This weekend we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. He would have turned 91 years old were he still alive. And imagining what King would have to say in the age of Trump we can only guess. Just what would he have to say about the divisions of our time, and how those divisions are not only fed but nurtured and encouraged? What would King have to say about the meanness of these times and the rage so present and so directed at those most on the margins? That could be the topic of weeks—maybe years—of sermons.
Our spiritual theme this month is perseverance and the title of today’s sermon comes from one of King’s speeches. “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”[1]
Those words still have resonance for us, particularly right now. I don’t know about you but all too often these days I don’t quite know where to begin. I don’t quite know what to do. In these times of division, in these times when prejudice is given such license, in these times that can so easily have us questioning just how far have we come or not. And all of that means that finding our way forward is all the more important.
And that doesn’t always feel so easy. Just when I think we can’t get any lower something new comes up, some new injustice, some new manipulation of the media, some new stoking of fear. And I know that I often find myself in reaction mode. And that is not a good place to move out of. Certainly not what I’d call spiritually grounded. No, I need words like King’s to help point me in the direction of hope and justice.
King was talking with students when he originally spoke those words. Here is some of the larger context out of which he spoke:
“This is the most important and crucial period of your lives, for what you do now and what you decide now at this age may well determine which way your life shall go. The question is, whether you have a proper, a solid, and a sound blueprint. I want to suggest some of the things that should be in your life’s blueprint. Number one should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your own worth and your own somebodiness. Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you are nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.
“Secondly, in your life’s blueprint, you must have as a basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. You’re going to be deciding as the days and the years unfold what you will do in life, what your life’s work will be. Once you discover what it will be, set out to do it and to do it well. Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be the sun, be a star, for it isn’t by size that you win or you fail, be the best of whatever you are.
“Finally, in your life’s blueprint must be a commitment to the eternal principals of beauty, love, and justice. Life for none of us has been a crystal stair, but we must keep moving, we must keep going. If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl, but by all means, keep moving.”[2]
King’s words, first of all, are a reminder that we are not the first ones who sometimes may not know where to begin when it comes to bearing witness against the injustices of our world. And they are a reminder that before we can do much of anything else we need to first find a way to be grounded.
We live in a culture where there are many things to fear. We legitimately ask whether there will be clean air to breathe and pure water to drink. We worry about war and violence, we worry about what the future will be for our children. But fear can also be used to divide us, to see ourselves as being up and against others. It might be based on how we look or dress, it may be based on divisions of race or class or where we come from. To see the other as just that, the other.
And when we find ourselves moving out of that place of fear, our first response may be to forget our own grounding, our own core principles. If we feel helpless to do much about it our impulse may be to simply freeze, to not know where to begin.
Of course in shielding ourselves, we find we are distanced from others in all kinds of ways, and maybe isolated. Yes, we want to protect ourselves, but we can lose in the process.
Our challenge, first of all I think, is to pay attention to the fear. That fear, after all is telling us something. It is at its best telling us to be on alert and vigilant. But fear can also leave us paralyzed. When we are fearful we can so quickly forget our own value and worth. We can so easily forget our own agency. When our defenses are up our response may well be to pull back and not want to engage. We can lose our sense of self, our sense of grounding.
Martin Luther King certainly knew fear in his life. At the young age of 26 he found himself serving his first church in Montgomery, Alabama. It was a time when African Americans were growing increasingly agitated about the laws of the segregated South that kept them in a very unequal place.
In 1955, blacks had for years been working to challenge the laws that required them to give up seats on busses to whites. Several were refusing to do this. Earlier this month we heard the story of Rosa Parks and her arrest for refusing to give up her seat on the bus. That launched a boycott that lasted for almost a year but that was eventually successful.
It
was during that boycott that the young minister King was elected by other black
leaders as President of the Montgomery Improvement Association. That night he
gave his first public address to thousands of black citizens of Montgomery,
quoting the Prophet Amos to whom he would return speech after speech “And
we are determined here in Montgomery—to work and to fight until justice runs
down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream!”
But in assuming his position of leadership, King immediately became a target of
the white Montgomery police department. About a month later, King was arrested
on a bogus speeding charge and went to jail for the first time. The
boycott was continuing and King and the other boycotters faced increasing
violence and harassment.
That night, home from jail, King was up late, unable to
sleep. The phone rang with an anonymous caller threatening the young
leader. Historian Taylor Branch writes how that night King was
overwhelmed by the juxtaposition of images and memories—the threats from whites
juxtaposed with the memories of white mentors and colleagues in seminary; the
middle class blacks who were distressed by King’s assertive calls for justice
juxtaposed with the hopeful courage he saw in the poor blacks who were the
backbone of the boycott. It mirrored the tension he knew in himself—the
reality of evil in human nature and the hope for progress and justice.
On one hand, King felt the potential in himself to think anything, and to be
anything he wanted to be. On the other he was constricted by the realities that
paralyzed and defined him. On this night King buried his face in his hands at
the kitchen table. He admitted to himself that he was afraid, that he had
nothing left, that the people would falter if they looked to him for strength.
Then he said as much out loud. He spoke the name of no deity, but his
doubts spilled out as a prayer, ending, ‘I’ve come to the point where I can’t
face it alone.’ As he spoke these words, the story goes, the fears
suddenly began to melt away. He became intensely aware of what he called an
‘inner voice’ telling him to do what he thought was right.
For King, the moment awakened and confirmed his belief that he was connection with some force outside himself. That he was not alone in all of this.
So how do we sustain ourselves in our times? I don’t have all the answers but I think it is that recognition that we are not alone but part of something larger. It means we need to pay attention to what’s going on around us and within us.
There is, first of all, a need to bear witness to what we are seeing. To see in ourselves the plight of others around us, to see ourselves in common cause with those who are the targets of hatred these days be they immigrants, people of color, transgender people. To see in our own lives—and in our own struggles—the lives of others too. Part of what can so easily happen these days is that we can come to see other as just that, the other and we move not out of a place of common ground but out of a place focused on division and fear. And when we find ourselves moving out of that place then those who would stoke that fear have probably achieved their goal.
I think these times call for us to engage in a kind of spiritual practice that would have us moving out of our goals and our ideals—moving from a blue print is what Dr. King might say—to keep us grounded and steady. To keep our focus on what could be called the beloved community.
Spiritual practice helps us to stay focused on what is most important, in the direction of where we want to go. I think that sometimes we can interpret that as a kind of imposed discipline and it can be that. But mostly it is something that keeps us mindful of what feeds us, what makes us more alive. It keeps us mindful of that blueprint each of us has for how we want the world to be.
The thing about practice is that we may not always get it just right, we may not always succeed, but it does keep us focused on where we are and where we want to be. And even when we may miss the mark it is a place where we can return to get ourselves re-centered, to get ourselves re-grounded.
King, we know, had many trials in his life. In the last years he came to recognize how racism intersected with poverty. He came to recognize how the war in Vietnam so disproportionally affected black and brown people. As he recognized those intersections and as he named them and spoke out against them, it was not at all popular. And yet King also recognized how he really didn’t have a choice but to speak out because you really can’t separate one injustice from another, how they all, eventually do intersect.
We too are asked to recognize and to bear witness to those intersecting injustices in our times. And how seeing someone else targeted may only increase our own sense of fear and vulnerability.
We are called again and again to be with our fears, to not let them take over. The Buddhist writer Pema Chodron says that fear is the natural reaction to moving closer to the truth. That as we strip away our denial and constructions of reality, we come to a place of understanding. The fear helps us to open ourselves to the truth we know and have been afraid to acknowledge. That the fear suddenly has less power if we can see it for what it is.
And in that opening might come a renewed awareness of our own possibility and the possibility in those around us. And in it all we are asked to open ourselves to our potential to grow, to create, to love and be loved. Learning to trust and to be receptive calls us to move to the edge of where we are comfortable.
If we are able to be present with our fear, we are able to see life anew. Instead of running from it we find ourselves face to face with life. We don’t need to pursue the fear, but just pay attention to it and move from that place.
The Talmud calls fear the necessary gate through which one must enter in order to have a relationship with God. It is that force that calls us into relationship with something greater than ourselves, a force that can open us and help us to find our way. We face our fears and we are able to come to a deeper understanding of who we are—even when that place is very frightening.
In our lives, we may not face the kind of trials that King did. But we can learn something from his response—to see in his example someone who lived out of a calling, who lived mindful of a blueprint, who lived out of a relationship grounded in something larger.
Each of us is on a journey, and the particulars of that journey will be as unique as the individuals we are. Each one of us is called to look at those things that hold us back, those things that keep us from being in right relationship with ourselves, with our neighbors, with the ground of our being. Each of us is called to bear witness and to act out of that witness.
It is easy to want to run away from our fears to distract ourselves in all the ways that we have at our disposal. But even if that is what the culture might tell us, to move away from the fear, what we want to do is move into the fear and to see what it has to teach us. We are asked to recognize our blueprint and to live our lives mindful of that blueprint.
The scripture says “perfect love casts out fear.” If we are overcome with fear,
we are not able to open ourselves to love and to give love to others. Instead,
we are living in the fear and that only cuts us off from knowing ourselves and
knowing others.
Writer Sara Moores Campbell put it this way:
In fear, we isolate ourselves.
In love, we connect with others.
In fear, we become immobilized.
In love, we are empowered to act.
In fear, we judge others.
In love, we seek justice.
In fear, we distrust.
In love, we trust.
In fear, we retreat.
In love, we reach out.[3]
So then, how are we to live? How are we to be in these times? What does our blueprint ask of us? It is not that we need to have all the answers but simply, first of all, to know where it is we are grounded, where it is we need to start. And that is the moment when faith comes in. That is the moment that we are reminded that we don’t have all the answers, but that what we need to know will be revealed. And that, in relationship with others we will find our way.
The writer Wendell Berry says “It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.”
Love calls us into life over and over again. It asks us to be present, to see beyond our individual selves, to put ourselves forward in service. To accept ourselves as we are, with all of our brokenness and all of the gifts we bring. To see the world both in its brokenness and in its beauty and wholeness.
Words again from Terry Tempest Williams:
Let us hold each other close and be kind.
Let us gather together and break bread.
Let us trust that what is required of us next will become clear in time.
What has been hidden is now exposed.
This river, this mourning, this moment — May we be brave enough to feel it deeply, and act.[4]
May each of us answer that call to act. Life asks much of us, sometimes more than it seems we can bear. We are asked to stay in that conversation, to stay open, to keep our hearts open, to live in faith that what we’ll need will be there, that what we’ll bring will be enough. That love, in the end, will show us the way.
May it be so. Amen.
Prayer
Spirit of life, we give thanks this day for all that is our life. We give thanks for those who have gone before us, those who, with courage, have worked for freedom, for justice, for love in the world. Help us to not be afraid. May we, in all the days of our lives, live not with fear, but open to the ever abundant source of love and grace in the world. Amen.
Benediction
As
you go from this place today, have hope good people. Have hope that the way
will emerge. Have hope that we will move forward. Have hope in a new day
coming.
[1][1] https://singjupohttps://singjupost.com/what-is-your-lifes-blueprint-by-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-full-transcript/st.com/what-is-your-lifes-blueprint-by-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-full-transcript/
[2] https://singjupost.com/what-is-your-lifes-blueprint-by-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-full-transcript/
[3] “Into the Winderness,” Sara Moores Campbell, Skinner House Books, Boston, 1990, pp19.
[4] http://letterstotherevolution.com/terry-tempest-williams
Topics: Perseverance