Dr. King's Birthday

 

Today is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday.  I encourage you to go YouTube and listen to a sermon he preached (there are several there).  Or Google and re-read, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”.  Dr. King’s words are powerful and as true today as when he first wrote/spoke them.  I am so taken by his opening response in the Letter from a Birmingham Jail to people who were criticizing him and essentially telling him he was wrong.  Dr. King didn’t respond by belittling others, calling names, or throwing verbal punches (as happens too frequently today).  Dr. King sought to answer with words that are thoughtful and challenging.  He writes, “Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”

What Dr. King is saying here ties to another one of his insightful quotes: Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.  I think about this given the reflections on baptism and temptation this past week.  I recently heard that when we take a stand make sure we do so on soil that can still be tilled and tended.  That is, so often, we stand on ground that we don’t want to touch and won’t let anyone else near.  But soil (both beneath us and within us) is alive.  The soil within us needs to continually be nourished by water.  We can poison the soil (within and around) with words and misuse of power.  We can take soil that isn’t ours.  We can demand that others see our soil, our position as the best. 

It isn’t that we either take a stand or stay on the sidelines.  There are moments we are fully engaged and moments of rest.  There are moments we speak and times we refrain because we are not ready.  And the problem is that we are quick to armchair quarterback other people’s lives and not see how we too have fumbles and unforced errors.  Some may want to discount Dr. King.  Some question his insistence on non-violence.  Yet, for me, I hear his words and find God’s still speaking force moving in what he wrote decades later.  I pray whatever sermon or speech you land on or read, God’s grace would move through you and help you tend/till the ground on which you stand.

Prayer: God wake me up to Your grace; challenge me with Your unconditional love; and let me shine my light in whatever way and wherever I can.  Amen.