A change is gonna come
The PC(USA)’s Advocacy Director amplifies Sam Cooke’s vision during an online worship service
LOUISVILLE — Six decades ago, Sam Cooke gave us a memorable song promising that a change is gonna come. On Wednesday during an online worship service primarily for PC(USA) staff, the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins reminded worshipers they are called, like Cooke and others involved in the civil rights struggle and God’s people who lived long before that, to persevere through difficult times.
It's not like people of faith haven’t seen hard times before, Hawkins noted, relying on Rev. 21:1-5, Rev. 22:1-2 and Rev. 22:20-21 for a sermon that was as assuring as it was challenging.
“We have ambivalent feelings toward change,” said Hawkins, the PC(USA)’s Advocacy Director. “Change can be promising and frightening at the same time. We welcome it, and yet we dread it.”
He asked: Isn’t that the whole point of Revelation 21?
“We can’t straighten out the mess that’s in our lives, but God can. The promise is that good change is going to come, that we have to pray and at the same time work for change so that we can be ready when it comes.”
Cooke himself was a celebrated entrepreneur, musician and songwriter, and yet was denied rooms in white-only hotels as he traveled throughout the South. “This is a song of faith and a call to perseverance,” Hawkins said of “A Change is Gonna Come.” “It is an expression of enduring hope for a better future, a belief that change not only can come, but that it will.”
In the midst of today’s “political madness, we are still to serve the Lord our God each and every day with faithfulness, love and sacrifice,” Hawkins said. “This is God’s amazing promise: that a new day, a new reality, is coming. Just hold on, trust and believe. The same God who created the heavens and the Earth is not yet done.”
The Rev. Dr. Felipe Martínez, Co-Moderator of the Unification Commission, joined Hawkins and the Rev. Jihyun Oh, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly and Executive Director of the Interim Unified Agency, and Dr. Dianna Wright, Director of Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations, to lead Wednesday’s service. Martínez reminded those in worship that last month, Oh shared aspirations and four core values that will mark the work of the Interim Unified Agency. “We’re called to be nimble, trustworthy, learning and courageous,” Hawkins reminded his colleagues.
That includes being nimble “in our ability to adapt to whatever comes our way, knowing that God is still on our side and still leading us.”
It also calls for trustworthiness “in our own personal integrity and to model what it means to be a Christian as we continue to work to serve together,” he said, “always understanding that our colleagues are doing the best that they can to be trustworthy as well.”
Learning means growing, “to grow better in our faith and in our service,” he said, “and to continue to want to learn more about how to be more efficient.”
Courage is most needed in our nation’s atmosphere of fear, he said. “In the midst of a country at war with itself, remember that the Bible constantly encourages us, ‘be not afraid.’”
John of Patmos wrote Revelation for people being persecuted for being Christian, Hawkins noted. “It gave them assurance,” he said, even though “things would get worse before they got better.”
Hawkins called Revelation “a message of hope and faith in God’s reign and omnipotence. The words of Revelation are powerfully comforting and reassuring, words we need to hear today as we are living in a period of unrelenting chaos, persecution and political madness.”
The rights of women are being undermined, Hawkins said. LGBTQ+ people, especially those in the trans community, are seeing their rights threatened. Racial justice “is under attack.”
“The Smithsonian Institute has been warned that the National Museum of African American History and Culture has too many references to Black people,” Hawkins said. “Hispanic members of our family are being swept up from city streets simply for being Black and brown, snatched away from their families … detained and deported by an administration so filled with racial animosity that it refuses to see the inhumanity of their actions and that they are counter to the Word of God.”
And, of course, armed National Guard troops now patrol the streets of Washington, D.C., “under the guise of reducing crime,” which is down by more than 25% from the previous year, Hawkins noted.
“Our world is grilling under the destructive power of climate change as the West Coast is on fire and the South is under water,” Hawkins said. “There is global, horrific suffering inflicted by human hands as Palestinian children die from starvation and gunshot wounds and Sudanese children suffer in even greater numbers while media outlets ignore their plight. Ukrainians, Congolese and Haitians die unmercifully by the hundreds on a daily basis.”
In addition, we all have our own problems, fears and concerns, Hawkins pointed out. Family members deal with illness. Children face the challenges of life. “Each day we grow older and we struggle to adapt to our new reality,” he said. “We are tired of being frustrated when things just don’t work out — no matter how hard we try, no matter how much determination we have, life humbles us. No matter how smart we are or how competently we perform or how faithfully we try to live, life remains a struggle.”
But “God has not forgotten the world that God created. God still hears the cries of those who are suffering, and God suffers with them,” Hawkins said. “God is sending men and women in order to make positive change” to “end unnecessary suffering and pain and despair.”
“The promise is a new heaven and a new Earth,” he said. “Glory be to God, for change is gonna come. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
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