by Richard Lucco

ON DECEMBER 17, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Montgomery Improvement Association and in opposition to segregated transportation in Montgomery, Alabama. Three days later, on December 20, the ruling took effect, ending the 382-day Montgomery bus boycott.

Young Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking at Holt Street Baptist Church, said: It is true that in the struggle for freedom in America we will have to boycott at times. But we remember that as we boycott that the boycott is not an end in itself... [the] end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.

The “beloved community.” The Apostle Paul said it this way: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility...” (Eph.2:13, 14).

Charles Marsh, in his book The Beloved Community, writes that the young Baptist pastor King, “...the first Negro on the bus... took a seat on the third row. Glen Smiley, the peaceworker from Texas sat alongside King... ‘I rode the first integrated bus in Montgomery with a white minister and a native Southerner as my seatmate,’ King said.” And they became a “beloved community.” them.

I have been graced and blessed to have black brothers and sisters as my seatmates in my own journey towards the “beloved community.” I want to thank God for each of them.

Edna was the first. I was around ten years old. She came to our house once a week to clean and wash and iron for my widowed working mother. She took the bus to our house, an hour each way. Edna told me most of her work was in our neighborhood. I said she should move into the house up the street that was for sale; then she wouldn’t have to ride so long on the bus. She said even if she had the money to buy the house, “Folks like me can’t live in neighborhoods like this.” And then she hugged me.

Melvin was my friend and teammate in high school. He was dating another friend, Jennifer. I would pick her up and take her home for him because her parents would not “approve” of him dating their daughter.

Joe was a veteran youth worker who became a mentor to me when I was in seminary. He challenged me to influence folks like me to work for reconciliation with black folks.

Peewee and Bo were pioneers in working with urban minority kids in Young Life. I sat with them and listened to them speak and pray about justice and righteousness and change, and felt as if I were in the presence of the biblical prophets.

And then there is my son Chris, a black child with a white father and brothers and a Mexican American mother, who helps me to see the world through his eyes; a world that is still sometimes cruel and unfair. Every day Chris is an example to me of courage and insight and grace.

Of course there are friends and colleagues in the Covenant. Men and women who teach me to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. And in so doing invite me into “beloved community.” Harold and Jerome, Debbie and Don, Harvey and James and Tim.

The “beloved community” is not yet fully realized. In fact, it often feels more broken than whole; more a hope than a reality. But that hope calls us to work and pray that racial righteousness and reconciliation might characterize our life and ministry together.

In May of 2003, my seatmates on the Sankofa bus became a beloved community. We walked across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama. And we remembered. We remembered King and Hosea Williams and John Lewis and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference leaders. We remembered they marched across that bridge, alongside the people of Selma. We remembered they stood together to face Sheriff Jim Clark and his army of angry white police. We remembered what would be called Bloody Sunday, when young John Lewis was beaten almost to death and many others were beaten or jailed.

We remembered that two weeks later hundreds of clergy from every denomination came to Selma, and became a “beloved community” marching from Selma to Montgomery. And we remembered that just five months later the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed.

In reflecting on that time and that “beloved community” I wrote in my journal:

Bloody Sunday, 1965.

They crossed the bridge. The troopers said, “Stop. Go away.” They didn’t stop and they didn’t go away. They knelt and prayed and were beaten and jailed.
What do we do now? We do what they did in Selma. We march for justice and righteousness.

When people say, “Stop.”

We say, “No, we can’t stop.”

When they say, “Be quiet.”

We say, “No, we can’t be quiet.”

When they say, “Go away.”

We say, “No, we can’t go away.”

And then we kneel and pray together.

Sisters and brothers in Christ.

Sisters and brothers in a movement.

A movement for justice.

A movement for reconciliation

in the Covenant.

in the Church.

in the country.

in the world.

The beloved community. Already and not yet. Not just black and white. But Latino and Asian-American. Native and First Nation. Colombian and Canadian. Korean and Japanese. Indigenous and African. For “we are a companion of all who fear thee.” And we are enlarged and enriched by our brothers and sisters. The beloved community. We pray for it and live towards it. In the church. For the world.