Today we gather to listen for the sound of the Living God as articulated and embodied in the witness and words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was one of our nation’s most cherished and creative wounded healers.To be sure, he was also reviled and betrayed – in his day as well as our own – but I submit to you that Dr. King did more to help Americans live into our highest calling as the beloved community than any other contemporary politician, pundit, preacher or saint – and we ignore his witness only in hubris or futility.
• “Nothing in the whole world,” he once wrote, “is more dangerous than sincere ignorance or conscientious stupidity.”
• Think about that in the light of all that has taken place in our land – and in our name throughout the world – in the aftermath of September 11th and you cannot help but sense that Martin would have helped some of us see more clearly and act more boldly on behalf of that beloved community. Amen?
What’s more, because he knew how to discern what the love and witness of the Lord Jesus Christ looked like in our generation, I must confess to you today that I still cannot study either the Bible or the newspaper without hearing something of the cadence of his challenge alive and well all these 44 years after his assassination.
• I watch the debates – and read about our politics – and hear Dr. King ask: How did it come to pass that our scientific power has outrun our moral power so that we have created guided missiles and misguided women and men?
• I read the scriptures for each week in preparation for worship – and then listen to how they are butchered and manipulated by those with a narrow and ugly partisan agenda – and hear Martin say: When did we in the church forget that hatred paralyzes life, but love releases it; hatred confuses life while love harmonizes it; hatred darkens life but love illuminates it?
I wrestle with the haunting fact that in the 21st century close to 50% of Americans now live at or near the poverty level and then hear him say: All people are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. So the ultimate measure of our soul is not where we stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where we stand in times of challenge and controversy.
I still lament Dr. King’s death. I have been shaped and formed as one of the drum majors for the Lord through his testimony. And I have learned a few things about the Lord my God by his life. I was called into ministry just a few short months after his assassination. I wrote my undergraduate thesis in political science on the methods and morality of his nonviolent movement for full civil rights. I studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York City with four of the heirs of Dr. King’s legacy – James Cone, Cornell West, James Forbes and the late James Washington.
In fact, Brother Forbes – late the Senior Minister of the great Riverside Church but then a professor of homiletics – once called me into his office to ask: “Lumsden, why are you trying to get yourself killed?” And when I professed ignorance he said: “Look, man, you can neither fix nor solve all of society’s problems. What’s more you are in seminary now – so make the most of it – study with all the depth you can. And remember even Dr. King and Gandhi took some time off for reflection – you should, too – and then afterwards you can get yourself killed, ok?”
In more ways that I even know, my ministry has been given shape and form by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So, what I want to do this morning is share with you three insights about God I have learned from the master. Specifically, I want to call your attention to what Dr. King can teach us about:
• The importance of God’s words in scripture
• The way the Lord often uses broken and wounded servants to advance the beloved community
• And why some of us are called to become fools for Christ in a world addicted to respectability
Are you with me here – three broad ideas – about words, wounds and wonder? Let’s see what the Spirit has in mind… and we begin with what St. Paul shared with us about being disciples of Christ in I Corinthians 6. He wants us to know that flesh and blood as well as words and ideas and spiritual practices have consequences, ok?
Unjust people who don't care about God will not be joining in his kingdom. Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don't qualify as citizens in God's kingdom. A number of you know from experience what I'm talking about, for not so long ago you were on that list. Since then, you've been cleaned up and given a fresh start by Jesus, our Master, our Messiah, and by our God present in us, the Spirit. Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean that it's spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I'd be a slave to my whims.
Here’s the context: Paul is speaking to a mostly Gentile congregation in the greatest port of the “Roman imperial culture in Greece. It contained temples to Aphrodite and Asclepius (the god of healing) as well as centers for athletic contests, theatre and culture.” (The Jewish Annotated New Testament, p. 287) It was a happening place where competing moral and social values regularly clashed as sailors and prostitutes, merchants and day laborers, rich and poor tried to live together into the blessings of Jesus.
Like all churches, sometimes they got it right – and this delighted St. Paul – but sometimes, like all churches, they got it wrong – really wrong – and Paul was eager to help his friends make some corrections. Specifically he wanted them to know that living according to God’s grace was not license for unethical living.
• Yes, you Gentile believers are no longer bound by the Hebrew covenant and its dietary restrictions in order to have intimacy with God, but that doesn’t mean you can do or say anything you want, yes?
• Taking one another to court with mean-spirited lawsuits doesn’t show the world the unity of the Body of Christ – nor does spending time with pagan temple prostitutes – or eating up all the Lord’s Supper and getting drunk on Eucharistic wine before your poorer sisters and brothers can even get to worship. None of that helps the cause of Christ so knock it off, ok?
Of course all things are legal – and God forgives all our sins – but don’t make a mockery of God’s grace because that both weakens our testimony in the world and brings down God’s judgment on your life. Your words – and your deeds – matter: so live like it!
And I have to tell you, Dr. King treated this teaching with utmost respect. He WORKED at being one of America’s finest orators who knew how to blend scripture and politics in a healing way. But it didn’t come naturally to him: did you know that?
When he finished his doctoral course work at Boston University in 1954 and settled into the pastoral ministry of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, the word on the street was that “Dr. King was a good but not great preacher.” So he worked on this. He knew that words mattered – especially in the Black Church – where the scholar, Richard Lischer, has noted:
Life and language are so mixed together that it is impossible to describe how one emerges from the other. It is enough to say that for the black preacher the word does not function as a theoretical base for action. Rather, the word is a kind of action that cannot legitimately be separated from the struggles, temptations, suffering, and hopes of the people who live by the word. The community is carried forward by this word… for it is the soul of the church's body.
James Cone has rightly observed: Only in the pulpit – and later in the pulpit of our nation’s capital – did Dr. King lay bare his deepest and most moving commitment to God’s beloved community by showing us all how important words can truly be. In 1963, before the Lincoln Monument, King preached a sermon we know as the “I Have a Dream” speech. He had been working on it on and off for almost a year – making necessary improvisations – as he went.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.
One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on that promissory note…
Brilliant – authentic – moving and THAT was before the age of greed of the 1980s and 90s – or the current economic and moral debacle of this generation. King knew that words matter – especially the word of the Lord – so he worked hard at writing and speaking and interpreting those words within the context of our real lives.
That’s one thing I have learned about God from Dr. King: words matter – God’s words matter – and our actions have to be congruous with what we say about the Lord – lest we merely talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. First, words…
Second, wounds: one of the most powerful truths about God that I have learned from MLK is that time and again the Lord chooses broken, wounded and troubled individuals to advance the cause. That was certainly true in Martin’s life… But equally true for Moses or St. Paul – or Mary Magdalene – or Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the very patriarchs of our spiritual predecessors.
• Think about it: Moses was a murderer who fled his actions and wandered for 40 years of obscurity before God called on him to bring Israel into the land of milk and honey. What’s more, he was terrified of public speaking – he stuttered and was ashamed but God still used him.
• What about King David – the model for the Messiah – not exactly a conservative, well-behaved family values kind of a guy, was he? And my buddy, St. Paul? A mess – ugly, demanding, self-obsessed who was hell-bent on assassinating Christians when his life was turned upside down by the Lord.
So let’s be clear: all those whom the Lord calls like Samuel in today’s Old Testament lesson – or Jesus summons in the gospel according to John – are NOT 99 and 100% pure. Most are broken – many are morally and even psychologically wounded, too – but that doesn’t mean they are junk. Or can’t be used for serving the Lord in their generation because – news flash – God is not trapped or without options when it comes to human limitations, right?
God can and wants to welcome us all into service of the kingdom – women and men – whole and broken – wise and wacky. And I give thanks to God that I learned that from Martin Luther King, Jr. too: service to the Lord is NOT a club; so you don’t have to have it all together or all figured out or even have all your wounds healed BEFORE you enter into service.
As my minister back in Connecticut told me in 1968 when I was testing my own call to ministry: “Don’t wait until you think you’ve figured it all out, ok? That will never happen. As Dr. King once said, ‘Faith is taking the first step when you can’t see the whole staircase.”
So first words – second wounds – and third wonder: Dr. King made it clear to me and so many others that sometimes the way of the Lord leaves people scratching their heads in wonder about what the devil is going on. When he was lifted into service in Alabama and his house was bombed, some people urged him to quit the movement and wondered how putting his own family at risk could be of the Lord?
• When he was jailed – or stabbed – or humiliated and knocked down by defeat, his own sense of common sense caused him to wonder whether this was all worth it?
• And in 1967, when he broke ranks with the majority of his advisers and friends and began speaking out against the insanity and immorality of the Vietnam War… almost everyone wondered if he had lost his mind.
• He’s talking about those who ache with Jesus for some of the last to become first – for some of our hatred to be healed by forgiveness – for some of the poverty to be filled with God’s richness and won’t quit until it happens.
• It means, as St. Paul discovered, giving up any sense that you will be liked by everyone because you won’t – and you certainly won’t be considered successful by the movers and shakers. In fact, you are likely to be hated and mocked and maybe even jailed and crucified.
Being a fool for the Lord is not easy – and nobody comes up with it on their own – it is too hard. But when this call comes, you find out that you have to respond to it for nothing else will bring you peace. Paul put it like this: We celebrate even our suffering because we know that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope and hope does not fail because hope is God’s Holy Spirit being poured out into our hearts. To be such a peaceful fool for the Lord is a special calling – a unique discipleship – and Dr. King gave it meaning and shape and form for our generation.
He challenged us - he challenged me - to be a fool for love: imperfectly, wounds, flaws, fears and all. And I give thanks to God this day for that challenge...
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