"M L King: A Prophet to America"
Haggai 1:1-4,12-15 2:1-9
[sermon notes. 1/94. Harold Miller, Corning NY]
going to look at a prophet --from God-- to America.
but first want us look (briefly) at prophet God sent to Isr .
turn to Haggai 1
"1:1"
when is this? who are these persons?
600 yrs before Christ, "Babylonian captivity" - God’s people
taken into exile for about 70 yrs
"2nd yr of Darius" figures out to be 16 yrs after some of these
exiles began to return
as returned, one of main thing on minds: rebuild temple.
But the neighboring Samaritans gave them a hard time.
and also the city walls needed repaired.
and the Israelites needed to start their crops going.
So for 16 yrs virtually nothing was done on the temple.
Well, Haggai began prophesying.
"1:2-4"
goes on warn what happen if they don’t build.
"1:12-15"
sounds good
but less than a mo later, needed more enc :
some were evidently discouraging others. "look at this puny house.
no comparison w "
"2:1-4" [notice again msg " am w you."]
"2:5-9"
2-pronged approach:
short-range view of what God is asking now.
rebuild the temple.
"be strong...& work"
long-range view of what God will make the future to be.
God will fill this house w a great glory. "that former-
temple (that people were talking about)--won’t be able to
’hold a candle’ to the greater glory of this house."
virtually all the prophets followed that 2-pronged approach.
------
now to America.
we need a prophet now to spk to our country. call to
repentance.
We also needed one 30 yrs ago.
if you had been on the state capitol grounds in Jackson,
Mississippi, on a certain Sunday morning in 1965, you’d have
seen a strange sight.
Across the street was a large ch , and at the top of the front
steps stood a row of white ushers, arms linked, barring the way
to the doors.
There were 4 or 5 black men, conservatively dressed for ch ,
standing on the lower steps, facing the doors. As one of these
men approached the top step, an usher disengaged his arm and
smashed the would-be visitor in the face, sending him sprawling
down the step.
Inside, the congregation was singing the opening hymn: "Love
divine, all loves excelling..."
Philip Yancey (author) who grew up outside of Atlanta, GA:
"When news came over the intercom system that Pres John F
Kennedy had been shot, students in my high school stood &
cheered. They cheered bec he was the Pres who had proposed
civil-rights legislation [which worked to de-segregate Whites &
Blacks] and had then backed it up by forcing the U of Miss to
integrate." *ChnT* Jan15’90 p22
Yancey also wrote about a ch he attended in the 60’s.
the pastor there taught that God consigned Blacks to life as
lowly servants when cursed the son of Noah their ancestor.
his pastor would say from the pulpit: --"That explains why black
people make such good waiters and household servants. Watch a
black waiter move thru a crowded restaurant, swiveling his
hips, balancing a tray of food above his head. He’s good at
that job bec that’s the job God destined him for."
*ChnT* Jan15’90 p25
On Dec 1, ’55 in Montgomery, AL, a black woman named Rosa Parks
got on a city bus. She sat down gratefully in first empty
seat, her feet tired after a long day.
a few stops later a white man demanded that she give up her
seat to him and move to the back of the bus. she was too
tired; said she wasn’t getting up from her seat. she was
arrested. *GH* editorial Jan13’87p32
America needed a prophet. ...& God sent one.
the black comm began a bus boycott--car-pool & walk. To lead
this boycott, chose as a compromise candidate the new
minister in town, 26 yrs old, M L King.
as soon as King’s lship of boycott was announced, the threats
from the KKK began against him.
and from the police. --within days King was arrested for
driving 30 mph in a 25 mph zone & thrown in the Montgomery
city jail.
The following night King, shaken by his first jail exper , sat
up in his kitchen wondering if he could take it anymore.
Should he resign? it was around midnight.
he felt agitated and full of fear. --A few minutes before, the
phone had rung. "Nigger, we are tired of you and your mess
now. And if you aren’t out of this town in 3 days, we’re going
to blow your brains out, and blow up your house."
King sat staring at an untouched cup of coffee and tried to
think of a way out.
In the next rm lay his wife, Coretta, already asleep, along w
their newborn daughter, Yolanda.
Here is how King remembers it:
And I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and
thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me
any minute. And I started thinking about a dedicated,
devoted and loyal wife, who was over there asleep. ... And I
got to the point that I couldn’t take it anymore. I was
weak. ...
And I discovered then that religion had to become real to
me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over
that cup of coffee. I never will forget it. ... I prayed a
prayer, and I prayed out loud that night. I said, "Lord, I’m
down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I
think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I
must confess that I’m weak now. I’m faltering. I’m losing
my courage."
...And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner
voice saying to me,, "Martin Luther, stand up for
righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth.
And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world."
...I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He
promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No
never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave me,
never to leave me alone.
3 nights later a bomb exploded on the front porch of King’s
home, filling the house w smoke & broken glass but injuring no
one.
King took it calmly. later said: "my religious exper a few
nights before had given me the str to face it."
King came back to this "visitation" at the kitchen table every
critical moment in his life. for him, it became the bedrock
of pers faith.
(were you struck by the simplicity of the message he received?
"I am w you."
It’s same msg the Jews of Haggai’s day were given. --moved
them when weak/ demoralized to obey God. )
King reported no further visitations or visions over the next 13
yrs of his career. This one word was enough.
King’s theme to his people in the bus boycott--& thru rest of
his ministry--was patient nonviolence.
they were to work for justice. but only thru nonviolent mns .
it was not easy to stay on this track.
after King’s house was bombed, a crowd collected. he was able
to disperse them after he said, "we cannot solve this problem
thru retaliatory violence.... Remember the words of J , ’He
who lives by the sword will perish by the sword’ "
This is what King called for above all else: nonviolence.
hard for us to grasp how hard it was for him to maintain this
stance. --
after you’ve been hit on the head w a policeman’s nightstick
for the dozenth time, & received yet another jolt from a
jailer’s cattle prod, begin to q the effectiveness of meek
submission.
many blacks abandoned King over this issue.
students especially, the heroes of the freedom rides, drifted
toward "black power"-rhetoric --after their co-workers were
murdered in Mississippi.
Malcolm X (for many yrs ) mocked King’s nonviolent approach.
"This is no revolution," Malcolm said. "This is a beg-o-
lution."
Holding hands w white people & singing "We Shall Overcome," he
said, is laughable. "You don’t do that in a revolution. You
don’t do any singing, you’re too busy swinging.
King dismissed Malcolm’s words as "fiery, demagogic oratory"
that "can reap nothing but grief."
nonviolence, King told one audience, disarms the oppressor.
"It weakens his morale...and exposes his defenses. And at
the same time, it works on his conscience. And he just
doesn’t know what to do. Now I can assure you that if we
rose up in violence in the South, our opponents would really
know what to do, bec they know how to operate on this level.
... They control all the forces of violence."
this section on Malcolm from *USNews Nov23’92p83*;
rest *ChnT* Jan15’90
as riots broke out in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, and
Harlem, King traveled from city to city trying to cool tempers.
"Chrnity [he said] has always insisted that the cross we bear
precedes the crown we wear."
preached from Christ’s Serm on Mt .
One of King’s biographers tells of a tense encounter w
Chicago’s tough mayor, Mayor Daley.
As was his style, King sat silent thru most of the boisterous
mtg.
the blacks were feeling betrayed. they thot had reached an
understanding: Daley-permitting-them-to-march-thru-
Chicago-w-police-protection in exchange for calling-off-a-
boycott.
but Daley had double-crossed them, obtaining a court order
that banned further marches.
the air was hostile, & it looked as if the mtg would break
apart in bitterness.
King finally spoke up to the mayor & his men, w what one
onlooker described as a "grand and quiet and careful and
calming eloquence."
Let me say that if you are tired of demonstrations, I am
tired of demonstrating. I am tired of the threat of death.
I want to live. I don’t want to be a martyr. And there are
moments when I doubt if I am going to make it thru . I am
tired of getting hit, tired of being beaten, tired of going
to jail. But the important thing is not how tired I am; the
important thing is to get rid of the conditions-that-lead-us
to march.
Now, gentlemen, you know we don’t have much. We don’t have
much money. We don’t really have much education, and we
don’t have political power. We have only our bodies and you
are asking us to give up the one thing-that-we-have when you
say, "Don’t march."
King’s speech changed the mood of the mtg & ultimately led to a
new agreement w Mayor Daley.
"We have only our bodies."
it was ultimately the marchers and their televised encounters w
southern sheriffs (& their police dogs and water hoses) that
brought victory to the civil-rights movement.
King & his marchers accepted beatings, jailings, and other
brutalities bec they believed that as evil would come out into
the open, it would evoke national moral outrage.
And it did.
let me again quote from the article by Philip Yancey
Many historians point to one event as the single moment in
which the civil rights movement at last attained a critical
mass of national support. It occurred on a bridge outside
Selma, Alabama, when Sheriff Jim Clark turned his policemen
loose on unarmed black demonstrators.
The mounted troopers spurred their horses at a run into the
crowd of marchers, flailing away with their nightsticks,
cracking heads and driving bodies to the ground. As whites
on the sidelines whooped and cheered, the troopers shot tear
gas into the crowd. Most Americans got their first glimpse
of the scene when ABC interrupted its Sunday movie, Judgment
at Nuremberg, to show footage. What the viewers saw
broadcast from Alabama bore a horrifying resemblance to what
they were watching from Nazi Germany. Eight days later
President Lyndon Johnson submitted the Voting Rights Act of
1965 to the U.S. Congress.
- ChrnT Jan15’90 p26 Philip Yancey "Confessions of a Racist"
"We have only our bodies," King said.
Against all odds, against all instincts of self-preservation, he
stayed true to his theme of patient nonviolence.
he did not strike back. offered his body as a target, but
never as a weapon. where others called for revenge, he called
for love.
the word "prophet" is often applied to King, for like the OT
prophets, he endeavored to inspire change in an entire nation
thru moral & sp appeal.
his short-range view of what God was asking them to do
[overhead]: nonviolence as call for justice.
in good prophetic tradition, King used 2-pronged approach of
short-range long-range
the marchers / civil-rights workers needed something more than
just the short view.
already convinced of the justness of their cause, they wanted
someone to interpret the long string of disheartening failures.
needed the long view to answer their deepest qs :
- how can we believe that God loves us in the face of so much
suffering?
- how can we believe in a just God when the world seems ruled
by a sovereignty of evil?
we now look back on the civil-rights movement as steady tidal
surge toward victory.
but at the time, in the midst of daily confrontations w the
power structure and under constant blackmail threats from the
FBI,
civil-rights leaders had no guarantee of victory.
we forget how many nights those leaders spent in rank southern
jails.
usually to them the present looked impossibly bleak, & fut
looked even bleaker.
to such demoralized troops, M L King Jr offered a vision of the
world held in the hands of a just God.
in the 1960’s he was performing the same role as had OT prophets
in 500 BC.: he was raising the sights of God’s people to the
permanent things.
already in 1961 the students were getting restless. & here is
what King told those students:
There is something in this student movement which says to us,
that we shall overcome. Before the victory is won some may
have to get scarred up, but we shall overcome. Before the
victory of brotherhood is achieved, some will maybe face
physical death, but we shall overcome. Before the victory is
won, some will lose jobs, some will be called communists, and
reds, merely bec they believe in brotherhood, some will be
dismissed as dangerous rabblerousers and agitators merely bec
they’re standing up for what is right, but we shall over
come. ... We shall overcome bec there is something in this
universe that justifies James Russell Lowell in saying,
truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim
unknown,
standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.
And later, when the famous march from Selma finally made it to
the state capitol, King addressed those scarred and weary
marchers from the capital steps:
I know that you are asking today, "How long will it take?"
I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the
moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long,
bec truth pressed to earth will rise again.
How long? Not long, bec no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, bec you still reap what you sow.
How long? Not long, bec the arm of the moral universe is
long but it bends toward justice.
How long? Not long, ’cause mine eyes have seen the glory of
the coming of the Lord, trampling out the vintage where the
grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful
lightning of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching
on.
He has sounded forth the trumpets that shall never call
retreat. He is lifting up the hearts of man before His
judgment seat. O be swift, my soul, to answer him. Be
jubilant, my feet. Our God is marching on.
For M L King Jr the long view meant remembering that no matter
how things appear at any given moment, God reigns.
In the end, only God himself truly knows the long view of
history. We are simply asked to trust him, and to act
faithfully on what he has revealed to us in the short view.
a true prophet is going to call us to daily acts of obedience
and faithfulness, regardless of personal cost, regardless of
whether we feel successful or rewarded. Build the temple,
resist evil, enc good, love your enemy, tear down walls of
division, keep pure.
and the prophet also reminds us that no failure, no suffering,
no discouragement is too great for the "God who stands within
the shadows, keeping watch above his own."
A prophet who can get across both those messages just may change
the world.
------
King was a flawed instr . had some grave personal & moral
weaknesses.
But God --in his grace to King --& to this nation-- used him as
a prophet to Amer .
------
we still have not arrived to where we should be re racism.
both of last Gen Assem - blacks saying racism still exists &
needs to be fought.
listen to this *NY Times* statistic:
Annual median salary for black college grads: $30,910. Annual
median salary for white college grads: $37,490.
listen to this from a recent *USNews* Nov9’92p44
researchers have tested what happens when pairs of whites and
blacks w identical housing needs and credentials--apart from
their race--apply for housing. (study funded by HUD in ’89)
blacks were discriminated against slightly over half the time.
--shown fewer apartments (of the housing units shown to
whites, 60-90% were not made available to blacks), provided w
less assistance in finding a mortgage, & so on.
even more disappointing, the evaluators found no evidence that
discrimination had lessened since HUD’s previous study in
’77.
close w one of King’s best-known visions of the fut :
I have a dream that my 4 little children will one day live in
a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their
skin, but by the content of their character.
