The third Monday of January is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This isn't a church year holiday, but Martin Luther King Jr. was a reverend and he remains one of my heroes of the faith, so we are going to look at his legacy today. We could focus on many different aspects of Reverend King and his work, but today we will look at three areas: justice, non-violence, and reconciliation.
Justice is central to the late Reverend King, but what is "justice"? It is righteousness and moral rightness. It is acting with just behavior. It is doling out a deserved reward or punishment. When a person is just, they are guided by truth and fairness. Justice is proper and following a true principle. It is what is right and correct. While justice is always in line with God's law, man's laws can be unjust and therefore the Christian is morally obligated to follow God's law instead of man's. We need to note that justice is not revenge, but man's laws often are revenge-centered.
Reverend King preached and practiced non-violence, even when he was beaten, stabbed, and arrested. He wasn't a blinded optimist convinced that non-violence resistance by the oppressed would automatically generate reciprocal non-violence on the part of the oppressors. He realized that to step out in non-violence was to accept the beatings and violence done against you without retaliating. Now for those thinking, "But the left/right has been violent too", the "other side" will have to give an account before God for their actions one day, but we are judged on our obedience to Christ's commands to love our enemy, pray for our persecutors, and turn the other cheek. We need to focus on our own plank before we look to the speck of dust in their eye. It's easy to condemn the violence in our opponents. It's harder to condemn it in ourselves and our allies. Non-violence is not just physical non-violence, but also spiritual. If we don't hit someone, but we allow our hearts to hate them, then we are still violent in our souls.
Reconciliation is the third aspect of Reverend King's teaching that we will look at. His protests and marches did not invent tension, but brought the undercurrent of tension to the surface. Only once both the oppressor and oppressed acknowledge the division, hate, and injustice can reconciliation occur. And we must be willing to reconcile. Our goal is not permanently punishing or destroying our opponents; we should want to reconcile with them, once confession and repentance of sins occur. Once someone seeks forgiveness and wants to be healed, God steps in with His mercy (not giving them the punishment that they deserve) and grace (giving them a gift they can never earn). The unrepentant do not receive these gifts, but God offers them to all who repent of their sins and turn to Him.
I challenge us to go beyond the one-snippet sentences shared on social media, especially those used to condemn the other side for their behavior. While Martin Luther King Jr. is a well-loved figure today, we haven't taken the time to understand his message. We take a sentence, out-of-context, and share it to spread warm fuzzies or put our opponent in their place. Reverend King's messages have a plethora of hard truths to swallow. In order to reconcile, we must work through the injustices around us together. We won't reach our capacity for love or growth while we don't bother to study and learn from the parts of his work that make us uncomfortable and uneasy. We, as a society, have been trained to avoid tension, to cover it up rather than face it squarely head on, but Reverend King knew that only in working through tension will we arrive a true justice and peace.
Action Steps to Take:
There are so many books that I could recommend that you read. You can read books about Reverend King, or even books by him. While I do encourage you to read books about Reverend King since it does help us to get a big picture of who he was and what his message was, we should also be sure to prioritize reading his writings directly. We have transcripts of his speeches, records of his articles, and copies of his books, so let us read his own words.
We can also listen to him. If we just search online, we can find many recordings of his sermons. While many of us are worshipping online this year, let us listen with Reverend King's church and learn from his sermons.
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