On August 23rd, 1963, the March on Washington for jobs and freedom brought 250,000, mostly African-American citizens, to the nation’s capital. Near its climax Martin Luther King, Jr. came to the podium. At a critical moment during his speech, his good friend Mahalia Jackson who was sitting behind him said, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” At that moment, as anyone can see watching the tape, King set aside his notes and began, “And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that [ALL people] are created equal.” King believed modern societies had solved the problem of producing wealth. Now we needed to invest that wealth in the solution of social problems, starting with the overwhelming problem of poverty. That was 55 years ago!
In his book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? King declared: justice “cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society.” The “black revolution,” he said, “is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism and materialism. To those statements written in 1967 we must add classism, gender privilege, and misogyny. This last year has brought us face-to-face again with racial and gender tensions, and the growing social and economic inequalities at the heart of our current system. The newly passed tax code will surely exacerbate these tensions. King’s question remains for us to answer as a society: will we choose chaos or community? If community, then how do we reweave the ragged fabric of our nation? What part might God be asking us to play in the evolutionary drama playing out across the globe?
On Monday we remember and celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose rhetoric and passion for justice helped gather thousands of ordinary Americans into a movement for civil rights anchored in his commitment to non-violence. That commitment was, and is, a beacon of light set in the heart of our nation. It has been largely ignored and often ridiculed as unrealistic, yet it radiates God’s voice, God’s cry, to repair the broken strands of our community. It sings of renewal and repair, calling us to mend our relationship with the earth, with each other and with all Creation. That is the real meaning of ‘salvation.’
King roused the conscience of the country by appealing to the values of human dignity and equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution. He reminds us of our American ‘creed’—“we hold these TRUTHS to be SELF-EVIDENT…. ALL people are created EQUAL. We are all endowed with INALIENABLE RIGHTS! To life, to liberty, to pursue happiness. He anchored these values in the Scriptures he knew so well as a Baptist preacher and his words inspired the cry for racial justice and full equality across the land.
We can be proud of our brother, Martin, and grateful for his courage, his witness, his extraordinary faithfulness to the Good News Jesus himself proclaimed. But if we simply make him into an icon and raise him onto a glamorous pedestal of Christian heroism, we fail in allowing him to lead us toward work God herself has set before us. Then his example will only gather dust in history books. Once a year we will just haul it out, give everyone a day off, and go back to life as usual where immigrants, women, gender non-conformists, non-whites, and even entire nations are ridiculed and humiliated.
“Who is my servant, where is she?” asks Rory Cooney in the song we will sing before approaching Christ’s Table in a few minutes. The verses continue, and a voice calls each of us to stand up and receive God’s summons. As we sing, we listen for the sound of our own name…and the question arises…”Who is my servant, where is she? My light to the nations, where is he?” The words fit the man we celebrate Monday, a man who stood courageously against the forces of oppression, exploitation and destruction of people and land, yes. But today they are addressed to you and me. We may not have the orator’s gift or a name commanding the national stage like our brother Martin did, but servants generally fulfill small tasks, actions often unnoticed even by those around them.
There is much we, as God’s servants, can do.
First we must acknowledge the racism burned into our own hearts through both obscure and overt cultural attitudes that teach us to segregate ourselves from people who are ‘different.’ Then we must work to uproot those attitudes that provoke knee-jerk reactions against or for policies that discriminate, policies that disregard real people and their very real needs. We have a good example of this type of attitude in an “open letter” written last month by 4 U.S. Bishops and 16 other conservative religious leaders decrying what they call “transgenderism.” The letter, titled “Created Male and Female,” labels transgender identity a “false idea” and claims people (like these letter writers) are being “compelled to agree with something that isn’t true, or face ridicule, marginalization and retaliation.” In their view the victims are not transgender individuals but those who oppose the fact they exist at all! This is a knee-jerk reaction to change, to uncomfortable differences, to a changing world and a changing paradigm. It disregards real people and their very real needs. It even refuses to listen to them.
We all have our biases, but still we must listen. God calls us within the challenging circumstances of our personal and collective lives. We are called to hear and heed the signs of the times, to listen, to allow ourselves to be changed by what we hear. We are asked to face all our interrelated biases and flaws, as Martin would say. God patiently, insistently, calls us by name, and poses a question to each of us: “Who stands in the storm like a beacon with hope for the ravaged and weakened? Whose presence is healing for young and for old, to friend and to stranger the same? THIS is my servant whom I shall uphold. His name is Christ. Christ is her name!
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