Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at Templa Emmanuel at Great Neck.

Sermon by Rev. Mark Lukens - 1-14-2005

It seems like everybody wants a piece of Dr. King these days. Everybody wants to honor his memory, his words and claim his legacy. Even some of those who bitterly opposed him, even some of our political leaders whose policies and positions are antithetical to everything Martin Luther King Jr., stood for, are falling over themselves to get in on the celebration. For better and for worse, Dr. Martin Luther King Day is in danger of becoming another American holiday in which genuine attempts to honor this, the greatest of American prophets compete with sales at the Mall, block buster movie openings and photo ops for politicians. I’ll bet even Trent Lott will be at some kind of Martin Luther King day celebration this week.

And there is something good about that, because, as most of us old enough to have lived through those times know, it was not always so. Like the biblical prophets before him, King’s was a voice crying in the wilderness. His road was a hard and narrow one. And those who walked behind and alongside of him risked their very lives as we he did King was imprisoned, assaulted, fire bombed, maligned as a communist and a terrorist because he believed that liberty, dignity and justice are for all people and he was killed because he lived that belief, and because he inspired others to do the same. It is good news that even those who are working so hard to undo his legacy recognize the power of his dream. It is good news because it means that his memory still lives, still speaks to the divine goodness of the human spirit, still inspires others to seek out their own liberation and that of their fellow human beings.

Just recently, for example, I addressed a group of persons with mental and physical disabilities and the underpaid, over worked people who serve them. People who gather every year to honor one whose movement didn’t stop at the lunch counters and polling places and bus stations of the south, but marched on to tear down the walls of the snake pits of our public institutional system, and on into our schools segregated by disability as well as by race, our criminal justice systems, our urban ghettos and our rural hollers and then onward across the globe from the jungles of Vietnam, to the prison nation of South Africa. Our President is fond of telling us that Freedom is on the march, but Dr. King would no doubt be the first to remind him, and us as well that freedom is not imposed by force of arms but by the will to justice and that the promise of redemption and reconciliation. The dream that Dr. King proclaimed, the vision of this man whose mouth was made like a sharp sword to cut the bonds that enslaved both master and slave, led his own people to the mountaintop and in the process, showed the promised land of redemption, reconciliation and freed even to those who oppressed them. King gave us a vision of a nation, even a world, whose people were truly free, not only of the death grip of the cancer of racism, but of all the fears and prejudices that separate us from one another and thus, from God.

But, the co-option and domestication of King’s legacy that is so much in evidence today comes at a high price as well. Even as we gather her to honor his legacy, we can see it being eaten away. For too many of us this day is becoming little more than an opportunity to pat ourselves on the back because we’ve let go of a few unpleasant vocabulary words, or because we no longer have reserved seats on the bus, or because we now hide our racism behind a veil of political and economic conservatism. Rev. King’s challenge to us to risk position and prestige and even our lives for the welfare of others has been homogenized and sanitized into a more comfortable message of tolerance, as if the liberty of our fellow human beings were ours to bestow, their being itself, ours to tolerate. And I can’t help but wonder what the prophet Martin would say about this great new century of ours. About what we have made of his legacy here in a time when our schools, our neighborhoods, our nation are more segregated than ever. When the civil rights and constitutional guarantees that King gave his life for are being gutted by legislation with such insidious titles as the USA Patriot Act, the Intelligence Reform Bill, and the Houses of Worship Free Speech Protection Act. What would King make of our accolades to his memory when people of color, immigrants and Muslims are being harassed, deported and imprisoned without charge or trial and nary a voice is raised because we have determined that they are not like us. What would he say about religious leaders, pastors and churchman who claim the very evangelical faith that inspired his prophetic ministry, stake that claim on a program of cultural domination and legalized discrimination against those they have designated as the "other" whether on the basis of sexual orientation, religion, nationality or political persuasion. What would King say about a President, who, in the name of the very God that inspired King to remind all who would listen that "all men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, a relationship that is chosen for us as a reality of our membership in the human race." is leading this nation, King’s nation; our nation, in a grand effort to deny that mutuality and responsibility that King spoke of by waging pre-emptive wars, not only against the people of Iraq, but against the poor, against those whose language, or faith or national origin is different from the majority,against the civil rights and hard won gains of the very people King championed, people of color, and yes, all those whose life experiences taught them that they were different, second best, and not quite included in the American dream.

Unfortunately, today, the prophetic call to justice has been nearly drowned out by the merchants of hate and fear. By political, and worse, religious leaders who have tried to drown out King’s call to compassion and justice for all people with the drumbeats of holy war. By so-called men and women of faith whose notion of moral values is the denial of civil rights and human dignity to those whose sexual orientation might be different from theirs, and who wish to impose their religious understanding as the law of the land. By those who claim to respect the rights of unborn children while abandoning the women who are bearing them and by political leaders who rather than lead our people to a realization of their best selves, pander to fear and prejudice and fan the flames of hatred in the service of their own cynical agendas.

It is a discouraging picture and a difficult, challenging time in which we gather here this evening as people of faith and good conscience from many backgrounds, many races, many faiths. Yet here, in this house of God, this beautiful community of faith that has borne its faithful up from bondage in Egypt, sustained them through pogrom and crusade, shone the light of faith in the loving power of God through suffering, persecution and even the unimaginable horror of the Shoah, we can still hear the call sweeping down from the mountaintop. We can still hear the voice of Moses calling his people to freedom, the call of Isaiah challenging us to be a light to the nations and the words of the prophet Martin, calling us to justice, compassion and peace.

King wasn’t about domination. The power he wielded came from the depth of his convictions, his commitment to them and more than that, from his faith, a faith that taught him that the ends, far from justifying the means, were inherent in the means. A conviction based in Jesus’ challenge that as you do to, and for, those considered among the least of these, so you do unto me. And King understood truly, that as he led his own people to freedom, he was leading all people to freedom- not least of these, the very people who stood in freedom’s way.

Our challenge then, in this time of terror, imperialism and war, this time when civil rights and human dignity are again no longer a given for all of our nation’s people and the forces of fear and hatred seem stronger than ever, is not merely to pay homage to the life of the Prophet Martin with ceremonies or with quotes from his speeches, but to seize the still unrealized dream that "this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, that all people are created equal," if not in talent, then in dignity. To remember as King said, that "darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that, and hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. To honor his work with some work of our own, and to resolve, together, that we will not stand silent while advocates of torture are elevated to high office, while the death toll rises in a misguided and immoral war. We will not turn our backs on the cries of those imprisoned without trial because of their Muslim faith or middle-eastern descent. We will not stand by silently while the poor go without so that the rich can have more. Let us risk everything, as Martin did. Let us not wait until they come for us, but rather let us turn to the teachings of our respective faiths, to the words of the prophets from Moses to Martin and let us re-assert, together, that love is stronger that hate, faith is stronger than fear, right is stronger than wrong and that though we are of unclean lips, slow of speech, un worthy in every way, we will walk together, side by side, to the light, and that we will not rest, until, " justice shall roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream," for ourselves, for our children and grandchildren, for all of God’s children. Amen.