♫Let us turn our thoughts today
To Martin Luther King
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women
Living on the earth
Ties of love and hope
Sister and brotherhood
That we are bound together
In our desire to see the world become
A place in which our children
Can grow free and strong
We are bound together
By the task that stands before us
And the road that lies ahead
We are bound and we are bound♫ (James Taylor)
Today as Barack Obama is sworn in for a second term as President of the Unites States, we remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who as much as anyone helped prepare the way for this day by straightening highways of crooked thought that justified racial bigotry and hatred, exposing and filling in valleys of vitriol and violence with nonviolent resistance and love, and daring to begin the hard and dangerous work of leveling mountains of injustice in a land in which its people had allowed the words “with liberty and justice for all” to grow cold from neglect.
Today, we remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who preached that there are ties between us, that we are bound together by common hopes and dreams, by love and the work that lies before us as responsible citizens of this land and as people of this one earth. As people of faith, I think it is important to remember that Martin Luther King, Jr., in addition to being a civil rights leader, was first and foremost a pastor, prophet, and theologian for our time. Much like Rabbi Abraham Heschel who marched arm and arm with him to Selma, Dr. King’s vision, life, and writings formed one seamless garment. In my estimation, Dr. King is greatly underappreciated as a theologian. Graduating from Boston University with a Ph.D., his original instinct was to become a college professor teaching theology. It was his theology, his understanding of the justice of God, God’s love for the downtrodden, and the summons for all of us to make the beloved community a reality on earth as it is in heaven, that spawned, guided, and animated all his work. Who knows how much longer and how many more people would have suffered waiting for a prophet to come along who could embody as courageously and articulately as did Dr. King the message that indicted, inspired, and liberated so many, had he not followed the Spirit’s summons to return home in 1954 to pastor a black church in the Jim Crow South. After all his study and preparation, like Jesus in the desert tempted by Satan with power, possessions, and prestige, he resisted the lure of what might have been. Certainly the prestige that accompanied a professorship, especially for a black man in the 1950’s, must have been enticing. But with a listening heart, he stepped humbly and boldly into the moment to which he was being called. All his hours of study prepared him well for a life in academia, but it didn’t provide him a glimpse of the crucible that awaited him. But like all pilgrims of the truth, he took the road less traveled by. For all our sakes, that has made all the difference.
Today we remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and that there are ties between us, that we are bound together into a beloved community that is grounded in the dream of God, and that there is still work to be done and it starts, as Dorothy Day taught us, with little acts of faith, constantly repeated, little acts of hope, constantly repeated, and little acts of love, constantly repeated.
With Liberty and Justice for All,
Dan