The Long, Bitter And Beautiful Struggle For A New World

In 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed legislation designating the third Monday in January as a national holiday honoring the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. For me it represents an important annual touchpoint to check in with ourselves – individually and collectively – to ask how we are doing with respect to the vision and mission set forth by Dr. King.

Today is also the inauguration day of our incoming president, Donald Trump.

And I find it hard to imagine 2 people who articulated such different visions for America.

In our first reading today from Hebrews 5, St. Paul tells us that “every high priest is taken from among the people and made their representative before God.” I thought about Martin Luther King when I read these words. He was definitely a “high priest” in the history of this country. And when I imagine him as a “representative,” I think, “Now that is one heavenly politician that I can get behind! I want to be in his district!”

In so many ways, he represented the “better angels” of humanity – embodying what is possible for all of us if we are willing to do the hard work of confronting history, pursuing justice and giving a “preferential option” to the poor and marginalized. 

King, through his deep reading of scripture and following the nonviolent witness of Gandhi (to name but 2 influences), showed us what the gospel looked like here on American soil – especially with respect to facing anti-Black racism – but also with respect to economic rights, social justice, freedom and equality. And his legacy invites us to take up this work in our time and in the ways we are able. 

Our gospel reading from Mark 2 finds Jesus telling his disciples that one does not sew “a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak…[nor does one pour] new wine into old wineskins.” “It just doesn’t work,” he said.

Of course Jesus was referring to needing new and fresh tactics and ideas to engage the world and not using the same old, same old that has helped to create the problems that we are in. King advocated for what Jesus taught. He brought something new to the table – something which offered us a way out of the mess we found ourselves in. But the way out had a cost. It would require what King called a “radical revolution of values.”

As they say in the recovery programs, “the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result.” One of the tragedies that King pointed out, however, is that some people have a vested interest in the insanity. Their power and privilege rely upon the material and social conditions that maintain oppression, and King worked to bring into the light what was hidden in the shadows. In short, he called for a transformation of individual hearts and social systems.

In one of his most profound speeches (which I would urge EVERYONE to read or read again in light of the times in which we are living), Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence (4/4/1967), he says, 

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women [sic] will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

Just pause there and see what his words bring up in you.

In the beginning of this same speech, King talks of the difficulty for people to take up the “task of opposing their government’s policy” and acknowledges that the human spirit does not “move without great difficulty against the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world.”

Yet he invites us to break our silences and enter what cann be (in his words) a “vocation of agony.” But speak we must. And we must resist. He goes on to say that “the oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.”

From its rhetoric and actions, the incoming national leadership of this country has seemingly aligned itself with and fanned the flames of “the ever rising tides of hate.” And King warned us decades ago that it is a self-defeating path. Jesus warned us of the same more than 2000 years ago.

But this is where we find ourselves today and at this moment in history.

Much is going to come our way in the near future or in the next four years that will likely trouble us or challenge us. People like MLK remind us that the struggle that we are in is one that spans many centuries and must be taken up over and over by each generation. No matter WHO is in leadership in this country, it is our duty to speak with humility and also with moral courage against all that opposes the emergence of genuine human community as envisioned by Jesus (what he called the kin-dom of God).

Speak we must.

Resist we must.

Yet we must not succumb to the hate. We must remain rooted in love.

It’s worth noting that even in the midst of the criticism and opposition, King looked around in 1967 and saw that there was cause for rejoicing as large numbers of people were willing to voice and embody “firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history.” He concluded that, “Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us,” and urged us to “rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.”

A new world needs new wineskins. This is what we are here for. This is our calling as followers of Jesus.

“The choice is ours,” King said “and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.”

Now is our time.

Note: For today, I invite you to take some time in quiet prayer. Call upon our incredible ancestor, Martin Luther King, Jr. Ask Martin to awaken you, inspire you, connect with you, and sustain you. May his fire burn in our hearts.