2025 New Year message for Durham CAN Clergy
Don't Grow Weary: Finding Strength in Our Sacred Calling
*A Message for the First Clergy Caucus of 2025*
- Bishop Clarence Laney, Pastor, Monument of Faith Church
Galatians 6:9 speaks to us today in two powerful translations:
NRSV tells us: "So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at
harvest time, if we do not give up."
The Message translation renders it: "So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing
good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up or quit.'
Here we are at the first Clergy Caucus of 2025, gathering in the week before we
celebrate Dr. King's birth, and yes, on the eve of another presidential inauguration. The
sacred seasons of Christmas and Passover have concluded. We've performed
countless weddings, funerals, christenings, baptisms, and bar mitzvahs. And now we
stand ready to begin anew.
Let us be honest this morning and confess: many of us are beginning another year
weary, fatigued, and simply tired.
We are still emerging from the shadow of a global pandemic while simultaneously:
- Grieving the recent deaths of loved ones
- Witnessing the surge in mass shootings across these yet-to-be United States
- Confronting escalating gun violence in our beloved city
- Defending women's reproductive rights
- Fighting the banning of books that attempts to whitewash African American history
- Watching the normalization of white supremacy from the highest offices
This is overwhelming—yet we persist. We continue to:
- Write sermons
- Plan worship
- Visit the sick
- Bury the dead
- Manage congregational conflicts
- Oversee budgets
- Lead committee meetings
- Attend clergy caucus
- Organize our congregations
It's enough to make us want to holler, throw up our hands, and walk away. But Paul tells
us not to grow weary in doing good. Because we are called to serve this present age,
most of us will remain steadfast, committed to the task at hand.
Yet in our weariness, we ask ourselves:
- How do we keep going?
- How do we replenish ourselves?
- How do we tie a knot and hang on?
I find myself seeking answers to these very questions. For guidance, I turn to two
wellsprings of wisdom: my sacred text and our ancestors. They know intimately of
weariness and fatigue. They understand firsthand what it means to push against
seemingly insurmountable odds. Though weary thousands of times, they kept moving,
organizing, marching, and demanding change.
For this theological framework, I bring forth the words of the late Reverend
Congressman John Lewis, who teaches us how to persevere:
"Your faith has the power to sustain you through the worst that you can imagine. Each
of us has something significant to contribute to society—be it physical, material,
intellectual, emotional, or spiritual. Each of us is born for a reason, to serve a divine
purpose. If the structures of our lives do not contribute to that purpose, or if they
complicate our ability to live, to be free and to be happy, or even worse, if they lead to
the confines of oppression, then we seek change, sometimes radical change, even
revolution, to satisfy the yearning of our souls."
The late Congressman John Lewis embodied this spirit of holy persistence. From the
Edmund Pettus Bridge to the halls of Congress, he demonstrated what it means to keep
going when weariness sets in. He was beaten, arrested 45 times, yet he never gave up.
Even in his final days, he visited Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., showing
us that the work of justice knows no retirement.
Lewis stood alongside giants who showed us what it means to persist: Fannie Lou
Hamer, who kept fighting despite brutal beatings in a Mississippi jail; Ella Baker, who
worked tirelessly behind the scenes, organizing and empowering young people; Medgar
Evers, who continued his voter registration work even under constant death threats; and
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who pressed on despite bombings, imprisonment, and
assassination attempts.
These freedom fighters understood something profound about weariness – that it's not
the absence of fatigue that defines us, but what we do when we're tired. They taught us
that rest is not surrender. Indeed, they practiced what Howard Thurman called "the
rhythm of engagement and retreat." They knew when to march and when to pray, when
to push and when to prepare.
Consider the Montgomery Bus Boycott. For 381 days, our people walked. They were
tired – bone tired – but they kept walking. Domestic workers, after long days cleaning
other people's homes, walked miles more to their homes. They were weary, yes, but
they transformed their fatigue into fuel for the movement.
Their example teaches us three enduring lessons about persisting through weariness:
First, they didn't carry the burden alone. The freedom fighters created networks of
support, communities of care. When one grew weary, others stepped forward. As Ella
Baker said, "Strong people don't need strong leaders." They need each other.
Second, they anchored their work in something greater than their own strength.
Whether in church basements or around kitchen tables, they drew power from their faith
and their connection to community. Their weariness was holy – a testament to their
commitment to God's justice.
Third, they understood that weariness itself could be a sign of being on the right path.
As Rev. Dr. King noted, "Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every
step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless
exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals."
We may be weary but as my ancestors would often sing in the spiritual:
Oh, walk together children
Don't you get weary
Walk together children
Don't you get weary
Walk together children
Don't you get weary
There's a great camp meeting in the promised land
Goin' to mourn and never tire,
Mourn and never tire,
Mourn and never tire,
There's a great camp meeting in the promised land