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Dr. Martin Luther King's Birthday A Sermon by Rev. David Bryce |
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Good Morning! This Monday marks the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s seventy-fifth anniversary, an event that actually took place on Thursday. In my write-up for this sermon, I stated that I was going to look at the history of the struggle for the recognition of civil rights in our past and also ask the question, “Who’s next?”. I think that is an important question, and I intend to try to answer it. But it is also important to avoid the thinking that asking that question might imply. To say, “Who’s next?” could indicate a belief that all of the efforts of the past have been successful, that somehow past struggles are over, and that it is time to look beyond them. I do not hold that to be true. The struggles of the past are ongoing. Full rights are not yet secured for the majority of America’s citizens. That is a phenomenal statement, isn’t it? But it is true. The MAJORITY of our citizens do not yet enjoy full recognition and exercise of their civil rights. Add together women, racial minorities and sexual minorities and you have much more than a majority. I want to begin with what we all know, that when this nation was founded, the only voters were white male landowners who were at least twenty-one years of age. Vast numbers of its people lived in slavery or indentured servitude. Women and children were very nearly considered to be the property of their husbands and fathers. We have come a long way. By the nineteen fifties, when Dr. King became active in the civil rights movement, the most glaring abuses of civil rights were against African Americans in the South. That is not to say that the only abuses were in the South or that the only abuses were against African Americans; but it was in the South that legal segregation was in force; it was in the South that legislation and regulation imposed daily humiliation and indignity. It was in the context of the South that Dr. King began his two-fold movement for change. First, Dr. King wanted to put an end to legal, social and economic segregation. His work was not just about legal segregation; it was about the full range of participation in American society. He died while supporting striking garbage workers. He died struggling against economic segregation. Second, Dr. King called upon us to put aside the use of violence in any and all circumstances. His use of non-violence was not just a tactical decision to achieve human rights here in this country; it was a deep moral commitment to non-violence in all human affairs. As a man of peace, he spoke out against the war in Vietnam. As a man of peace, he also spoke to those who, frustrated by the slow process of change, were tempted by the thought of turning to violence to end discrimination and to end war. In speaking to them, he urged peace in the heart and justice in the work of the hands. I must confess that by the time he died, I, with the arrogance of many an eighteen year old, had decided that he had become irrelevant; that time and history had passed him by. I had concluded that “the system” was too evil to change and had to be torn down so a new more just system could rise in its place. I came to that conclusion because I was angry. Why, for three years I had been demonstrating against the war in Vietnam and it still had not ended. I would remind you that for an eighteen year old, three years is an eternity. With the wisdom of maturity, in later years I came to understand that Dr. King was right. I just do not have the strength of character and the moral depth to maintain the confidence that he had in the non-violent process. I get caught in what, ironically, we call “practical” thinking, as if killing and maiming can be called “practical”. I fell into that “practical” thinking in the late sixties and early seventies when I raged against my own government; I fall into it again periodically, as when I concluded two years ago that the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan was justified. I believed that then and I believe it now, even though I know that morality and love require non-violence. That is a difficult moral paradox I live with. I know that non-violence is the right life commitment, but I periodically set aside that belief in the name of “what works”. Yet, “what works” merely perpetuates the violence and injustice that currently exists. As an aside, I find it interesting that many of the same people who are most offended when one suggests that violence is justified against someone that they like or support become just as offended when one denies that violence is justified against their enemies. I say that while recognizing that I am one of those people. A few days ago, when President Bush went to the grave of Dr. King to acknowledge all that he did for this nation, there were demonstrators present who raised valid questions. They are not questions aimed solely at President Bush; rather they are raised for us all. How can we as a nation, we as a people, honor Dr. King while at the same time ignoring what he taught and told us? How can we honor Dr. King while ignoring the social and economic segregation that continues in this country? While legal segregation in our school systems has been banned, segregation in school continues, for both economic and social reasons. And in those segregated schools, the economic realities mean that, all too often, African American students still receive old, worn, outdated text books; all too often, they work in science labs and computer labs that are in disrepair if they exist at all; all too often, they are taught by well meaning but inexperienced teachers, who transfer to other schools as soon as seniority makes that possible. I would acknowledge that it is not only African American students who suffer these things; they are class issues as much as they are racial issues. But in our society, race is a factor in determining which class you belong to. How can we honor Dr. King while ignoring his called to non-violence at home and in the world? How can we as a people celebrate the fact that he was the moral conscience of a nation while we invade other countries? How can we honor his morality while rejecting his morality? We do that to many of our heroes. We celebrate them, congratulate ourselves for what they accomplished, and we then ignore their message. Dr. King, like Gandhi whom he emulated, confronted systems of evil while preaching love for people. You can only do that if you acknowledge that there are evil systems and deny that there are evil people. Neither King nor Gandhi believed in the philosophy that we should change the world by changing one heart at a time. If talk and colloquia were the means relied upon to bring about change, then I believe that the South would still be segregated. Both Gandhi and King believed in confronting systems of oppression, and through that confrontation, hearts would be changed. Like Gandhi and Jesus, Dr. King accepted the dual commandments to justice making and to radical love, to loving your enemies. The goal is to free them from evil as well, because they, too, are its victims. Again, there are evil systems, not evil people. In our Universalist heritage, our religious forebears believed that God forgives us our sins—all of them. All people are saved. We sin out of ignorance. And so, if we are to be children of God and messengers of God, then we must act out of that radical call to universal love along with our justice making. One of Dr. King’s qualities was a deep and abiding patience. He said, perhaps quoting someone else, “The arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice”. One message that transcends theology, the message from Jesus the Jew, Gandhi the Hindu and King the Christian, the message from all of them is: “Have Faith”. Have faith in Goodness; faith in goodness within every human heart and soul; faith in God, the Goddess, the Cosmos, Truth or Love. Have faith and believe that justice will come. Who’s next? The same people who have been struggling for years: African Americans, women, Latinos and Asian Americans. Who’s next? Sexual minorities of every kind. Who’s next? Arab Americans and Muslim Americans whose rights are being denied by both people and our government. Who’s next? Non-citizens whose rights are being denied, who are being arrested and held incommunicado, with no access to lawyers, with families that do not know where they are, with no list even of who has been arrested. Who’s next? We are, when we refuse to let practicality destroy our idealism; when wee stand for human rights against our own fears. Who’s next? We are when we confront institutions of evil while acting out of love. Who’s next? We are when we refuse to let hatred live within us. If we would live out the dream of Dr. King, we must have faith, we must believe in and work for justice, and we must love our enemies. May we commit ourselves to doing so.
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