Today is set apart for Martin Luther King, Jr. I have been listening to his speeches over and over in the last few weeks – as I run, as I fall asleep, as I walk through a town that is still terribly divided by race and social class, and every other line we draw between people and peoples, and as I look out at a world that is hardly different.
Dr. King has taught me a lot in the last few weeks. I’ve been thanking God for the audio-recording technology of the 60s that can carry his voice over all of these years. I’m in awe of the man. I wonder if God ever wove a betters set of vocal chords. The man’s voice could make you believe that Peace put skin on and started talking, and he could string words together in the most beautiful and powerful and truthful way I’ve ever heard (in my book he might come in second, only to Abraham Lincoln).
The man was a prophet. I have no doubt about that. I believe that God was whispering in his ear just as much as he was whispering in the ears of the Old Testament prophets and the writers of the New Testament. Maybe that seems silly, but maybe God still loves to raise people up to lay His dream out in front of crooked people and crooked nations.
Yesterday as I was running, I listened to Beyond Vietnam – a speech King gave exactly one year before he was murdered. It’s haunting. So much of what he speaks about Vietnam is true of the situation in Iraq. So much of what he speaks about the United States of the 1960’s is still terribly true of the United States in 2008. And I think that’s what I’m getting at….
For God’s sake don’t celebrate today as the day of a black man whose dream for black people came true. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a child of God who longed for God’s dream for humanity to become a reality. It’s the same dream that prophet after prophet delivered to Israel, and prophet after prophet they killed. A dream that we would see everyone as a child of God – the poor and the rich; the black and the white; the capitalist and the communist; the American killed in the World Trade Center and the pilot who hijacked the plane; the American soldier and the Iraqi child killed by American bombs; Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Earl Ray.
He said America was a nation that was sick, that racism and the war in Vietnam were only symptoms of a deeper sickness. I think America is still very sick, and could still stand to listen to his diagnosis. He was done with war and violence and ready to lay down his life for his enemies and men that hated him. He was broken and flawed and had the world (not to mention the F.B.I.) on his trail to point out those flaws – but I long to be like him – to have that fire in my belly, and that willingness to lay my life down for God’s dream.
So pull out your Bibles today, read through the prophets (God’s “I have a dream speeches), and if you are my friend at all – do not let this day go by without digging into some of MLK’s words. There are links here to help you do that. Get your families around the computer speakers or the stereo and have a listen.
Letter from Birmingham Jail
A letter to Alabama clergymen urging them to stop talking and to take action.
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence
King’s call to peace and an end to the war in Vietnam. Incredibly prophetic, especially for today.
I’ve Been to the Mountaintop
The speech King gave the night before he was murdered, in support of a strike by city sanitation workers in Memphis. He seems to know the end is near, but he doesn’t really seem to care.
I Have a Dream
The big one.
