How much easier it is to judge what is different or differentiate what we don’t understand than to benefit from from the truth it holds. I’m thinking, today especially, about my knowledge and understanding of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a white bread person growing up in a Christian environment. Though he was a pastor, I would never think of him in the same camp with my pastors growing up. Though he was an evangelist, I would never put him in the same sentence with Billy Graham. And though he boldly addressed the materialism, conformity to the world and injustice of the current church in America, I would have never seen him as a modern day Old Testament prophet like Amos, though I do now.
Why? Was it his color? Was it the nearness to violence (though never embraced)? Was it his reputation as a womanizer that made us write him off? I’m sure it was all of these things, but it pains me today that I am more familiar with his affairs than his sermons. He was different. He was scary. He was controversial. He was confrontational. He was passionate. He rang the bell of justice and equality, and he spoke of a love that gave human dignity to everyone regardless of difference. I wonder if Jesus showed up today as He did when He came, how many of us would write Him off because He didn’t look and sound like an evangelical? No doubt He would be different. His sermons wouldn’t go over well in many of today’s churches.
So lets look at one of the sermons of Martin Luther King and see what it might say to us today. The following is taken from just one sermon, “Paul’s Letter to American Christians,” delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, on November 4, 1956.
I am afraid that many among you are more concerned about making a living than making a life. You are prone to judge the success of your profession by the index of your salary and the size of the wheel base on your automobile, rather than the quality of your service to humanity.
Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brotherhood.
For so many of you morality is merely group consensus. In your modern sociological lingo, the mores are accepted as the right ways. You have unconsciously come to believe that right is discovered by taking a sort of Gallup poll of the majority opinion.
You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at 11:00 on Sunday morning to sing “All Hail the Power of Jesus Name” and “Dear Lord and Father of all Mankind,” you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America.
As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.
“But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24)
John Fischer The Catch 
well done john. it is heart breaking that the black leadership has abandened dr. kings heart. they have distroyed the black comunity. my heart breaks at he pain in the black community. thank you for reminding us dr. kings true heart. may we all have that nature. god’s nature.
Thanks John. So nice to see you here!
As an evangelical, your thought provoking question was….well, thought provoking: “I wonder if Jesus showed up today as He did when He came, how many of us would write Him off because He didn’t look and sound like an evangelical? No doubt He would be different. His sermons wouldn’t go over well in many of today’s churches.” Ever so convicting…
but jesus wasn’t a womanizer and isn’t that the whole point of having a message…although his message wasn’t about living a pure life, he was a baptist minister and I’d say that kind of takes him out of the ministry…I heard a snippet of a post inaugural discussion last night and I heard the words a new morality, and then I heard gay and lesbian…I’m sorry, there’s a balance between truth and compassion. Joseph was put in jail for his integrity and our message may not be popular, but if the salt has lost it’s savor, if the message shines no light, there is no longer a Biblical message.
I can see perhaps that technically, according to 1 Cor. 6:18 there is a difference between sexual sin and the rest of our sins. That being said, I continue to find it interesting that we make such a differentiation between ‘womanizing pastors’ and other sins that might be more common amongst us: obesity, gossiping, busy bodies etc. Do we ask a pastor to leave the ministry due to a long-standing problem with overeating? Or a gossiping Sunday school teacher?
It seems that this is the core of John’s message – we are all sinners saved by grace, not by works and this should strongly influence how we judge others – or not. We won’t live in the perfection in which we are seen by Him until we are with Him.
I’d be more likely to say that God’s word is true regardless of the messenger. Study King’s words today, further removed from his controversial life, and the truth still shines. We are all flawed vessels. So I kept my affairs in my mind… according to Jesus Martin and I are both guilty of the same sins.
I must admit I have never heard any of Dr King’s sermons or speeches, other than the most famous. This sermon could be given in any church in America today and be just as relevent as it was in 1956.
Amen.
Thank you John for your words of wisdom and I would include the inauguration today as a seminal event especially from Dr. King’s perspective.
This is 56 years old – where are the Amos’ of today? In Canada we are sorting out our attitudes about our First Nation citizens. So many of us are driven by fear – fear for losing earthly things – fear of a legitimate claim from someone else. We must heed the call of Jesus to use our possessions to bring people into heaven. Luke16:1-9
Sounds like you’re ready to join the new revolution!
I was visiting a friend in Atlanta several years ago and attended his church. It was a very large Southern Baptist church in the middle of an almost all black neighborhood. Over the many years of the churches history the very white neighborhood had changed. In this church I saw no people of color. I asked my friend how they could have an all white church in this area and he said, “they” have their own church down the street.
“You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at 11:00 on Sunday morning to sing “All Hail the Power of Jesus Name” and “Dear Lord and Father of all Mankind,” you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America.”
Some of us are still uncomfortable with people that don’t look like what we see in the mirror. In the good old days it only took long hair and a guitar to work up the good folks in my home church. The question that comes to me is, “who do I not want to see in my church Sunday morning?”
Thanks John, for giving me something to think about.
We haven’t changed as much as we think we have.
I was born in ’63 and grew up with all sorts of misconceptions about Dr. King. I love my parents dearly, but the biggest thing I heard around the house was “he causes riots and he’s a communist”. I’m Georgia, born and bred. Ironically, I never heard anything about womanizing. But everything about Dr. King was considered “suspect” (and still is to some degree) to my parents and their friends.
That being said, the message of justice and loving your neighbor, everything I read from Dr. King’s speeches, falls right in line with what Jesus spoke of to the Pharisees. It pains me to think so many of my friends and neighbors still hold onto what we heard/were taught in our childhood.
A few years ago, our entire United Methodist Women’s unit did a Bible study on Amos. Our particular “circle” was the only one who seemed to “get it”. I don’t understand that. But it was true. My mom still references today (some 25 yrs later) about how much I seemed to get from that study while she completely didn’t understand it at all (she’s 86).
I have no explanation why we don’t connect justice and mercy today any more so than 40+ yrs ago sometimes. I go to church in a multi-cultural church. It’s still not perfect, but it feels much more like heaven when you look out over the congregation and see lots of different faces around.
I might add, that when I was in 10th grade, I had to make a definitive decision on what I was going to believe and where my life was going to go. It is the one big thing my parents and I had issues over… racism… and what that actually meant.
I made the right decision and the more I read the Bible and learn about God, the more I believe that justice and mercy and love are the three “biggies”, after accepting Christ as your savior.
Nice. I’d love to visit your church!
We are all flawed, yet it seems hard to forgive others who are flawed. Did we not perhaps forgive ourselves for being flawed. We need to remember to love ourselves as well as God and neighbor.
For the last 18 years I have served under seven children’s ministry pastors. Five of them considered themselves the only ones who knew everything and the volunteers were there for them to achieve the presentation of the gospel. There was no servant leadership. Yet, while sitting back and keeping my mouth shut, and loving these pastors, I noticed that God used them to achieve His purpose in that ministry….children were saved and the gospel was presented. God does not need Christians to achieve His goals.
I have however started to pray for myself and others that I will finish my life strong in the Lord. Scripture showcases the 43 Israeli kings only 3 finished strong. Pretty dismal statistics. Don’t discredit them for the good they did, because there for the grace of God go I.
Martin Luther King was flawed but his dream lives on!
Amazing statistic. That’s sobering indeed.
well, I hardly think any of us would be following john if his flaw was womanizing and I don’t think Marti would call him a hero no matter what he had done
…it’s not a matter of forgiveness, it’s a matter of not respecting him as an unrepentent philanderer who never left his pulpit. There are extensive FBI files with extensive proof of his abundant illicit relationships in partiucular with prostitutes, not hearsay, as many would like to infer…
I am not condoning any of that behavior. I only wanted to point out how we remember his sins not his sermons.
M.L. King is remembered for his civil rights leadership, but he never stopped being a pastor/preacher as well. I had the privilege of hearing him speak to a mostly white audience at Vanderbilt University during a civil rights forum in 1965. He spoke for a few minutes, and then stopped, smiled us, and said “many of you are thinking, ‘he sounds just like a Baptist preacher.’ That’s because I am a Baptist preacher!”