This weekend we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. King would have turned 94 years old today were he still alive. What would King make of the times we are in now, more than 50 years since he was killed? What would King make of the divisions of our times? Of all the gun violence around us? What would King make of the Black Lives Matter movement? What would he have to say about the progress and also just how far it is we have to go?
Back to the words of our responsive reading earlier:
This is where we are. Where do we go from here?
We must massively assert our dignity and worth.
We must stand up amidst a system that still oppresses and develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values….
What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive
And that love without power is sentimental and anemic.
Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice,
And justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
And this is what we must see as we move on.[1]
I’m struck by how those words still resonate. They offer a kind of charge for what is still being asked of us all these years after King spoke them in 1967.
Change, we come to know in life, most often does not come easily. Change—real change—takes time and persistence. Sometimes it means a willingness to see things with a much larger perspective.
Today is not 1967. This is a different time than it was back that chapter of the Civil Rights movement. And there have been huge strides forward. And, it is hard to look out at the current landscape and to not see how far it is we still have to go.
We are in a time when White Christian Nationalism is on the rise. Racism is still very much in the web and weft of our culture. How the advances people of color have made need to be seen the context of enormous backlash. Steps forward all too often are followed by a step—or two steps—back.
As liberation movements advance they pose a threat to those who have been at the center of things for a long time, those in places of power and privilege—and maybe not ever aware of it. That is how privilege works. And for those of us in privilege afforded us by race or by class or by circumstance it can mean some complicated streams to navigate.
In this congregation the conversation is often seen through the lens of the 8th principle, which was adopted by this congregation back in 2021 and which is now part of a larger reimagining of the principles that guide us as a faith. The 8th principle makes explicit our commitment as a congregation to be anti-racist and multicultural. The language of the 8th principle, I note, is not part of so much of our shared language. And especially for newcomers can be confusing. But what it calls us to do—how it asks us to be—is still very much of work in progress. I note that passing of the 8th principle was relatively easy. What it means in the living out is something much more nuanced. Something with many more dimensions. Something that will take a long time to figure out.
What I do know is that it calls us to hold the larger picture of how oppressions are interconnected. Intersectionality is the word that’s used. How racism is still so pervasive in our culture. How the right of women to have sovereignty over their bodies is connected. How the rights of transgender people to live free of fear in safety is connected. How the right to have decent housing is interconnected. How the right to live free of fear of gun violence is so very much interconnected. All the threads are connected. All the threads of part of the fabric of our lives.
So where do we go from here?
When I try to understand the times we are in I try to begin by just trying the hold that whole. How all those threads are very much connected. How our job first of all is trying to pay attention to the places where we can witness liberation happening and so many places where liberation is threatened. How in fact so often we seem to be in a time of rolling back, of losing ground. That a step forward here seems to lead to a step back here. How change—real change—is not easy. I try to make a space for compassion and also a space for persistence in my spirit.
If I could ask Dr. King a question it may well have to do with how it was he sustained himself for that long haul? How was it that he kept the faith in the midst of all that he knew in his life? How did he keep finding a message of hope and of perseverance and courage.
In today’s call to worship I shared the words from a note penned by Dr. King a few years back that was found in a stash of papers. It said, simply:
“Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. (The person) who loves is a participant in the being of God.”[2]
The person who loves is a participant in the being of God.
What I want to call us to this morning is a kind of spiritual practice that keeps us open, that puts love at the center, that keeps our eye on the proverbial prize. That ultimately, we are all in this struggle together, no matter how far apart we might seem. I want to believe that in particular some of our Universalist ancestors would celebrate those words as a call towards the Beloved Community in our time.
A call to keep focused on that larger imagination for a world where all the children are free. That calls us to bear witness to all the threads that make up the fabric of oppression—and of liberation—together.
In 1967, King delivered a speech to students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia and his words may still have resonance for us today. Here is some of what he said:
“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.”[3]
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.
One of the things that can get in the way is fear. 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.
And then we 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.
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 move out of a place of love. 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 forgive and to be forgiven, 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.
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, whose core grounding was love.
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.
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 might begin. I think it is in that 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 we go from this place today make we make it a practice to do the work of love. May we keep our eye on that real prize that would have all of us be free.
[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., from “Where Do We Go from Here” in “A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., edited by James M. Washington, HarperCollins.
[2] Martin Luther King Jr. explains the meaning of love in rare handwritten note | CNN
[3] https://singjupost.com/what-is-your-lifes-blueprint-by-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-full-transcript/
[4] http://letterstotherevolution.com/terry-tempest-williams
Topics: Creation