I'm Everyday People Series

Topic: Everyday people

Scripture: Romans 12:9-14

Introduction

In 1968, the Democratic party was fracturing. President Lyndon B. Johnson was nearing the end of his political run, his national power diminished by civil disorder and Vietnam. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4. Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 6. On Nov. 5, Richard Nixon was elected president.

There were student riots. There were protests. For all the money, all the power, all the technology and education, there seemed to be so few answers.

Released in November 1968, Sly and the Family Stone's "Everyday People" seemed a welcome rallying cry in those desperate times.

The song is a plea for peace, for equality. Sly and the Family Stone was an integrated band, with black and white musicians. These musicians created incredible music that has passed the test of time. They went to No. 1 on U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart with "Everyday People,".

Lyric: "There is a blue one who can't accept the green one / for living with a fat one, trying to be a skinny one.

"And different strokes for different folks / and so on and so on and scooby dooby doo.

"Oh sha sha, we got to live together."

Chris Shields: We do ‘got to live together’! We are such a divisive species. We're tribal, following family paths, religious orders, political parties, etc. We think the purest of our motives and have the greatest suspicion for those who aren't "with us."

Here we are, it's 2022 and things haven't changed much from 1968. It's another election year. Political parties are trying to figure out polarizing factions within their camps. There are protests. There is violence. Race concerns are still prevalent. There is fear of other countries, other religions.

How do we break the cycle? CAN we break the cycle?

"We got to live together."

"I am everyday people."

Life is too complex to cover with one song.

But maybe one song can get us started on the conversations we need to have, to make decisions we need to make.

After all, we are everyday people.

IIl: In the mid 1980’s, when a cold war still divided Communist nations from democratic nations, and when concrete barriers and barbed wire fences divided East Berlin from West, there was a young man who passed through the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie nearly every day. Driving a pickup truck with a couple of bicycles tied to the top of the load, he would be stopped by the German guards, who would thoroughly search his possessions.

Some days, under the bicycles and under the tarp, he would be carrying pails of sand, and the guards would empty every one of them onto the pavement, looking for contraband. Other days, when the guards pulled off the bikes and the tarp, they found boxes of books, and they would unpack every box and leave them scattered on the ground. Still other days, he would be carrying pallets of blocks, or rolls of sod.

The routine was always the same: stop the truck, inspect the load, and send the man on his way. Now, the guards never found anything illegal, but each day the young man was required to reload his truck, tie the tarps down, and throw the bikes back up on top of the load.

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1988, this young man met one of the border guards at a tavern in downtown Berlin. Over glasses of beer, they reminisced about the loads he carried, and the daily ritual that they now laughed about. Then the former guard got serious, and said “Comrade, we know you were smuggling something, but we could never figure out what it was. Now that the danger has passed” the older man said, “tell me…what were you smuggling?”

And the younger man answered “Bicycles. I was smuggling bicycles.”

Sometimes in this life, the most obvious things are right in front of us, and yet we fail to see them. A promising business opportunity, or a potential marriage partner, or the possibility of an exciting adventure goes unnoticed because we were looking for something else. A current television ad shows a man jogging through a city neighborhood, wondering what kind of car to purchase, and he is oblivious to more than a dozen different Volkswagen Jettas that nearly run over him on his route. It is reminiscent of the proverbial man caught in a flood who turns down a life raft, and a canoe and a helicopter because he is waiting for God to rescue him.

The German border guard was looking for something secretive in the young man’s truck; something hidden to the naked eye that was a threat to Communism. But all along, the illegal import, the bicycles, was in plain sight. And he missed it.