"The Strength of Love"
I struggle a bit from year to year in an attempt to come up with a fresh approach to viewing some particular holidays. Special days are set aside to recognize religious or historical events or some fine person's lifetime. And it’s sometimes a challenge to come up with an approach that might help us to be inspired once again by their inherent values, values that we've chosen to commemorate and to celebrate. I don't ever have to struggle that way though, to find inspiration from the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. His life and his values speak to me, have always spoken to me, of justice and determination, of love and of hope. Perhaps more than anything else, his life speaks to me of his incredible faith. It was in the spring of my senior year of high school, only a few weeks before graduation, when Martin was assassinated. I had greatly admired him for his ability to speak the harsh truth of racial injustice with both honesty and love. I believed that he had spoken for more than only African-Americans; he had spoken for me and for all Americans. One of my greatest heroes died that evening in April 1968. Like so many prophets throughout history though, his spirit lives on to inspire and guide us. I trust we don't have to worry about the deification of Martin Luther King; he was much too human for that. He struggled and failed many times in his life, but ultimately he triumphed in composing a life that was dedicated to a larger cause. His was a life that was finally dedicated to love. In our own work for justice, Martin’s life continues to tell us that the answer to questions of injustice is always love. His words and his life directly addressed issues of race and gender discrimination. They addressed Third World subjugation and the abuse and depletion of the environment. In pointing towards the solutions to these problems, Martin understood that the answers depended upon personal and social change. The conversion that he sought and promoted was the capacity to recognize ourselves in one another–unbounded by race, and gender and culture. The conversion included a recognition that this planet is home to all of us and that we must keep our house in order, as a family does, so that it will be here for all of us and for the generations to come. The transformation for which he dedicated his life was that we might truly learn to "love our neighbor as ourselves." The object of his vision was love. But the road leading to that object was not just any old road. It was one whose bedrock was built of solid, unyielding stone of intentionality, determination, commitment, compassion, self-awareness and selflessness. Martin's road to the Promised Land was a religious road, and the stones of its bed were held together by the cement of his indomitable faith. The road to Martin's vision was a religious road. And, since this is a religious community, it might be of certain value for us to notice some of the similarities and differences between Martin's faith and our own. Perhaps we might do more to help achieve his dream if we had a greater appreciation for the road that led to it. Perhaps we might draw upon more of this prophet’s vision if we could but learn to draw more upon his faith. Martin Luther King was a friend to Unitarian Universalism. He himself claimed to be a small "u" universalist, and I strongly suspect he was a small "u" unitarian as well. He believed in a god who’d made no categorical or demographic mistakes in the creation of humanity. He believed that we are all brothers and sisters, children of a loving creator who holds for each of us the promise of justice, fulfillment and happiness. Many, if not all of us, would find considerable agreement around the belief that we are all brothers and sisters. We’d also have little trouble agreeing that we are each deserving of justice, fulfillment and happiness. But some of us, a good many I'd suppose, might struggle with what we might imagine to be Martin's belief in a god who is a loving creator. A number of his classic sermons preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta have been collected and published in a book entitled, The Strength of Love. One of the sermons in that collection, "Our God Is Able," tells how Martin bases his quest for love in a deep and abiding and a living faith. The following passage from that sermon provides a challenge, especially to Unitarian Universalists, to take our own faith more seriously. "As I come to the conclusion of my message, I would wish you to permit a personal experience. The first twenty-four years of my life were years packed with fulfillment. I had no basic problems or burdens. Because of concerned and loving parents who provided for my every need, I sallied through high school, college, theological school, and graduate school without interruption. It was not until I became a part of the leadership of the Montgomery bus protest that I was actually confronted with the trials of life. Almost immediately after the protest had been undertaken, we began to receive threatening telephone calls and letters in our home. Sporadic in the beginning, they increased day after day. At first I took them in stride, feeling that they were the work of a few hotheads who would become discouraged after they discovered that we would not fight back. But as the weeks passed, I realized that many of the threats were in earnest. I felt myself faltering and growing in fear. After a particularly strenuous day, I settled in bed at a late hour. My wife had already fallen asleep and I was about to doze off when the telephone rang. An angry voice said, "Listen, nigger, we've taken all we want from you. Before next week you'll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery." I hung up, but I could not sleep. It seemed that all of my fears had come down on me at once. I had reached the saturation point. I got out of bed and began to walk the floor. Finally, I went to the kitchen and heated a pot of coffee. I was ready to give up. I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing to be a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had almost gone, I determined to take my problem to God. My head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. ‘I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face it alone.’ At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never before experienced him. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice, saying, ‘Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth. God will be at your side forever.’ Almost at once my fears began to pass from me. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything. The outer situation remained the same, but God had given me, inner calm. Three nights later, our home was bombed. Strangely enough, I accepted the word of the bombing calmly. My experience with God had given me a new strength and trust. I knew now that God is able to give us the interior resources to face the storms and problems of life. Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a great benign Power in the universe whose name is God, and he is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming better men. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world." I’m not suggesting that anyone adopt the god who was the object of Martin’s prayer. I would suggest that some of us may imagine his god to be some fanciful whim of a superpower that we could not possibly believe in. We, Unitarian Universalists, often do very well at imagining someone else's god and then rejecting that god which we've imagined that they imagine. We don't often do well though, at imagining our own gods. Of this I'm sure–we do all have our own gods, whether we’ve claimed them or not. Our god may be one of science, or pleasure, or progress, or materialism, or money. We may believe that humanity is the greatest force in the universe, or that we ourselves are gods. Our gods may be the faces we place on some loftier ideals. Whatever being or principle we consider to be of the greatest benefit to the universe though, it is that which we have sanctified as god, however we may or may not have named it. Whatever it is, it is what we live our lives for. There was another movement besides the civil rights movement back in the 1960s. It was the "god is dead" movement. Perhaps the perception of the god of our forebears came to be irrelevant in a world of knowledge, and we declared him dead–rightly so. That patriarchal, sexist, racist and homophobic old coot deserved to die. But because we lost our faith in him (and I say we because this is a cultural development, and we are all a part of this culture) because we lost our faith in him does not mean that we can afford to lose faith in the possibilities of goodness in the universe. Martin Luther King understood that humanity is but a minuscule occurrence in the vast array which is the universe. If we are to overcome the obstacles of evil and hate even on this tiny dot on the edge of the Milky Way, he told us that our love is going to have to be strong enough; our gods are going to have to be universal enough to hold us when all else fails. We might deny that we have replaced god the father with lesser gods. We might deny that the term god has any relevance at all in the world we see largely ordered by our own actions. But our denial does not relieve us of our need for forgiveness, and for hope, and for compassion. Our denial does not relieve us from the burden of connecting the smaller pieces to the larger whole. If we can only believe in what we see in front of our noses, then we have lost sight of the larger picture. Then we have accepted less than what is available for ourselves and for each other. Then we can expect to accomplish less in our efforts towards justice and ultimately towards love. Then we have failed the vision Martin left for us. God is the possibility of love. Whatever else god may or may not be, the greatest potential imaginable in the universe is the potential of love. However we might envision that potential to be embodied is irrelevant. If we are going to change our lives, our communities, and our world to be the lives and the communities and the world they are capable of being, it will be through love. Martin Luther King knew that. That's what he wanted us to know. Not that love is warm and fuzzy, but that it is the greatest gift and potential in this universe. He wanted us to know that its strength can provide us with the perseverance, the persistence to knock on the door as long as it takes to receive the three loaves of bread–the loaf of hope, the loaf of faith, and the loaf of love. We need not conclude that life has no meaning and that our efforts are worthless. With Martin Luther King, we too can claim a larger god, one who will be with us in our midnights of despair, with us in our struggles for right, and with us in our moments of triumph. I bid you in the name of Martin Luther King, and for all our sakes: "Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth. [For the] God [of Love] will be at your side forever. "Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom," and justice and love; toward the city where we need no longer fear but where we celebrate one another, embracing our diversity and honoring our differences. May it be so.
by Charles Blustein Ortman for Martin Luther King Day
January 16, 2000