MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR: STILL IN NEED OF HIS VOICE
January 19, 2003
The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. on the front of our Order of Service today is one I keep on my desk here at church. It was sent to me a few years ago by a former parishioner, and it's a photo of King which I've never seen anywhere before. I like it because it's such a quiet picture - different from the usual ones of him marching in demonstrations, or standing in a pulpit exhorting his followers to action, or handcuffed and being carted off to jail. In this photo, he's pensive and appears to be alone- perhaps reflecting on the largeness of the task, the burden of what has been placed before him.
Whatever he was doing or thinking at the time the photo was taken, it is different than the usual public persona of the man. He'd always seemed so sure of himself - so full of confidence and fearlessness.
The poet June Jordon said "(Martin Luther King, Jr.) was not God, but a man of God, trying to redeem America." She called him "a mountain on the desert of our time."
It was that mountain quality - that spiritual and faithful courage -- which caught our attention, which made us sit up and listen, stand up, leave our homes and join in the demonstrations, either alongside him, or simply in our own hometowns. He inspired in us the same faithful sense of righteousness we witnessed in him.
Martin Luther King, Jr. came to be a prophet first for his own people, and then for all people; indeed, many of us came to think of ourselves as "his people." To this day we look to him as the embodiment of prophetic witness, partly because of his integrity, partly because of his courage, and partly because of the radical nature of his message.
And so, every year at this time, we pause as a nation and in our religious communities, to remember the man and his message -- though we probably hardly need reminding.
Martin Luther King, Jr. led a revolution based on the radical concept that we should love our enemy, and maintain a nonviolent resistance to evil. To his opponents, King said,
"Do to us what you will, and we will still love you. Throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and as difficult as it is, we will still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. And will so appeal to your heart and conscience, that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory."
That audacious notion - that no matter what our opponents do, we will love them into victory, see their humanness and their potential for redemption - had been learned by King first through the teachings of Jesus, and then through the examples of Mahatma Gandhi. But for many of us, the thought of actually following this idea, particularly in the face of violent opposition, was frightening, and seemed impossible. Indeed, it can still seem so today.
For King was not speaking of a sentimental, shallow kind of love, which ignores the demonic; but rather the broad, profoundly unifying principle of "agape" - of compassion and connection. If we are to truly prevail on the road to justice, reasoned King, must we not practice agape for those against whom we struggle? And isn't that what is meant by our first Unitarian Universalist Principle: "We affirm…the inherent worth and dignity of every person?"
Perhaps never before have we needed Dr. King's reminder to love our enemy as we do today. Imagine if our nation practiced that kind of love toward those who hate us; imagine what kind of revolution might occur if instead of sending our soldiers and bombs to Saddam Hussein, we sent only love. Imagine if we were to try, just once, to understand why so many people around the world want to do us harm, and speak to them with love instead - what an amazing world that might create. King's commitment to the principles of redemptive love and radical non-violence never wavered. But the issues he tackled kept evolving. He taught us that racism is not the only issue with which we must struggle; racism is tied to economic injustice, he said, suggesting that the two issues have a "malignant kinship." "The emergency we now face," said King, "is economic, and is a desperate and worsening situation. For the millions of poor people in America…there is a kind of strangulation in the air. It is murder, psychologically, to deprive people of jobs or income. You are in substance saying they have no right to exist."
Later on, Dr. King taught us that the same spiritual faith that compelled us to struggle for racial and economic justice also compelled us to confront the issues of war and peace. As the war in Vietnam began escalating, he broadened his focus to include protesting United States' involvement in that war. He told us, "This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of sending men home from the dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
But Martin Luther King, Jr. was concerned not only with rights of African Americans, or the economic distribution of wealth, or of war and peace; he was concerned with the very soul of America - with our spiritual health as a nation. He held out a vision to us of the "beloved community," built on justice and peace. And when he was killed, many of us feared that that vision was quickly slipping from our sight. The poet June Jordan wrote, "When news came that Dr. King was dead, I felt that so was love and so was goodwill and so was the soul of these United States." Today, I wonder if those fears haven't been realized.
In her autobiography, Joan Baez writes something to the effect of, "Martin, I need your voice now. It's not that I've become scared, or lost courage; it's that I've lost the vision that we had. I've become apathetic, and I need you here; I need your voice."
Often I wonder what he would say to us if he were to come back today. How would he have reacted after the terror of Sept. 11th? What would he have said about our immediate call for revenge, or the many attacks on people who looked Muslim? Or now the mandatory registration and, in some cases, detention of males from Middle Eastern countries, or the encroachment on the constitutional rights of all Americans? Would he not be asking us to become more "maladjusted?"
After all the strides we have made toward racial equality in this country, what would Dr. King say about the fact that far more African Americans and Latinos are still apt to end up on Death Row than are whites? How would he react at the recent news that African American and Latino males are still being stopped by police at a far higher rate than others? Would he not ask us to become "maladjusted?"
What about the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor in this country? Whereas a few years ago we were shocked to learn that one-fourth of the poor in this country were children, today that figure has expanded to one-third! And the state of health care and housing for the working poor and even the middle class has become a true crisis.
What would Dr. King's reaction have been to the news that feeding the homeless in some cities is now illegal, and in many just being homeless can result in arrests! All this while corporate executives - even in those corporations claiming bankruptcy -- are earning salaries and bonuses in the millions and billions of dollars. I imagine King would find it stunningly ironic that while almost every human service is being drastically cut here in California because of budget restraints, prisons are receiving increased funding! Would he not insist we become "maladjusted" at this news?
I suspect Dr. King would show us the parallels between the violence committed by children, and the violence committed by adults - in homes, in movies, in our system of Capital Punishment, and in our wars. Ed Bacon, the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, noted that a few days after the horrific high school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, President Clinton was telling the nation's children that violence is never a way to solve problems -- while at the same time, he was dropping bombs on Kosovo! Where it comes to violence, King might point out what Michael Moore demonstrates in his latest film: America is filled with double messages.
And indeed, here we are about to go to war against a tiny country that has demonstrated no interest in or ability to attack us; try as they might, the U.N. inspectors have not yet been able to come up with anything they consider a rationale for war. Our own country has more "weapons of mass destruction" than does Iraq. And yet our President and his advisors insist we must "defend" the world against Terrorism by attacking Iraq, at the expense not only of human lives, but of crucial economic and human issues here at home.
We live in perhaps the most dangerous of times since the ending of the Cold War, and American policies are at the center of that axis of danger. Would Martin Luther King, Jr. not demand that we become "maladjusted?"
Oh yes; we definitely need his voice today.
But there is something else besides his voice that we need; we need to remember that he was a mere human being, not that much different from you and me. When I return to this picture of him (hold up O/S), I see a humanness and vulnerability manifested that is rare in our leaders today. Here is a man whose voice and words we heard as if they were the voice and words of God. Yet he was not God; indeed, the photo is of a man who knew he wasn't God - only a man of God.
I once heard someone who had worked closely with King say that he was an "ordinary man." Even though most people who worked with him thought him to be extraordinary, still…he was merely ordinary. Like most prophets, he didn't set out to be one; he didn't intend to be a leader of any kind. Originally he'd planned to go to medical or law school. And when he first heard the "call" to go into the ministry, he resisted that. But he later would write, "I came to see God had placed a responsibility upon my shoulders. And the more I tried to escape it, the more frustrated I'd become." It was, in fact, a mere accident of history that catapulted him into the role of spokesperson for the civil rights movement.
Martin Luther King, Jr. faced the ordinary human struggles and frailties. He was not a great father, according to one biographer. He wasn't a great husband. And indeed, we now know he was a philanderer, and was even guilty of plagiarizing during college. Not a saint, by any means.
King doubted himself often, questioned whether he should keep going, and struggled with his own bitterness and cynicism. But prayer became a source of strength and discernment for him. Through conversations with his God, he found the clarification and courage he needed to not give up.
Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us about the power of faith in something larger than our individual selves. Some of us might call that "something" God, as did King; some of us might call it Love, or Spirit of Life, or simply the power of human community. Whatever name we give it, the faith that gives us the courage to carry onward is all we may have at times of deepest despair or hopelessness. Let us not lose sight of it.
Perhaps the final lesson from King comes through that photo on my desk: He wasn't a god; he was a mere human, like you and me. He was born with the potential for prophetic leadership, for witnessing to his truths, for serving as an inspiration to others; we are all born with that potential. Circumstances called to him, and he responded; that's all. Such a calling comes from living life with integrity, manifesting ones deepest values in everyday life - facing challenges, and accepting imperfections. That's ultimately what made him a mountain: struggling with and accepting his imperfections, and the imperfections of others.
I believe that if Dr. King were still alive, he would be asking people of all faiths: "Why are you not outraged at the continuing injustices being allowed to exist and the continuing violence? What are you doing to stop it, and to heal the world?" He would have been pleased at the thousands of citizens who showed up yesterday at peace demonstrations around the country; I've no doubt that he would have been there with them. And of course, he would want all of us to be present as witnesses for peace at our new West Valley Peace Vigils.
Perhaps the most important lesson for us from King is found in these words of his: "Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make the subject and verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You only need a heart full of grace; a soul generated by love."
Our world still needs King's voice; but we must be the embodiments of that voice. May we keep our hearts open to grace and love year-round, so that we can live his words with the passion and "maladjustment" he inspired in us so long ago.
May we become his voice so that "out of the mountain of despair," we may "hew…a stone of hope."
© 2003 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
