Martin’s Letter as Biblical Epistle

1-15-24

Rev. Douglas Taylor

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/KfYC3xdzpZ8

There was more than one conversation in my UU ministers circles asking which text will people be using this Sunday from Dr. King. Several people shared they were referencing the “Beyond Vietnam” speech, others of course focused on the famous “I Have a Dream” speech. At least one colleague is using the text of his Ware Lecture to the Unitarian Universalists in 1966. Another said she was following from his book Where Do We Go from Here: Community of Chaos? Dr. King certainly left us a considerable amount of material to work with.

I’m not sure when it became a common tradition among us to honor Dr. King’s message each January. An obvious possibility is in connection with 1983 when MLK Day became a national holiday. It does not seem as if there was a concerted effort from somewhere in the UUA to make this happen, it seems more organic. I’ve certainly felt a need to speak about racism, democracy, and justice each year in connection with the holiday – similar to how I feel I need to preach about forgiveness around the time of Yom Kippur each year. It just feels needed and now is a good time to bring it up. It is part of my regular liturgical year. King’s words are for me like liturgical scripture – text that keeps reappearing on my Sunday calendar year after year. 

Of course, there is a danger with this line of thinking. It does happen that people will only talk about the happy parts of Dr. King’s message and only this one time each year. ‘Whitewashing’ is the unironic term for such behavior. The question can arise – why only King? Why have this heavy focus on his words as if no one else every spoke eloquently or powerfully?

Remember Ella Baker who said “Until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest.” And Jackie Robinson said, “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.” And we do well to remember that “In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist,’ was first spoken by Angela Davis. And it was Malcom X who said “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” Any of those voices would be a solid focusing center for a sermon on racism, democracy, and justice. And for a more contemporary voice, listen to Alicia Garza, founder of the Black Live Matter movement, who said: “The fight is not just being able to keep breathing. The fight is actually to be able to walk down the street with your head held high — and feel like I belong here, or I deserve to be here, or I just have [a] right to have a level of dignity.”

So why all the focus on Dr. King? I’ll start by agreeing that our ears should not only be open to the words of Dr. King on the topics of racism, democracy, and justice! I’ve made a note to myself to do a sermon focused on James Baldwin next year – probably not in January. And I don’t think I have done a sermon on the relationship between Dr. King and Malcom X – I’ll put that on my list as well.

But I am going to keep bringing Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message to this congregation for two reasons. First, King has achieved a mythic level of acceptance in our society and it would be a waste to ignore him when speaking about the very issues that were central to his life’s work. King’s message already has a foothold in our broader culture. His legacy is sufficiently entangled with our nation’s story such that the message is already in the room! The second reason I continue to focus on King is because his message is still relevant to our situation today. I need to hear his message still. He was nuanced and deep enough in what he said more than half a century ago that we are still working toward his vision today.

Perhaps a third reason is something I’ve been pondering lately and is expressed in the title I chose for this morning’s sermon: “Martin’s Letter as Biblical Epistle.” I don’t mean to suggest we turn King into a saint and treat all his writings and speeches as the holy and infallible word of God. I don’t treat the actual bible that way – so of course that’s not what I’m suggesting with my title.

Let me pause for a moment and unpack the word ‘epistle.’ Like many ‘bible-y’ sounding words, it comes to us from Greek through Latin. It essentially means ‘a long, formal letter.’ Many people will simply refer to them as the letters, or more commonly, by the recipient community. 1^st Corinthians, for example, is the first of two letter Paul wrote to the church community in the city of Corinth.

Apostle Paul wrote many of the epistles we have in the bible, or at least the first handful; several others were written in his style. And when we say ‘long, formal letter’ I will share that King’s letter from Birmingham Jail is a little shorter than Paul’s longest letter in the bible, Romans.

Biblical scholars agree that the letters from Paul are the earliest Christian writings – the Gospels with their accounts of Jesus’ ministry were written decades later. Paul wrote his letters to these young congregations, addressing concerns of doctrine and behavior, encouraging them to live and act in more Christ-like ways. In recent years, people have occasionally offered letters written in the spirit of Paul, following Paul’s format or using some of Paul’s language or echoing the kind of message Paul offered. In that sense, King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail can be seen as such a letter written to the White Christian Churches of America.

Indeed, in the Letter from Birmingham Jail, King even suggests this interpretation of his letter when, explaining why he traveled from Atlanta to Birmingham for the demonstrations. He wrote:

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth-century prophets left their little villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city in the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

So, consider Dr. King – like apostle Paul – crafting a letter to a community in need of guidance, in need of clarity and dare I say correction.

The general thrust of the letter is an articulation of how we have a moral responsibility to use non-violent direct actions to oppose unjust laws rather that to wait for justice to be delivered through the courts. In this way it is an updated, in the trenches, revisiting of Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.”

“Unjust laws exist: [Thoreau writes] shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse.”

– Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

And a little over a hundred years later, King felt compelled to articulate the same sentiment when white clergy in Birmingham questioned his actions, suggestion he could wait. King responded saying “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Do not blame the oppressed for the way they cry out in their oppression. Instead, join them. Thoreau, again, has said, “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”

Dr. King kept a dog-eared copy of that short essay on hand for moral sustenance and encouragement.  In his 1963 book, Strength to Love, Dr. King wrote, “The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.  In any cause that concerns the progress of [humankind], put your faith in the nonconformist!” 

I hasten to clarify at this point that the hard work of a civil disobedience campaign is that its not just a moment for non-conformists to act out. A civil disobedience campaign is organized and thoughtfully enacted. It is not a simple step to take, and certainly not one taken in isolation.

The main argument in Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is similar to that of Thoreau: Unjust laws call for a moral opposition and we cannot wait for the oppressor to set the timetable for an oppressed people’s freedom. I am sure the work looks differently today – witness how different the Black Lives Matter movement has been when compared to the Civil Rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s. And I hear how that sounds – to be describing what happened in the 60’s Civil Rights work and the current Black Lives Matter movement as if they are not the same ongoing effort.

“Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability.” Birmingham, chapter 4, verse 24, (I may be so playfully bold.) Progress is not inevitable. When King said the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice – he never meant for us to interpret that to say we can sit back and wait for universe to do the bending all on its own. Progress is not inevitable. “It comes,” King wrote, “through the tireless efforts and persistent work of [people] willing to be coworkers with God.”

Yes, we have done away with the lunch counter and drinking fountain version of segregation. Yes, we have had black astronauts and black senators and black billionaires and a black president. Yes there has been progress. But the rise of white nationalism and the flair up of white supremacy culture has been vitriolic and violent recently.

The reason we keep quoting King in our congregations is because we’re not done. King’s call for justice still serves our current situation. And it may take the form of fighting militarism or poverty – King certainly linked those evils in with racism as we experience it in our country. King would certainly applaud resistance against war and efforts to alleviate economic inequality as complimentary to our anti-racism work. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. Let our lives be the counter-friction to stop the machine.

As we prepare to go forth into the world from this morning, let us keep King’s call in our hearts. Let his eloquence ring in our ears. We can yet work against racism. We still can take part in speaking out against endless war. There is still more to do, right here in Binghamton in the struggle against poverty and economic inequality.

Let us go forth, ready to bend the moral arc of the universe a bit more toward justice today. Let us go forth, ready to help realize the dream King spoke about by working to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and care for the sick. Let us speak out against racism and the ways it corrodes the soul of our nation. Let us share the dream together, today. And let us have our hearts spurred into action to once again do the work of building the Beloved Community for today.

In a world without end

May it be so.