During this summer of protests and yet another outbreak of protests and violence and racism and white supremacy in our country one thing that went unnoticed was the feast day on August 14 of Jonathan Myrick Daniels, an Episcopal saint and martyr. I remember it because ten years ago on his feast day marks the day that I began seminary.
Jonathan Myrick Daniels was born in Keene, New Hampshire, in 1939. He was raised in a conservative Congregational family.
As a teenager, however, Jon had been drawn to the liturgy and ceremony of the Roman Catholic Church, but had been put of by the Church's moral rigidity.
When a new rector came to the parish church of St. James' Episcopal Church in Keene, however, he and Jon became good friends – a friendship which led to Jon joining the Episcopal Church and entering Seminary in 1963.
As part of his seminary fieldwork, Jon was assigned to an urban parish in Providence, RI, where he was exposed to racism and urban blight for the first time in his privileged life.
Jon then spent four months of his final seminary year on assignment in Selma, Alabama, eventually participating in the famous Freedom March to Montgomery with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
He returned to seminary, but finally decided that for northern civil rights workers simply to move into the South for a demonstration or two and then go home was not the kind of witness his faith demanded, so in the summer of 1963 he returned to Selma, merely to live with the poor suffering Black community in Lowndes County, Alabama.
He wrote at the time: “I really wanted to do the incarnational thing. It seemed to me that Jesus did not simply come for a day or two to confront a few evils and leave, he came to the earth to stay – for a lifetime.”
Sadly, some of the hardest times for Jon were those trying to worship at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Selma. When he tried to attend with a small, integrated group on Palm Sunday, ushers refused them entrance and called the police, but the rector intervened and they were allowed in – to the back of the church.
When they tried to enter later with some Black children, they were called “scum.” Later, the organist confronted them, shouting, “You go to hell, you SOB.” On Easter Day, an usher warned them not to bring any Negroes to the church, so they went to the Black Methodist church instead.
In the summer of 1965, Jon, Fr. Richard Morrisroe (a Roman Catholic), and some of their Black friends were arrested for a minor demonstration at a dry-goods store in Fort Deposit, Alabama, and were jailed in the Lowndes County Jail in Hayneville – a jail with no working toilets or bathing facilities, and poor food.
They spent six days in jail, and then, unpredictably, on a hot and sultry August night, they were suddenly released from the jail – an act that made them suspicious and nervous.
While others in their group were trying to make telephone calls to find a ride back home, on a dusty side street Jon, Fr. Morrisroe, and two young Black women, Ruby Sales and Joyce Bailey, found a small corner general store which held the promise of cold drinks and refreshment.
As they approached the screen door of the store, however, they were confronted by a local deputy sheriff, Tom Coleman, who held a shotgun. He shouted that the store was closed and ordered them “to get off this property or I'll blow your heads off, you SOBs.” Jon pushed Ruby Sales out of the way and down.
Coleman fired the twelve-gauge shotgun and tore a hole in the right side of Jon's chest.
Fr. Morrisroe grabbed Joyce Bailey and turned to run when Coleman fired again and struck the priest in the lower back. Both girls got up and ran for cover.
As he lay dying, Jonathan Myrick Daniels' last words on this earth were these:
“We only wanted some ice cream.”
Local authorities convened a hasty trial before the priest could recover, and the jury, many of whom were long-time friends of the defendant, deliberated for less than two hours and concluded that the murderer, Tom Coleman, had acted “in self-defense.”
Even the Attorney General at the time said that the acquittal represented the “democratic process going down the drain of irrationality, bigotry and improper law enforcement . . . now those who feel they have a license to kill, destroy and cripple have been issued that license.”
In the chapel of Canterbury Cathedral where Jon Daniels is one of only two Americans memorialized with other modern saints and martyrs is engraved the quotation from T.S Eliot's “Murder in the Cathedral”: “A Christian martyrdom is never an accident, for saints are not made by accident.”
And the great Martin Luther King, Jr. declared: “One of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry and career was performed by Jonathan Daniels.”
Prophecy in the Bible isn’t always about telling God’s people what’s to come. More often than not, it’s about something bigger. Prophecy is about speaking God’s truth to Power.
That’s what Isaiah did; he told the ruling elite of Judah that they had some hard days ahead, even if it meant he might lose what little favor he’d gained. And we see it over and over again.
Nathan, Jeremiah, Jonah. Even Jesus fits the mold of a prophet hollering at the powerful Pharisees and staring down Pilate. “What is truth?” Pilate says, with all the power of the empire yet deaf to God’s truth before him.
But the woman at the well with Jesus, she’s in a tough spot. She’s begging God’s truth to come into her life and save her daughter from the suffering that’s trapped her, and Jesus replies with a slur.
There are all sorts of ways to come at this moment. Tomes have been written on this moment, and most of the claims are, frankly, unsatisfying. Some say it was a test. Some say it was just Jesus on a bad day. Some turn somersaults to come up with a way out for Jesus.
But still he said it. He called her a dog, a word that carried much more vitriol back then. This isn’t just any old slur; this is one from the mouth of God-Among-Us. This is Jesus. This is real, divine power.
And she looks in the face of that power, and speaks God’s truth right back. “No, Jesus, what you’ve brought into this world, that's Good News is for everyone. Even for us. Even for me. Even for my own little Ruby Sales”
This unnamed woman may just be the greatest in the line of Biblical prophets, for when she speaks God’s truth to power, she speaks God’s truth to God. Not a king, not a Pharisee , but God.
And God hears her. And unlike so many human powers of the world, God responds with love, not with hatred or defensiveness or retaliation. . . but love.
And that's the truth about speaking God's truth . Some speak it more clearly, others act or love or live with eloquence, but we can all be prophets.
That’s why we honor our saints; we remember their witness. We let their truths speak to us. And we learn how to speak that truth.
Don’t worry if you don’t have the words. God’s truth uses your words, no matter how clumsy, or simple, or mundane.
Remember Jonathan Daniels’s truth spoken so plainly: “We only wanted some ice cream.”
That’s God’s truth, staring down the power of a 12-gauge or a torch. That's God's truth staring down a bunch of loudmouths and thugs waving rebel flags.
That’s God’s truth, spoken just 55 years ago. And that's God's truth today. That’s God’s truth. Forever.