2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time: Martin Luther King, An American Martyr

Martin Luther King, An American Martyr

Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

My mom was a story teller - she got that from being from Hawaii where everybody “talks story.” After dinner we would stay at the dinner table and keep on “talking story.”  My cousin Sue would come over sometimes and she and my mother would talk from 3 in the afternoon until well in the late evening talking story.  I loved her story of the 1946 Tsunami not because of the horrific event that happened, but because her story of the Tsunami was really about the reactions of the people around her.  My mom was in a school bus on a pali looking down on the valley when she saw the Tsunami. The bus driver yelled out, “Tsunami” an unfamiliar word to the children in the bus. And the kids leaned over one another to see the Tsunami crush houses and push through the the jungle as the water from the ocean traveled inland destroying everything in its path.  My mom talked the nervous energy of the other kids on the bus as they watched what was happening down below. My mom remembered how my grandmother’s face and her shoulders looked when they told her about the Tsunami because my uncle was at the school that was destroyed by the Tsunami. She told me how the other mothers in the neighborhood sounded as each mother heard the news whether her child died or was found alive.  When we share stories we “abide” in the consciousness and heart of the story teller. We begin to see what the storyteller sees and feel what the storyteller feels.

Jesus was one who was able to talk story. His manner of teaching was not pure recitation of the law, but through parables and direct human engagement. He sat with people, broke bread and talked story. Jesus drew people in when he talked about this kingdom. Jesus invited people to become his disciples with the phrase “Come and you will see.”  This mean that people became disciples by “abiding” or “staying” with him.  In the gospel today John the Baptists’ disciples were interested in Jesus and John encouraged them, “Behold the Lamb of God…” he said.  When they approached Jesus they stayed for dinner and presumably stayed the night.  They “abided” with Jesus. This is what I call “salvation through relationship.” 

This phrase, “salvation through relationship” means that we are saved because Christ has chosen a relationship with us. And when he chose “us” he chose those who were marginalized. He was born in the margins of a small town on the outskirts of Jerusalem. He was raised in Nazareth in the province of Galilee - a marginalized region of poor subsistence farmers and laborers.  His ministry was among marginalized peoples: beggars, publicans, prostitutes and drunkards.  His death was outside the margin of the city - a place called Golgotha, the skull.

Jesus’ experience on the margins did not harden his heart, but rather, it gave him a powerful insight into the lives of people who needed hope and something to live for. Jesus changed lives because he was able to captivate people by using stories and parables and by treating people with non-judgmental compassion.  Jesus saw the value in gathering people together for meals in which stories and fellowship were more important than strict compliance with rules of purification and social protocol. When Jesus told stories and gathered people together, he made them disciples and the disciples went out into the world and forever changed the course of human history.

Ministers we are called to be storytellers.  The best ministers are those whose stories captivate people in such a way that listeners want to change the world. This weekend we recognize Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the world’s greatest storytellers. He had an incredible command of language and was able to share a vision of a society in which people from all races and economic backgrounds would be able to sit together and become a family. His vision, which we refer to as “The Beloved Community,” stood in stark contrast to the racial hatred and segregation of the 1950’s and early 1960’s. White leadership in the South were dead set against granting equal rights and protects to black people and Black people pushed back against the tide of ignorance with the use of violence.  White establishment in the North were not willing to share power with the emerging voice of Black people.

When racial tension escalated to a point where people were being arrested in mass numbers, White people took offense.  Among those arrested was including Dr. King who wrote a letter from jail addressed to the White establishment Churches that criticized Dr. King for his activism. (see http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/letter.html) This letter was an invitation to his critics to sit with him, to “abide” with him to understand why he is doing what he is doing.  In one section of letter Dr. King told why the African American community has mobilized itself for social change.  Dr. King wrote,

When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking, "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored" when your first name becomes "Nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

This section of the letter is a litany of short vignettes that tell the life experience of an entire community. When we hear these stories, do they not resonate with our story - at least to some degree?  Do these short sentences not move your hearts? Can you understand their frustration and why people have chosen the course of action that they took?

Today we acknowledge Dr. King’s contribution in advancing our society to be a place or inclusion where all our stories are told and where all are welcome. We acknowledge that we still have a long way to go in bringing mutual acceptance between races and individuals. And maybe one day we will see the Beloved Community in which people regardless of their skin color, religion, national origin and status of citizenship will gather together. One day people will come to surpass tolerance with embracing others who are not like themselves. One day we will have that Beloved Community in which all sorts of people will respect and embrace one another as kinfolk and not see that one configuration of a partnership or family be a “threat” to their own partnerships or families.  Let us tell each other these stories of hope and that in our telling, we may find our way to one another and in manifesting the Beloved Community here and now.