Atlanta.
John Lewis died July 17th at the age of 80. presidents gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, Thursday to honor the life of civil rights legend, 17-term Congressmember John Lewis, who represented the city of Atlanta for more than three decades and was known as the conscience of Congress. AMY GOODMAN: Family members, lawmakers, three living former U.S.
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