MLK - A LIGHT TO ALL PEOPLES
Isaiah 49:1-7; John 1:29-42
2nd Sunday after Epiphany, January 15, 2023
The Rev. Dr. Ritva H. Williams
Today as we commemorate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr as a renewer of society and a martyr of the church, let me share a few memories of the events that introduced me to his life and work.
My childhood home was a small town on the shores of Lake St Clair in southern Ontario, where the cultural divide was between English speaking Protestants, and French Catholics. the only black people we saw and heard were on tv and radio — Bill Cosby, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Diana Ross and the Supremes. We knew that Detroit, the big city across the border was home to many black people. One of our friends even went to a “chocolate” doctor (her words)!
I was seven years old during the long, hot summer of 1967 when bloody, violent race riots erupted in Detroit. The distance from our home on the shores of Lake St Clair to Detroit was maybe 15 miles. We could see the flames and smoke rising above the city. A neighbor who owned a car repair business in Grosse Pointe afterward told us how he slept in his shop for a week with gun. Those events made a lasting impression on me. As did the assassination of Dr King on April 4, 1968. As did the assassination of Robert F “Bobby” Kennedy on June 6. A couple month’s later Dion’s recording of “Abraham, Martin and John” was released, and quickly became a number one hit in Canada. [play video recording from YouTube]
“Didn’t you love what they stood for? Didn't they try to find some good for you and me? And we'll be free some day soon …" This song touched and inspired the 8-year-old-me in ways that I could not express then.
These events were like seeds. It was only a year or two later that I began reading the Bible. A dangerous book it is. You see the Bible is one of the very few books in the world written by and for people who were historically a despised and oppressed minority. In this morning’s reading God addresses Isaiah, a member of that oppressed people assuring them, they are God’s servant in and through whom God will shine into the world, chosen to be a light for the nations — for all peoples so that God’s salvation may reach the ends of the earth. Just in case you’re in doubt, hear the last verse:
Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and God’s Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the natives, the slave of rulers, “Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.” (Isaiah 49:7)
I have a hunch that Dr King read in Isaiah’s words both a calling and a promise. He was indeed a servant of God in whom God shone, using his strengths, gifts, talents and life to proclaim the good news of God’s promise.
By the time of the Detroit Riots, Dr King had spent over a decade as a tireless activist, participating in the Montgomery bus boycott, forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, speaking, writing, surviving an assassination attempt, visiting India to learn about nonviolence from Mahatma Gandhi, led lunch counter sit-ins in Atlanta, helped organize freedom rides, was arrested and jailed multiple times, led the March on Washington where he gave his famous “I Have a Dream Speech,” appeared on the cover of Time magazine as man of the year, attended the signing of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, moved into a Chicago slum to draw attention to the living conditions of the poor, began the Poor People’s Campaign, and more. In spite of all these accomplishments, I’m sure there must have been times when like the prophet Isaiah, Dr King was frustrated and worn out by the one-step forward, three steps backward, and two steps sideways progress of achieving freedom and equality for all people. Yet he refused to let go of the dream.
Three weeks after the Detroit race riots in 1967 addressed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, on the subject of “The Crisis in America’s Cities.” Here is the opening paragraph:
A million words will be written and spoken to dissect the ghetto outbreaks, but for a perceptive and vivid expression of culpability I would submit two sentences written a century ago by Victor Hugo:
If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he whom commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.
The policy makers of the white society have caused the darkness; they created discrimination; they created slums; they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and
deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; the violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison.
Dr King’s words shine light on realities that so many, then and still now, are determined to ignore. In our Gospel lesson, John the Baptist points to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Here’s the thing: in order for Christ to take away the sin of the world, the world has been to be willing to let go of it. That my friends, is the work that you and I are called to do.
Let us pray with Dr King:
O God, make us willing to do your will, come what may. Increase the number of persons of good will and moral sensitivity. Give us renewed confidence in nonviolence and the way of love as taught by Christ.
O God, we thank you for the lives of great saints and prophets in the past, who have revealed to us that we can stand up amid the problems and difficulties and trials of life and not give in. We thank you for our fore-parents, who’ve given us something in the midst of the darkness of exploitation and oppression to keep going. Grant that we will go on with the proper faith and the proper determination of will, so that we will be able to make a creative contribution to this world. In the name and spirit of Jesus we pray. Amen.
