Rod Kennedy’s Reflection at Mandela Memorial

A Tribute to Nelson Mandela
Dr. Rodney Wallace Kennedy
Lead pastor
First Baptist Church Dayton
December 12, 2013

Oppressors, from Pharaoh to Jim Crow are obsessive compulsive, oppositional
defiant, and deficient in vocabulary.  They never ever understand words like
“freedom,” “justice,” “human rights,” and “dignity.”  Oppressors are also
hard of hearing.  For example, “Let my people go.”  The lesson has to be
repeated and repeated.  “Let” is hard on the powers and principalities who
are interested not in “letting” but in taking, denying, discriminating,
destroying, diminishing, persecuting, killing, and etc.  Oppressors are
never interested in letting go but in imprisoning, impaling, impoverishing.
There is never an end to those willing to take the role of oppressor and for
that reason there must always be those courageous ones willing to stand
against the oppressors.  An early Baptist, Thomas Helwys, told King James
that no king had power over the conscience of another person.  

Yet oppressors think they own people, have hereditary rights to oppress
people, but soon or late, the cry of the people, is heard by God and God
calls people like us into action.  I must say that whenever I show up at a
meeting in this city that deals with justice, John Paddock is always there
and it is an honor to stand next to John in the struggle for justice.  He is
my brother and my friend and justice is our common cause.  

Justice requires of us a constant vigil.  The powers and the principalities
will devalue human life and creation at any given moment in time.  We gather
here in this sacred place to lend our voices to support a real life hero of
the real life Justice League.  We do so to encourage ourselves to keep
fighting for justice wherever and whenever injustice rears its ugly head
against another race, against women, against children, against gays and
lesbians, against the poor, and against those who put profits over persons,
rules over relationships, and greed over generosity.  

It was my thought that the best words to honor President Mandela were first
uttered by the Great Emancipator after Gettysburg and so to the Great
Liberator I offer these words of tribute and encouragement.  

Ninety-five years ago Nelson Mandela was born, and in his lifetime he was
dedicated to the proposition that all persons are created equal.  He gave
his life to the pursuit of justice for his people in South Africa.  In a
land where the majority cried, “Apartheid today, apartheid tomorrow,
apartheid forever,” Mandela said “Apartheid never!”  

Now we are engaged in a great war for justice, testing whether any nation
can long endure when some are less free than others. We are met to honor one
of the heroes of that forever-long war. We have come to acknowledge the
victory of Nelson Mandela over apartheid so that his nation might always
live in freedom, and our world be free of the scourge of discrimination.  It
is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot rest in peace or consider our work done.
This one brave man, struggled a lifetime, much of it in prison, and we must
now make his contribution live forever by adding our lives to the struggle
for justice.  The world will ignore what we say here, but it can never
forget what President Mandela did.  Away from the spotlight of media and
political power, we bend our knees and lift our heart to dedicate ourselves
to the unfinished work of justice thus far so nobly advanced.  It is rather
for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that
from President Mandela we take increased devotion to that cause for which he
gave the full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that hero
shall not have died in vain – that the people of God, with renewed vigor,
with constant diligence, with unrelenting courage shall not rest in ease
until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing
stream.