For a Time Such as This | August 30, 2026 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton
For a breathless moment in time, a little group of diverse peoples
was caught up in a dream as old as life and as new as a hope
that just emerges on the horizon of becoming human.
It is perhaps with the opening quote that I would like to begin my consideration of Howard Thurman and the founding of The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. I am in the midst of writing a presentation to deliver at Harvard Divinity School next month. I am in the swirling mix of my consideration of the vast and precious story…almost too vast and too precious to share. I realize that at a time like this in our human history, it is no time to be in hiding…no time to be coveting this story. Instead, it is a time for the unveiling of it. And this morning I am looking for your thoughts and feedback regarding this endeavor. We are, in this beloved community, in this together. We are together in discovering, even now, a hope that …emerges on the horizon of becoming human.
I am being nudged by a spirit yet in the making…the spirit of our ancestors and of this moment…calling me…calling us to the moment of our high resolve. We are being called to respond to the current moment of the seeming triumph of fascism…of a seeming celebration of our inhumanity to each other. Is it the Spirit of God that we sense?
Spirit of the living God
Fall fresh on me
Spirit of the living God
Fall fresh on me.
Break me, melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.
Spirit of the living God
Fall fresh on me.
I am being broken…I am melting…I need molding and filling. I am yearning to be used for the wholeness of life in this moment. I am being called by this spirit, as Thurman says…
The movement of the Spirit of God in the hearts of [people] often calls them
to act against the spirit of their times or causes them to anticipate
a spirit which is yet in the making.
We need to act against this spirit of separation, greed, hatred, deception and fear right now. We are in trouble…a trouble that may not be new, but it is now our responsibility to respond. Mahalia Jackson sang of this trouble…
Soon-a-will be done-a-with the troubles of the world
Troubles of the world
Going home to live with God
No more weeping and a-wailing,
I'm going to live with God
Now Mahalia Jackson sang this song at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. That was certainly a time of trouble…and a time of mobilization and coming together. It is that spirit that we need. If we truly were able to live with God, then we would be in touch with that spirit that is calling us…as it was calling Esther. Now what matters here, in my opinion is that she may be in her position as Queen for a time such as this. It was a time of trouble such as was being experienced in 1963 and is being experienced today. In Esther’s time, she was told by Mordecai to go to the King despite the possible sacrifice that would mean…
14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?
Now, we know of sacrifice in our human history. It was especially prevalent in our lifetime in the civil rights movement. People were willing to seize the time, reminiscent of the book by the same name written in 1970 by Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party. And certainly, throughout the movement, there were sacrifices being made by people in their respective communities. It is our hope that this effort is not dead.
On Friday, 63 years after the historic March on Washington, people like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talked about this process. At the march, she said that we have been organizing at home…to build power in our own communities. It is only then she said that we can come together for this First, she adds, we must imagine it and then we need to refuse to let it go. Representative Hakim Jeffries spoke of finding a way out of no way, of the fact that Black history is American History. He called on so many ancestors, including John Lewis who spoke of good trouble. He says this trouble is to end this national nightmare.
Let me be honest with you. I have days when I lose hope…when I think it is too late…when I think that maybe it’s a good thing that I am older and may not be here much longer. But I know that this statement is not a comfort, because I know as Thurman knew…I know as King knew…I know as Olive Schreiner knew…as our prayer hymn pledges…that We Would Be One. We are tied into the idiom of all that lives. We separate ourselves to our peril…and to the peril of the entire universe. We are seeing the results of this mindset and it is disastrous and frightening. I take some comfort in some of my teachers, one of which was also a teacher of Howard Thurman. Her name was Olive Schreiner and he admired her so much that he named his first-born daughter after her. In a discussion with a friend yesterday, who is suffering from this illusion of separateness and aloneness, I was reminded of the power of her words in the story that is an excerpt from Three Dreams in a Desert. I read my friend the following passage:
“For what do I go to this far land which no one has ever reached?
Oh, I am alone! I am utterly alone!”
And Reason, that old man, said to her, “Silence! What do you hear?”
And she listened intently, and she said, “I hear a sound of feet, a thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, and they beat this way!”
He said, “They are the feet of those that shall follow you. Lead on! Make a track to the water’s edge! Where you stand now, the ground will be beaten flat by ten thousand times ten thousand feet.” And he said, “Have you seen the locusts how they cross a stream? First one comes down to the water-edge, and it is swept away, and then another comes and then another, and then another, and at last with their bodies piled up a bridge is built and the rest pass over.”
She said, “And, of those that come first, some are swept away, and are heard of no more; their bodies do not even build the bridge?”
“And are swept away, and are heard of no more—and what of that?” he said.
“And what of that—” she said.
“They make a track to the water’s edge.”
“They make a track to the water’s edge—.” And she said, “Over that bridge which shall be built with our bodies, who will pass?”
He said, “The entire human race.”
And the woman grasped her staff.
And I saw her turn down that dark path to the river.
Olive Schreiner’s words resonate with the vision of Fellowship Church…of our journey in kindling a hope that inspires…our journey to gain a growing understanding of all peoples as children of God. This is the work before us and we cannot be silent. As with those that attended the March on Friday, we must come together in the moment of our collective high resolve…come together as an example of ways we can move forward in this uncertain and terrifying time. May we join as one today and in the days ahead, asking each other to go with us on this journey…without turning back…making a track to the water’s edge that those that follow will see and be guided by. We are indeed on our way!
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