Greetings, beloved in Christ. I hope that you are well on this day. On August 20th in 1965, an Episcopal seminarian named Jonathan Myrick Daniels was in Hayneville, Alabama. He was there because he had become convinced that civil rights were human rights. He was there in a nonviolent movement working for voter registration, working to procure rights for Black people who had been systemically denied rights for so long. On August 20th, he was killed by Tom Coleman, who raised his shotgun and was shooting at a 17-year-old girl named Ruby Sales. Jonathan shoved Ruby out of the way and placed himself between that shotgun blast and that young woman.
Jonathan died doing perhaps the most Christian thing that anyone could do, and that was safeguarding another human being. In the Episcopal Church, we celebrate Jonathan’s feast day on August 14th, but I always take time on August 20th to remember his sacrifice because August 20th is the day that Ruby Sales’ life was saved. Ruby Sales is alive and well this day because of the sacrifice of Jonathan Daniels. If you want to learn more about Jonathan’s story, I commend to you the PBS special, Here I Am, Send Me. It is a powerful witness to the violence of those days, to the persistence of faithful people striving for justice and for peace and a testament to the life of Jonathan Daniels. I ask that as you consider your walk of faith that you consider those around you who are in harm’s way that you consider what you might be called to do in the interest of doing what is meet and right and what is just in this very cold, broken, and divided world. Blessings.