Honoring Dr. King and Pursuing a Journey Towards Wholeness

Sermon by Stephen D. Edington
January 16, 2000

Reading

(Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt)

There are so many American stories...yet so many of us know only one or two versions. So many of us think that our stories are mutually exclusive: The story of Native American people whose lands were wrested from them versus the story of white settlers who moved across the great plains; the story of African Americans cruelly separated from their native homes versus the story of Southern planters who used slave labor to build their wealth; the story of immigrants who fled their homelands for the sake of a distant promise versus those Americans whose families seemed always to be here. And there are the stories of those whose American history is nothing like the stories above, stories of people who feel torn by what often seems like interests not their own.

In the face of these divergent stories and complex identities, our ability to talk to each other and to listen to each other becomes crucial. With all the stresses of the post-modern world, many Americans believe the only choices are to paper over what seems dissonant about ourselves and our nation, or to see those differences--and be destroyed. But more and more of us view this choice as a false one. There is another option open to all of us: To know ourselves more clearly, even if what we see doesn't always make sense; to acknowledge what is painful among us, as a first step toward mutual reconciliation; to rejoice in the knowledge that our American dreams, though hardly achieved, are sometimes closer to fruition than we know. For parallel to the stories of injustice and persecution that are a real part of American history, are the stories of justice and hope that continue to fuel a common love for and commitment to the American experiment.

Sermon

This past Friday the "Encore" section of the Telegraph featured a full page picture of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and several pages were given over to describing the various events in this area that are happening in conjunction with the celebration of his birthday. The day before, in Thursday's Boston Globe, there was a front page story saying that Dr. King is a leading candidate to be declared a martyr by the Roman Catholic Church, with his name being advanced to the Vatican by the US Council of Catholic Bishops for such a designation. In the category of "you're never too old to learn something new" I thought you had to have been a Catholic in order to be officially declared a martyr by the Catholic Church, but that does not seem to always be the case. You could have even been a Baptist minister, it appears.

Its gratifying to read such things. I am glad to see Dr. King so honored in this State, given the struggle it took to bring New Hampshire into the fold of the other 49 who officially set aside a day in his memory. The significance I see in the Catholic Church's consideration of Dr. King for martyr status is the recognition that his efforts on behalf of civil rights, racial and social justice, and peace were at base a religious and spiritual undertaking. When young Martin King, Jr. was considering a career for himself, his first choice was to go into law. This choice was partly motivated, I would imagine, by his need to move away from the very large shadow cast by his father, Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr., who was one of the most prominent African American ministers in the city of Atlanta, Georgia when Martin was growing up.

But the younger King ended up choosing the ministry for himself as well because in the Black Church, which had so shaped his own life, he saw a spiritual energy that he believed could be channeled into the cause of racial justice itself. Dr. King also believed that even a society that had first enslaved, and then brutalized and marginalized the lives of his fellow African-Americans for centuries still had a spiritual core that could be reached and appealed to for the sake of racial healing and reconciliation.

For all of the gratitude I feel at Dr. King being so honored, however, this question still comes to my mind: Which Martin Luther King, Jr. is it whose life we celebrate with an official day in his memory, and whose life is now so revered by religious leaders worldwide? Of course, there was only one Martin Luther King, Jr. but his was a life that moved through a series of phases in the course of its brief 39 years. The Dr. King we celebrate tends to be the apostle of non-violence, the Martin Luther King of the 1963 March on Washington and the "I Have a Dream" speech; or the Dr. King of the Selma to Montgomery, Alabama march in 1965 where the primary aim was to dismantle the persisting racial segregation of that time. Given that these events were among the highlights of his life, they are ones for which Dr. King would certainly want to be remembered.

But at the one, and only, time I ever saw and heard Dr. King his life, mission, and ministry were expanding into even wider, and even more controversial areas. In late January of 1968 I attended, in Washington D.C., a large gathering of an organization called Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam. I was in theological school then. As a part of that gathering Dr. King was scheduled to give a speech at the Arlington National Cemetery which was critical of the American military presence in Vietnam, and calling for a cessation of our military involvement there. We were also going to Arlington to honor the lives of those who had perished in all wars, including the one going on in Vietnam, and to offer prayers for peace. But in the days and hours prior to that event a series of legal maneuvers that took place. The result was that the National Park Service, which has the Arlington National Cemetery as part of its jurisdiction, was successful in preventing Dr. King from addressing our gathering there on the grounds that we were not a "patriotic" group. (I won't pursue that point except to say that such a ruling may give you some idea as to how polarized the country was then over the issue of the Indochina War.) Since there was no time to legally contest the ruling, the Clergy and Laity organization was able to obtain a permit to observe a minute of silence at Arlington Cemetery, after which we went to a large Presbyterian church in Washington where Dr. King made his speech.

The image of Martin Luther King holding forth from behind the pulpit in that packed church--with a very young Jesse Jackson and Andrew Young standing behind him--is one that will stay in my mind for the rest of my life. In addition to speaking out against what he had come to see as the immoral nature of our military involvement in Southeast Asia, Dr. King also spoke of his plans for a Poor People's March and Encampment in Washington, D.C. that coming summer. He appealed to the clergy and lay leaders for their support as he sought to bring issues of class division and discrimination together with the issues of racial justice to which he'd give a good deal of his life.

The previous summer, 1967, had seen a number of urban uprisings and riots in some of our larger cities. While remaining as strong as ever in espousing non-violence, on that afternoon Rev. King, in a blunt-spoken manner, laid much of the responsibility for those outbreaks at the feet of both the public and the private sectors' neglect of--if not blindness to--the conditions of many of our inner cities. He had by no means given up on the dream of which he had so eloquently spoken in that same city 5 years earlier, but now there was a certain weariness, if not sadness, in his demeanor. He spoke words of judgement and rebuke as well as words of hopes and dreams. As we all now know, Dr. King tragically had less than three months left to live himself by then. He was assassinated the following April 4, 1968.

(As a side note here I'll add that the spring and early summer of 1968, when I was 22 years old, was a very disquieting time for me. Less than three months after I saw Dr. King, he was killed. During my spring break that year I went home to West Virginia for several days, and while there attended a Presidential Primary campaign rally for Robert Kennedy in Charleston, WV, even though I was a supporter of Sen. Eugene McCarthy. Less than three months after being at that rally, Senator Kennedy was killed. It was just a very jarring time.)

Be all that as it may, I can't help but recall those few days in our Nation's capital in late January of 1968 when the celebrations of Dr. King's birthday take place today. I can't help but note, with no small sense of irony, that we now have a Federal holiday in place to honor a man who, on one of his last visits to Washington, D.C., was denied a public forum on federal land in that City on the grounds that the message he planned to deliver was not sufficiently "patriotic." All of which brings me back to the question I posed at the beginning of these remarks: Which Dr. King do we honor today?

I admit to still getting chills when I listen to his "I Have A Dream" speech, and I know that both his words and the way in which he delivered then will continue to inspire generations of people who were not yet born on that August afternoon in 1963. But to keep Dr. King confined to that snapshot moment in his life is also to keep him in a safe place. Much in the manner of an Old Testament prophet, Dr. King brought both a message of hope and a message of judgement. In the late 1960s, as he was approaching his horribly untimely death, he was coming to make connections; he was coming to see the bigger picture when it came to issues of both race and class. He was coming to see that in addition to securing voting rights and achieving the desegregation of public facilities and establishments, the work of racial justice also involved confronting institutional racism. He knew that complete racial justice would not be realized until there was a more equitable distribution of power among the races throughout and within the many institutions--public and private--that affect our lives. This is a challenge that remains with us to this day.

King's strategy, in the final months of his life, for a "Poor People's Campaign" was indicative of his coming to link issues of race and class, of his contention that economic hardship itself is a form of slavery and disempowerment. Remember, that on the evening he was killed he was on his way to address a rally to boost the spirits of the garbage collectors of Memphis, Tennessee who were preparing to strike for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

In honoring Dr. King we should honor his whole person and his whole life, aware as we are of some of his human flaws and failings. We should honor the idealistic young man who, while growing up in a setting that amounted to legalized apartheid, also grew up in a secure and protected family and community setting, and who believed in a spiritual energy that could transform persons and societies. We should honor the young man who chose the ministry in order to harness that spiritual energy in the cause of racial justice. We should honor the scholar who, upon graduating from Morehouse College in Atlanta, came north, bringing his presence to predominantly white seminaries to earn his Masters and PhD degrees. We should honor the bravery of a young minister serving his first congregation in Montgomery, Alabama who agreed to step forward lead a bus boycott in that city following Rosa Parks' arrest. We should honor the risks that young minister was willing to take in leaving his church to become a founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We should honor his energy, his determination, his courage, his tirelessness, and his gifts of oratory as he became--not the only leader, to be sure--but the driving force and spiritual center of the civil rights movement of the early '60s. And we should honor the hard spoken prophet who chose to confront the powers and the institutions of racism and classism, and who decried the violence of an unjust war that was needlessly consuming both American and Vietnamese lives. We do a disservice to both Dr. King's memory and to ourselves if we confine his legacy to a single speech, magnificent as it was. We honor his life by using the energies we have, and the opportunities we have for using them, to keep chipping away at the unfinished business of racial and social justice and reconciliation that still confronts us.

Had young Martin King chosen that law profession he might well still be alive and would have turned 71 yesterday, which would make him older than most, but hardly all, of us here. He probably would have used his legal skills in the cause of racial justice, just as he used his spiritual resources and his organizing and rhetorical skills in the life he lived.

What would he make of us, as a society, today? One can only surmise, of course, but I can imagine a mixture of gratitude and sadness on his part. He would be grateful that many of the battles he fought have borne good fruit. He'd be grateful, and would take pride in the fact that the walls he strove to topple have brought greater numbers of people of color in our country into more of its mainstream. He be grateful at the number of African Americans who have moved into positions of leadership and influence in our institutions of government, business, academia, law, medicine, entertainment and the like. But his gratitude would be sobered by the realization that the control of these kinds of institutions remains, by and large, in white hands. Even knowing that the values they represent are outside those of mainstream America, the man whose memory we honor would, no doubt, be outraged by the continuing presence and visibility of hate groups, of white supremacist organizations, by the spate of black church burnings we experienced not too long ago, and by the hate crimes that still plague and diminish us, like that of the dragging death of James Byrd. He'd agree, I would imagine, that this is not what America--taken in its entirety--is really all about, but he'd still be grieved that such things still happen in America at all. I also think he would be saddened and angered at the persistence of personal racism: Persons of color unable to get a taxicab to stop for them; "racial profiling"by certain sectors of law enforcement; black motorists finding themselves targets of occasional harassment by law enforcement officials. He would probably wonder "just how will it be before we get past all this?"

On this point, we had an incident in our own community this past week in which an interracial couple is alleging that they were a target of racial harassment by one of our local law enforcement officials while driving through our community. The work of a police officer is demanding, highly stressful, and very often dangerous; and I have no desire to diminish that truth. I am also aware that the case is still under investigation and review. But if the accounts this couple offer prove to be well founded then I believe it is incumbent upon the citizens of our city to make clear that this is not how we wish to have our community represented, and this is not the kind of behavior we desire by those whom we expect to protect us.

Putting the focus now on our own faith community, what would Rev. King make of this small but persistent band of religious liberals on the North American religious landscape called Unitarian Universalists? He'd recall with gratitude the support he received from some of us in the early days of the civil rights movement. He'd recall UUA President Dana Greeley adjourning a meeting of the Association's Board of Trustees in Boston in the spring of 1965 so that those who chose to make the journey could join Dr. King in Selma, Alabama. He'd honor the ultimate sacrifice of Rev. James Reeb, the young UU minister who was beaten to death on the streets of Selma, and of Rev. Clark Olsen, another UU minister with Rev. Reeb who was also beaten but escaped death, and who now lives in retirement from the UU ministry. He remind us of a very painful chapter in our Association's history in the late 60s and early 70s when we nearly ruptured our movement over the issue of how to best address issues of racism, and the resulting fear amongst us to approach the issue again for several years. I believe he would now look favorably upon our efforts, fledging though they are, to move beyond the white monocultural make-up that--for all of our good intentions and generally enlightened attitudes--has characterized our movement over much of its history. He would urge us to keep taking those steps--step by step--on a Journey Towards Wholeness.

To bring it even closer to home, and to invite even more conjecture, how would Dr King assess us as a congregation, one that is in many ways reflective of our larger Association? This church and the American Unitarian Association were founded in the same year, 1826, as a matter of fact. Our church, like the early Unitarians themselves initially appealed, in large measure, to persons of status and wealth. One of our principal founders, Mr. Daniel. Abbot, was also the owner of the strongest economic establishment in town in 1826, The Nashua Manufacturing Company. Much has changed in the ensuing 175 years. I feel quite safe in saying we reflect a greater measure of cultural and economic diversity than our founders did. Still, historical patterns have a way of persisting. We remain a pretty homogenous group in many ways. But I would, again, conjecture, that Rev. King would counsel us to not be apologetic about our past, but rather he'd implore us take the ideals and values we've long espoused and use them to open our eyes, and our doors in order to envision what, and who, we may yet become.

Looking beyond our doors, some of the ways in which we reach out to our surrounding community though our annual social outreach grants is very resonant with our Association's Journey Towards Wholeness progam's urging that our UU congregations find ways of acting in partnership with local efforts to deal with matters of social and/or racial concerns, realizing that the two frequently go hand in hand. Our support for CASA--the Court Appointed Special Advocates; for dental care and medications for low income and uninsured persons through the Neighborhood Health Center; or the education and health services offered through Marguerite's Place or Keystone Hall, reflect some of the steps we have taken in this direction. I am thankful and pleased at the way we have extended the resources of this congregation in an effort to bring a greater measure of human wholeness to our wider community. Taking a cue from the suggestions of the Journey Towards Wholeness program I would suggest that along with the grants we offer, let us also be exploring ways of building human partnerships, or initiating efforts of our own, that will make ours a more wholistic community when it come to race, class, and economic station. Lets continue to explore the ways in which we can stand for "justice, equity, and compassion in human relations."

To return, and close now, with what might be yet another of Martin Luther King's admonitions for us today, I can imagine he would urge us to hear the wise counsel of one of our own African American ministers, the Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt, whose words I shared a little earlier. She calls on her fellow UUs to create and strengthen religious communities within which "divergent stories and complex identities" can he shared and truly heard. Hear again part of what she has to say:

"In the face of divergent stories and complex identities, our ability to talk to each other and listen to each other becomes crucial. With all the stresses of a postmodern world, many Americans believe the only choices are to paper over what seems dissonant about ourselves and or nation, or see those differences and be destroyed. But more and more of us view this choice as a false one. There is another option open to all of us; to know ourselves more clearly, even if what we see doesn't always make sense; to acknowledge what is painful among us, as a first step toward mutual reconciliation; to rejoice in the knowledge that our American dreams, though hardly achieved, are sometimes closer to fruition than we know. For parallel to the stories of injustice and persecution that are a real part of American history, are the stories of justice and hope that continue to fuel a common love for, and commitment to, the American experiment."

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