Fifty years after King

Fifty years ago this April 4, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. We have now been without him longer than he walked on earth. His public ministry lasted a mere 14 years. Called as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in 1954, he quickly became a leader of the Montgomery bus boycott. Following its success, his ministry expanded well beyond the call of a tall-steeple pastor.

Since his assassination, Martin King has become an icon of American righteousness, and deployed as a symbol in service of many different agendas. Probably most often, he is used as a heroic symbol of racial progress.

We conveniently forget how much opposition King encountered. We forget how few people and organizations joined with him, even at the height of his success and popularity. We forget how, after having made gains in civil rights in the South, King was fought to his death when he took on civil rights in the North, the evil of the Vietnam War, and economic justice for poor people of all skin colors.

We love dead heroes far more than the living men and women. The dead can speak no more challenging truths, they cannot personally confront their opponents. We have their words, we have their accomplishments, but we lose the vitality, the spirit, the relationships, the living leadership of the living person. Without the living person to call us to account, the contest over their legacy may take priority over their life work.

Yet Martin Luther King, Jr., named after three prophetic saints in the Christian tradition (Saint Martin, the peacemaker, Brother Martin Luther, reformer, and Daddy King, pastor), even 'til the day of his death witnessed to a vision of God's justice. King would be the first to acknowledge that the movement he led was not about him. It included him, it included his fellow leaders, it included his communities of color, it included the poor white Southerners and the middle-class Northerners, and the Vietnamese peasants, and the Jim Clarks, Richard Daleys, and Lyndon Johnsons of this world. It includes you and me. It includes everyone, because God's vision is a dream of healing and redemption.

In God's vision for this world the hardest of hearts are opened, the most toxic hellholes get loving remediation, and the dream of peace and justice is the reality we live.

In memoriam: Martin Luther King, lover of humanity, renewer of society, preacher of peace, and prophet of the Lord.



See also my 2008 article "Martin King, prophet & martyr."

NOTES:

The first image is Martin King's mug shot from his arrest February 21, 1956, discovered July, 2004 by a deputy cleaning out a Montgomery County, Alabama, Sheriff's Department storage room. It is not known who added the notations.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Which healing? Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Image
This gospel lesson is difficult for preachers. Which healing do you pay attention to? Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 Much has been made in recent years of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ cloak. The daily loss of her life-blood not only indicated health problems (an infection? fibroid tumors? uterine cancer?) and sapped her strength (anemia?), it made her unclean. It deprived her of touch, of entry to the Temple, of normal social interaction. For twelve years... Even in her pursuit of healing she tries to be audaciously inconspicuous. The healing she finds in Jesus restores her body, her spirit, and her place in the community. It is difficult to ignore the story the daughter raised from the dead. The brief descriptions in the gospel lesson are easily filled out by imagination and experience. Children continue to die, by accident, illness, and violence, and the chord this sounds is recognizable, resonating deep in the soul. The death of a child strikes hard, on the family and also on the
Read more

Who do you think you are?

Image
Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost Romans 12:1-8 Matthew 16:13-20 As I listened to the lessons for today, it seemed to me that identity issues are prominent. Jesus asks his disciples "who do you say that I am?" Have they been paying attention? Are they aware of what’s going on? The apostle Paul is also concerned with a couple of identity issues: using the different gifts given to each member, and also finding or forging a new identity, as members of the body of Christ. One reason these "identity issues" stood out for me is that I have been reading a book about the management style of the Jesuits, an organization within the Roman Catholic church. The author, trained as a Jesuit before leaving for a career as an investment banker, makes the case that the thing which has allowed the Jesuits to be a successful 450 year old company, is their focus first of all not on what they do, but on who they are. Their core strength as an organization originates no
Read more

Up in the Air - Sermon for Easter 7

Image
The following sermon was preached in James Chapel, Union Theological Seminary in New York City, at a communion service preceding commencement, May 17, 2002. While many of the references are particular to the setting, the general themes (where to look for God; the awkwardness of losses, in-between times and transitions;it remembering our own stories in light of vocation and mission) are transferrable to other settings. One explanatory note: the chapel was decorated in part by cords hung at irregular places throughout the space. Graduates and other Union students had been invited to hang from these cords symbols from their time at Union (a backpack, theology books, a stethoscope, baby clothes, a chaplain's vest from the WTC recovery), requiring partipants in the service to take note of them and also negotiate their movements around the objects. Up in the Air So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He repli
Read more