Perfection is difficult to come by! No matter how good
something is, it is always possible to find flaws. It is always
possible to discover imperfections.
When I was in engineering school, I took a class in
drafting. My professor’s claim to fame was that he could,
without a compass, draw freehand a perfect circle. Just
with his pencil and muscle control, he could put on paper
what appeared to be a complete circle, with no variations in
the distance between the center and the circumference.
That’s what it appeared to be; but, of course, we students,
delighting in taking our teacher down a peg or two, found
that if you used a ruler to check it, the circle was not
perfect. There were wobbles and wiggles. Not perfect.
Perfection is difficult to achieve.
I have this terrible talent of being able to spot a misspelled
word in the middle of a text. I don’t know how I do it, but I
do it. I pick up a book or a paper, and immediately my eye
goes to the mistake. It drives typists crazy! Someone once
gave me a report, and said, “I have been over this a dozen
times. I have used my computer program’s Spell-check. I
defy you to find any mistakes.” So I picked up the report,
turned to the first page – the first page! – and there, about
halfway down, it said, “For the first time in several years,
our expenditures have exceeded our budge.” Our budge?
As in, “Here I stand and I won’t budge?” No, it was
supposed to be “budget”, and this eagle eye of mine was
the one to catch it. She wouldn’t speak to me for a week!
Perfection is so hard to achieve.
But the truth is that perfection never comes to you and me
without the involvement of others. Completeness never
comes to us without the contributions of others. And, most
important, our lives and our works are not complete until
they are taken up and carried forward by others who follow
us. Great authors’ books are not complete until an editor
revises them. Great artists’ paintings are not complete until
a framer puts them into a proper setting. Great musicians’
compositions are not complete until a performer interprets
them. And great lives are not complete, not perfect, until a
succeeding generation takes on the challenges they leave
behind.
I think that is what the writer of the Book of Hebrews is
talking about when he gives us the roll call of the heroes
and heroines of faith, but then says that they would not,
apart from us, be made perfect. All these worthies of the
Biblical record, having accomplished so much, having done
such daring things – their life stories are not complete apart
from us in this generation.
Doris Reynolds Parker lived a long and successful life. For
eighty-five years she fought the good fight, dealing with
discrimination and injustice, working to support her family,
but always determined, and always faithful. She lived a
long and successful life, and now, at her passing, we are
tempted to say that her life is complete. In a sense, it is;
but complete though it may be, it is not yet perfected. Her
life will be perfected only in you who survive her. Apart
from you, she is not made perfect. Perfection is so difficult
to achieve; in fact, it never comes without the involvement
of others.
To what did Doris Parker devote herself, and what will it
mean to perfect her legacy? What I know of her life and
legacy can be summed up in that powerful statement of the
prophet Micah, given some eight centuries before Christ:
“He has told you ... what is good; and what does the Lord require
of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly
with your God?”
If you would perfect Doris Parker’s legacy, turn to these
things.
I
First, what does the Lord require of you but to do justice? I
am told that if you look at some of the old pictures of the
early days of the civil rights movement, and if you focus in on
some of those gatherings of the Montgomery Improvement
Association, you will see, right up there next to Dr. King and
the other leaders, Doris Reynolds Parker. She gave herself
to the cause of justice. She poured her energies into a
cause that was to grip the soul of America and bring us all,
black and white, to a new day.
Isn’t it a wonderful happenstance that Mrs. Parker’s death
and funeral come right during the time we are
commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board
of Education decision? Isn’t it somehow just exactly right
that the life of one of those pioneers should be gathered up
with this celebration? Many of us in this room are old
enough to remember those days. We remember the sense
of excitement. We remember feeling as though, at last,
things were about to change. We heard the rhetoric of King
and saw the tactics of Marshall, and we knew that the world
was going to be different. But we also knew that for that
change to be real and lasting, it would take the faithfulness
and the dedication of thousands of people, people not as
prominent as the names we read about in the newspapers,
but nevertheless people who would commit to this cause and
stay by the stuff. That Doris Parker did. She committed
herself to the cause of justice, and stayed with it. She
completed her assignment.
And yet, listen again to what the Biblical writer says,
“They would not, apart from us, be made perfect.”
Doesn’t that tell us that if today we want to honor Doris
Parker’s memory, we too need to be committed to justice?
Doesn’t that suggest to us that if today we expect to give her
what is her due, we too need to find ways to advance social
justice and equal opportunity? Are we giving back to the
community that brought us thus far on the way? Are we
participating in something that teaches children, that guides
young people, that corrects those who have gone the wrong
way? If we are sitting back, as the folks say in my native
Kentucky, “all fat and sassy”, and just enjoying what we have
without thinking about extending it to the next generation,
then have we not made a mockery of all that her generation
accomplished? What does the Lord require of you but to do
justice? Doris Parker’s commitment to justice will not, apart
from us, be made perfect.
II
But Micah says more. Micah the prophet asks, “What does
the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness”
To love kindness. To be at the service of others. To be so
considerate of the needs of others that you think first of their
benefit and not of your own. What more profoundly does our
God ask of us than that we love kindness?
When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandments
were, He told His listeners, “You shall love the Lord your God
with heart and soul and mind and strength ... and you shall
love your neighbor as yourself.” There’s a lot in that short
sentence. It suggests that we need a healthy self-love
before we can do very much about loving our neighbors.
And all that I have been told suggests to me that Doris
Parker indeed was possessed of a healthy self-love. To
have managed her family, supported them, dealt with the
challenges of day-to-day life in her time – this in itself took a
strong personality, a person committed to strength. As the
years went by, and as Alzheimer’s took its toll, still Mrs.
Parker remained fiercely independent, clearly committed to
caring for her self, so that she could care for others. She
loved her neighbor in the same way that she loved herself.
What does the Lord require of you but to ... love kindness?
And yet, once again, the word from Hebrews: “They would
not, apart from us, be made perfect.” Doris Parker’s
commitment to loving herself in a healthy way so that she
could love others – are we prepared to carry that forward?
Are we prepared to perfect and complete that? Some of us
wallow in low self-esteem, even self-hatred. Some of us put
ourselves down and act as though we are nothing and have
nothing to contribute. To do that is to make a mockery of
Mrs. Parker’s legacy. Others of us suppose ourselves to be
above and beyond all the day-to-day grimy work. We have
white-collar jobs and homes in the suburbs and drive nice
cars. We’ve gotten over! But to forget that there are others
whose needs have not been met; to forget that just behind us
there are children who must be nurtured; to give up on a
nation where too many are still ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-fed –
that is to deny the meaning of Doris Parker’s determined life.
That is to deny the power of loving kindness. What does the
Lord require of you but to love kindness? Maybe some of us
have some work to do on our own hearts, for apart from us,
her commitment to kindness will not be made perfect.
III
But the prophet Micah is not finished with us yet. Nor are we
finished with reflecting on Doris Parker’s life and its meaning.
For, as important as it is to do justice and to keep on keeping
on as long as there is injustice in this land; as critical as it is to
love kindness and to love ourselves in a healthy way so that
we are equipped to love others – as important as those things
are, it is vastly more important to fulfill one more thing that the
prophet says the Lord requires of us:
What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love
kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
When all is said and done, it is only God who brings closure
and completeness to a life. We may come to the end of our
days feeling less than satisfied, because we are painfully
aware of how far from perfect we are. But God has a way of
binding up the wounds and finishing the agenda. God brings
closure and completion to our lives. I don’t know that I could
tell you exactly how that happens, but I do know that it is
among my deepest beliefs that in the economy of God, no
lives are wasted, and all that we have undertaken in His name
He completes. Mrs. Parker trusted the Lord, leaned on Him,
believed in Him, and did His work. And today we affirm that
God is completing His work through her.
By now, however, you should be able to guess how God is
going to complete her work. By now, if you have caught at all
the drift of my argument, you should suspect that I am going
to go back to the writer of Hebrews and his assertion, “They
would not, apart from us, be made perfect.” And I am going
to couple that with something he said earlier in this same
passage, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”
Are you walking with the Lord today? Is the humble walk with
God a part of your daily life? Do you bring to your life faith,
not just self-confidence, not just credentials, not just
accomplishments, but do you bring faith? Do you bring a
childlike trust in a God who is able to take a woman and make
her into a determined, solid, magnificent person? Do you
bring, do you walk with, a faith that tells you that no matter
what the opposition, no matter what the challenge, you are
empowered by Almighty God? Without faith it is impossible to
please God.
If you would honor Doris Reynolds Parker today, there would
be no better way to do so than to make a life-changing, life-
strengthening commitment to Jesus Christ as savior and as
Lord. For, apart from us, Mrs. Parker will not be made
perfect. And apart from Christ, none of us will even begin the
path toward perfection.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of
witnesses, lay us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings
so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set
before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,
who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the
cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right
hand of the throne of God.”
