Martin Luther King Jr.: The integration he was really seeking

NOTE: The following is an excerpt from my sermon given Jan. 17, 2010 at Watertown's First Presbyterian Church. Portions have been rewritten for clarity.

Who exactly was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?

There were indeed things that didn't seem right. King had many friends in the Civil Rights movement who were active members of the Communist party. And so he was accused of being a communist. But this friendship often seemed similar to the way Jesus was a friend to tax collectors and prostitutes.

In a November 1957 sermon titled "Loving Your Enemies," King was concerned that the American dream of democracy was being misused, and thus making communism much more popular than it should ever be.

“Isn't it true that we have often in our democracy trampled over individuals and races with the iron feet of oppression? Isn't it true that through our Western powers we have perpetuated colonialism and imperialism? And all of these things must be taken under consideration as we look at Russia. We must face the fact that the rhythmic beat of the deep rumblings of discontent from Asia and Africa is at bottom a revolt against the imperialism and colonialism perpetuated by Western civilization all these many years. The success of communism in the world today is due to the failure of democracy to live up to the noble ideals and principles inherent in its system.”

And of course, we found out through the FBI that King committed a number of personal indiscretions.

Most people prefer remembering King only as the relentless integrationist, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. And yet to see King as only one extreme or the other actually makes King less of a man than he really was. King was first a minister and in his writings you hear a voice, a voice of a minister, called by God to guide his sheep to greener pastures. What if we saw him not as a heroic figure, a historic figure, an outside agitator? What if we saw him as a pastor, whose sermons were written to inspire all of us to integrate God into our own lives?

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., like all ministers, was immersed in the writings of the Apostle Paul. I defy you to read “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and not see the words of Paul come crashing through.

See if you don't discover the Letter to Ephesians, where Paul begins Chapter 4 by writing: “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”

See if you don't find Galatians, where Paul laments, “Oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?” See if you don't find Corinthians, in which Paul says that just because we have been saved from our sins that doesn't give us the right to go on sinning. And finally, see if you don't find the Letter to the Romans, where in Paul tells us that we rejoice in our sufferings, because suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint.

It is possible, that in 1963 from a jail cell in Alabama King was speaking to the church for generations yet to come?

“So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silence...But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club.”

In 1956 Martin Luther King Jr. gave a sermon titled "Paul's Letter to American Christians" in which he attempted to say what he thought Paul would say to Americans 2,000 years after his own death.

“But America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. ... You have allowed the material means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which you live. You have allowed your mentality to outrun your morality. You have allowed your civilization to outdistance your culture. Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brotherhood.”

King wanted America to understand its relationship to God. In fact there was one occasion where he wrote a sermon called “Rediscovering Lost Values” that could have been delivered in Watertown, New York today rather than Detroit, Michigan in 1954.

“And I think, my friends, that this is the thing that has happened in America. That we have unconsciously left God behind. You see, the materialism in America has been an unconscious thing. Since the rise of the Industrial Revolution in England, and then the invention of all of our gadgets and contrivances and all of the things and modern conveniences—we unconsciously left God behind. We didn't mean to do it. We just became so involved in getting our big bank accounts that we unconsciously forgot about God—we didn't mean to do it. We became so involved in getting our nice luxurious cars that it became much more convenient to ride out to the beach than to come to church that morning. It was an unconscious thing—we didn't mean to do it.”

King may have had it right. Sometimes I think it is through unconsciousness that we have come to believe that there were once indeed good old days.

But history and Martin Luther King Jr. have shown that there is no such thing as a universal good old days. There are hardly any universal good old moments. For every pitcher who celebrates striking out the last batter to end the game, there is a dejected batter who didn't come through in the clutch. For every investor who just made a killing on Wall Street, there's another investor contemplating suicide.

And for every 1960's episode of “Leave it to Beaver,” there was a sermon from an imprisoned minister calling for justice to roll down the mountainside.

Will 2010 one day be seen as the good old days?

Let us all work together to become the church that the Apostle Paul and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed about. Through prayer and fellowship, worship and tithing let us open our hearts to God — the ultimate integrationist — and in so doing become the prophetic church we have been called to be.