Martin Luther King Day

Martin Luther King thoughts.
Not necessarily for your benefit, dear blog reader, just a chance for me to indulge in my own reflections:
Some good pieces are available on TV so take time to watch a few.
Yes, I remember the day his assassination happened; hearing about it at school.
I had a room mate for some of my first year in seminary at BU who personally knew King and worked with him in some of the later events and I did not take the opportunity to hear more of his experiences. Opportunity lost! Coretta Scott King spoke in Marsh Chapel of Boston Univ. when I was there. (Yes, we sang "We shall over come") I hope to never forget it. We could go to the library at Boston Univ. and see whatever letter of his might be on display at the time, and of course there were a few older professors who knew him from his days as a doctoral student at BU.
If you're ever in Atlanta see the historical sites: Ebenezer Baptist Church, the King "boyhood" family home and the King center there; I was there in the early 80s and it had a pilgrimage feel to it. I keep my "souvenir mug," with a favorite quote in the office. Ways to be reminded of something that must not be forgotten....
But most of all, am I/ are we ( a nation , a church, a culture) willing to see that the vision is not fulfilled? The work is still there to do. ..inclusion, justice, "strength to love"....spiritual transformation ...In later work he spoke not only of the racism, but the poverty and the violence of war.
Still have a dream? Maybe it serves to trouble my conscience a bit because I have not had the prophetic kind of voice that I envisioned for myself in seminary and early ministry days. As one of my early DS's put it, my pastoral sensibilities have grown (...but at what price?)

Martin Luther King Jr Day

Some of his words.

The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must
be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an
irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.
, Strength to Love, 1963.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies
hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction
of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of
annihilation.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.

The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of
civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant
animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.



Was not Jesus an extremist for love -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice -- "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ -- "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist -- "Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God." Was not John Bunyan an extremist -- "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist -- "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice--or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill, three men were crucified. We must not forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thusly fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment.

From “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (April 1963)

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.


To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.

“Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'”

The last citing here is from inward/outward's posting:

By Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

Let us realize that William Cullen Bryant is right: “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.” Let us go out realizing that the Bible is right: “Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” This is for hope for the future, and with this faith we will be able to sing in some not too distant tomorrow with a cosmic past tense, “We have overcome, we have overcome, deep in my heart, I did believe we would overcome.”

Source: Final speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, August 16, 1967, in I Have A Dream, edited by James Washington