Sermons

January 15 2006

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day
What Would He Say To Us Today?

Reverend Dr Cheri DiNovo

This week I knew I was going to talk about Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and also tomorrow on my radio show I’m going to air the last sermon he gave before being assassinated, a particularly powerful one. In telling the folk at the station about my plans one of the students there who is doing a co-op placement, "Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King – is that the one they call, "The King"?"

It’s an interesting question to ask a Christian minister because of course, "the King" at least in this surrounding is Jesus Christ, but I also knew that when she was talking about, "the King", she was speaking of none other than Elvis Presley. Now an interesting factoid came across my desk this week as Elvis seems to be in the air. Did you know that when Elvis died in 1977 there were only 3 know Elvis impersonators but a year ago there were 50,000 registered Elvis impersonators? This comes under the lies, damn lies and statistics category, but that the author of this statistic then went on to postulate that by projection in the year 2015 one in four humans on the planet will be Elvis impersonators. So it’s very possible that several among you today are Elvis impersonators and don’t even know it!

Anyway, back to the other King, Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King. He was born in 1929 in Atlantic Georgia and came from a long line of preachers. His daddy was a preacher and his granddaddy. They were hellfire and brimstone Baptist preachers at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Martin was a young rebel. He didn’t like what he was hearing. He went to Divinity School without a great deal of enthusiasm and then of course went on to do amazing Christian ministry, preaching and teaching and then as we all know, just before his fortieth birthday, dying, in Memphis Tennessee. He was there because of a garbage worker’s strike. He wanted to add his support to striking workers.

Now I know that all around North America this week and next week, people will be speaking about Martin Luther King Jr. You kinda have to. Mainstream media will be speaking about Martin Luther King because they kinda have to. My suspicion is that what they will be saying will make of this amazing man, a Hallmark card and take away from him what was truly amazing and that is that he was a Christian revolutionary. That’s who he was. A Christian revolutionary. So it is with some trepidation and shyness, that I attempt to speak as if it might be something he would say. What would Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. say to us today?

I thought there were three areas that he might want to say something about. The first because it is the civil rights issue facing our Churches today is in the area of queer rights and same sex marriage. The second area that he might want to say something about is violence and non violence and the war in Iraq. The third area he might want to address is what it means to be a Christian at all because it strikes me that what it means to be a Christian these days in most areas of the Untied States and Canada was not what it meant to be a Christian for him.

Same sex marriage and same sex rights are something dear to the heart of many in this congregation. What would he have said about those issues? You can sort of judge people by their friends, those people who are close to them and what they think probably has some bearing on what the person themselves would think. So judging from Martin Luther King’s friends, this is what I think his opinion would be. One of his friends was Rev. Dr. James Forbes of Riverside Church. We had the great good fortune of traveling down there with our confirmation group a couple of years ago. There’s a chapter in my book about it and I talk about what an absolutely mind blowing experience that was. James Forbes is African American and about 60-70% of their congregation is African American and we just happened to be there the Sunday before Gay Pride Day in New York City. James Forbes said to the gathered 2000.00 at that day’s worship, "If you do not come next Sunday as we commission and bless our contingent for the Gay Pride parade you better have a doctor’s note." The next Sunday this predominantly African American congregation turned out to witness the blessings and commissioning of the marchers in the Gay Pride parade in New York City. That’s one friend of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s. In fact, he preached his, "Why Are We in Vietnam?" speech from the pulpit at Riverside. Another friend, Julian Bond who is the president of the NAACP, has come out in support of same sex marriage, another good friend of King’s. Probably his best friend is a man named James Lowry with whom he started the Christian Leader’s Federation in the southern United States, a group of clergy focused on civil rights issues. James Lowry said something quite beautiful and I think very King-esque. He said, "I have entered the valley of prayer about same sex marriage but…", he said, "…if it comes to a decision between inclusion and exclusion and you are a Christian, you must always, always opt for inclusion." So what would Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. say about same sex marriage? I think he’d say, "Go for it."

What would he say about violence and non violence particularly in our city, country and world? Well you know what he’d say. He studied non violence under Ghandi’s tutelage and started his own institute for studies in non violence in Atlanta and perhaps his most famous speech/sermon about this is "Why Are We in Vietnam?". In that speech he decried the American involvement in Vietnam. He called for the troops to be withdrawn immediately. What do you think he’d say about the war in Iraq? He’d not only be out in the streets demonstrating with Cindy Sheehan. He’d probably have been arrested by now and, one article I read suggested, arrested for abetting terrorism. If he had said the same things about the Iraq war as he said about the war in Vietnam, he would now be covered by any press and would be open for persecution. Not only an illegal war but an immoral war, as are all wars. You know one of the things that neess to be said because when you start talking about non violence and pacifism you always hear the same concerns. One of them being, " It simply doesn’t work" King would say, "Who cares?" It’s not whether something works or not that makes it ethical or moral. He would say what makes it ethical and moral, for a Christian, is that Christ mandated it. Christ said in no uncertain terms to everyone who bears Christ’s name, you must be nonviolent. You must not take up the sword. We read Christ’s words on Sundays not Julius Caesar’s.

What would Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. say about Chrisitianity? It’s interesting, he never preached a sermon about personal piety, personal sin, personal morality. Not once. The F.B.I. who had him under constant surveillance would have said that’s because he didn’t have any personal piety or personal morality. He was known as an adulterer to them That was the era of J. Edgar Hoover. King was known as a Communist sympathizer. Amazingly those tapes were never used to destroy him. One wonders if they wouldn’t be used to destroy him today? Certianly that he was allowed to do the ministry he did was an act of God. King didn’t feel that that was an essential part of the Christian message, personal sin and morality. He felt that the essential part of the Christian message was Jesus Christ’s proclamation to the poor. He was a member of the Social Gospel movement. As Canadians we should be so proud of that. This was before liberation theology. You know where the social gospel movement was born? It was born on the Canadian praires with names like Ben Smillie, Tommy Douglas and many others. What the Social Gospel movement taught was a new way, an old way some would say, of reading the gospel message. They saw Jesus concerned not about personal liberation but liberation of the poor and the oppressed, liberation of the world. That’s the meaning of Christianity. It’s not about being "nice". It’s about changing the world. As you change the world, then you in turn are changed. You can’t work with God without being changed by God. I think Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would look around and be thoroughly depressed by what passes as Christian these days. Before you can wear the cross you should bear the cross.

He knew he was going to be killed. He knew he was going to pay with his life. You can hear it in his last speech. His house had been fire bombed twice, his home life was non existent, he traveled constantly, he’s already been stabbed. He knew he was going to die. Death is the end of all stories of bravery and courage. It’s the way all stories end anyway. He never pointed though at himself as holy. The last thing he would have wanted is to be sainted. He was after all a wonderful Protestant, named after Martin Luther, the great reformer. Luther said, my favourite Luther quote, "Sin boldly and love Christ more boldly still."

This was our Rev. Dr. Martin Luther Kin Jr. a revolutionary, a profound Christian. When he did good work he didn’t point to himself as good, he wasn’t trying to be "better". This was not a make over Christianity. He was pointing to the goodness of God. When he did works of great power, he wasn’t pointing to his own personal power. He didn’t have much. He knew that. He was pointing to the incredible power of the Holy Spirit. When he did works that could be construed as saintly he wasn’t pointing to his own holiness. He wasn’t holy and he knew it. He was pointing to the saviour that we call Jesus Christ.