Celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr’s Life: Honoring Love and Justice
Dan Heneghan – C12 Forums RVA
Today’s devotion is to mark and to celebrate the life and work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which ultimately is to celebrate something that is very important to our God who created us all. From the Old Testament to the New, the scriptures remind us of how love and justice are to be honored and to be understood despite the holy and messy tension that exists between them. God’s Word says as follows:
“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness (or mercy), and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
“Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.” (Isaiah 30:18)
“But as for you, return to your God, hold fast to love and justice, and wait continually for your God.” (Hosea 12:6)
“God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
“Jesus Christ, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. The was to show God’s righteousness, because in His divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:35-36)
I think we all believe that the victory of Calvary was demonstrated clearly in Christ Jesus, as the love of the Father erased the justified wrath of God Himself due us for our past, present and future sins.
And this week’s national holiday in memory of Dr. King stands most importantly for a day to reflect on when a person is committed to wrestling with some of life’s most contrasting elements—love and justice, being and doing, prayerful waiting and decisive, loving action in the world but also trusting God’s sovereignty —until they come together as an integrated whole.
For Dr. King, it was never love or justice. It was never prayer or action— being in God or doing something for God. It was never missional efforts to address the problems of the world or privately contemplating the presence of God within. It was both. All the time. He made this profoundly clear when he said “life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.”
It was King’s spiritual insight and alignment with the heart of God that made it possible for him to know what many Christians and other well-meaning individuals had somehow either avoided or just failed to grasp—that racism and racial injustice are an offense to the heart of God and contradict the essence of the Gospel. As Paul wrote to the Galatians in Chp 3: “For there is no longer Jew or Greek…slave or free…male and female; for all of you are one in Christ.”
Martin Luther King Jr. often referred to a personal “soul force”, which he believed to his core was God-directed action that was motivated by love, emerging from the soul of a person who was in touch with the Spirit of God and witnessing with their spirit about things that are true. King inspired others as he said: “To our bitterest opponents we say: We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you… One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.” Peter’s 1st letter in Chap 3. echoes this sentiment: “ Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.”
To mark and celebrate Dr. King’s life this week is also to mark the deep spirituality out of which his passion for justice emerged, the same spirituality that sustained him through the challenges of his fight for justice. It was strength of soul that made it possible for King to live within the paradox of adopting and maintaining a non-violent approach to confronting evil. King said: “Through nonviolent resistance we shall be able to oppose the unjust system and at the same time love the perpetrators of the system.” This is just not easy to do and it was King’s faith that kept his activism grounded in such radical truth. Without strength of soul it would have been impossible for him to live these truths himself, let alone lead others to faithfully embrace these same truths.
His spiritual vitality was a powerful undercurrent that carried him beyond fear and concern for his own survival to the fulfillment of God’s purposes for him in his own generation. The day before his assassination, he spoke passionately about being strengthened by what can only be described as a mystical experience of “going to the mountain” and gaining a spiritual perspective on his life and the cause he was championing”
“We’ve got some difficult days ahead,” he said, “but it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned with that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land! And I’m so happy tonight! I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”
King’s leadership in the fight for racial justice was more than mere human activism; it was actually spiritual activism as he partnered with God in any and all attempts to bring transformative justice to the world. He understood his leadership in this fight to be his destiny—a destiny that God himself had thrust upon him.
King knew that God and God alone gives us the interior resources to bear the burdens and tribulations of life, especially those that come as we fulfill our call to serve others and to stand for what is right in this world. Had he not known how to move from action back into prayer it’s likely that the forces of evil would have prevailed, at least for a little while longer. In a sermon entitled Our God is Able, King tells a very personal story of how an intimate encounter with God sustained him in the darkest hour of his fight for freedom and equality. When he began receiving death threats just before the Montgomery bus protest, he came to the end of his own inner resources and almost gave into fear. But it was an encounter with God at his kitchen table that empowered him to continue saying yes to his calling:
“At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never 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 passed from me. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything. The outer situation remained the same, but God had given me inner calm.”
King’s choice to orient himself towards God in the midst of the resistance his action had stirred up became a pivotal moment in his life as a leader. It solidified his calling, transformed his fear into a deep sense of calm, and gave him the strength to go on. Were it not for his full engagement in the fight for justice and his grounded-ness in the life of prayer, he might never have had the kind of encounter with God that transformed him in the deepest level of his being.
King truly believed that every genuine expression of love grows out of consistent and total surrender to God and that every action we take in the world must be motivated by love—the most durable power in the world. At the heart of his message was the conviction that love is the creative force exemplified in the life of Christ and it is the most potent instrument available in the human quest for peace and security. In fact, he believed that the ability to love our enemies was an absolute necessity for our survival. In his sermon Pilgrimage to Nonviolence he says, “God has been profoundly real to me in recent years. In the midst of outer dangers I have felt an inner calm. In the midst of lonely days and dreary nights I have heard an inner voice saying, ‘Lo, I will be with you.’ When the chains of fear and the manacles of frustration have all but stymied my efforts, I have felt the power of God transforming the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope. I am convinced that the universe is under the control of a loving purpose, and that in the struggle for righteousness man has cosmic companionship.”
King’s soul was nourished and strengthened by a powerful pulse: his intimate connection with God through prayer propelled him to courageous and unreserved action as he engaged with the brokenness of the world. And action in the world always drove him back to prayer and radical surrender to God. This is the very heart of each of our walk with God—the belief that God is real, that God can be encountered in the depths of one’s being, and that our life can be radically oriented and responsive to the faith in His Presence through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
And what is the outcome of a life lived in this kind of powerful pulse? Love. Truth. Justice. Courage. Vision. And Action. As James said it in his epistle, Chap 2, v18: “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my good deeds.”
As we consider the possibility of living lives that fully integrate love and justice, being and doing, prayer and action, it is good for us today to celebrate Dr. King as a man who had a God-given dream but didn’t keep it to himself for his own private inspirations. He emerged from prayer to describe that dream to the rest of us in ways that enabled us to see it and taste it and feel it. It is good for us to be challenged and inspired by a man who made a difference in our world through contemplative action—that is, action that emerges from that place where God’s Holy Spirit witnesses within us about things that are true and empowers us to take right action in the world. Spirit-led action for the sake of both the lost, and for all who are - by saving faith in Jesus life, death, and resurrection - called God’s children.
Where are you most challenged in holding love and justice together in - as Dr. King suggested - a “fruitful harmony”?
Is your prayer life a deliberate submission to asking God to meet you and to strengthen you in the midst of this challenge?