Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man. Martin Luther King, Jr., a father and husband; an intelligent scholar; a preacher and pastor; a consummate political activist. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man of compassion and prophecy. A human person . . . with deep flaws and searing inner conflicts. Martin Luther King, Jr., a voice of beauty, and mercy, and understanding; and a voice shattering the myths of American righteousness and innocence; a voice, and a life, that exposed and challenged the hidden and violent side of the American collective psyche and its culture and institutions.

Martin Luther King, Jr., a Son of Atlanta. Born and raised there, felled by an assassin's bullets, his body rests in a simple, stone memorial tomb only two and a half blocks north of the downtown Atlanta loft where I resided for a year while serving as a UU interim minister. Martin Luther King, Jr., son of the south, his life a testament to courage and love for all Americans . . . his life a testament to something that calls to us all, though it takes great courage and maturity of heart to hear. It takes great courage and maturity of heart for folks like ourselves---affluent, mostly white, members of that class of folk who dominate society---it takes great courage and maturity to hear because as Albert Camus once said, never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.

The details of his testimony, and of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. are available to all. All the grandeur and magnificence, all the personal errors and strategic missteps. This history and story of his life, from birth to violent death, it is all public knowledge.

What does it take to truly understand the kind of courage, dedication and largeness of heart so clearly evident in the story of that life? And what, ever, are we to do with such a life? How can we, really, acknowledge and celebrate such a life? How can we realistically apply the lessons of such a life?

But, then, which life? Which of the many lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. that have been made public, that are told and retold every year about this time, which story is the most worthy, the most accurate, the most compelling?

Is it the story of the dreamer? The man who so boldly proclaimed, standing before thousands, "I have a dream. . . is it that man?" Is it the man who traveled to India in order to immerse himself in the philosophy of Gandhi---and who returned to America a complete advocate of nonviolence, putting what he had learned to its most rigorous test: directly confronting lawlessly violent and bigoted systems of government, business and social life---is it that Martin Luther King, Jr.? Or, is it the man who wanted equity for his people, his African-American sisters and brothers; who wanted the integration of cultures and races throughout society? Is it the one dimensional activist, the one issue proponent, whose focus was race, race and race? Or is it the world renowned and deeply respected recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace whose focus was the peaceful unity of all human kind?

Which Martin King, whose image has been tweaked and massaged, manipulated and, in fact, suppressed, which Martin King shall we, here, in this complex, class and racially stratified peninsula, which Martin Luther King, Jr. shall we lift up? Which Martin Luther King, Jr. shall we, here, in this affluent suburban area, which Martin Luther King, Jr. shall we celebrate?

It is a classic issue. The life of Dr. King, and the many interpretations of his life, is a classic issue for us here. For, of course, we celebrate who we believe we see---and we see who and what we want to see---and we want to see what protects our interests and our identities. It is very difficult, very difficult, indeed, to see the truth behind something or someone we suspect (or are convinced) threatens our sense of security. And the real life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a threat to our security. It is difficult to see through what we interpret to be a threat, to see through to the real message, the real person beyond our fears and uneasiness. And Martin Luther King, Jr. must rest uneasily upon our memories. The memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. is, simply put, a threat---not only to our memories, but to our sense of ourselves as we go about our business each day, to our sense of ourselves right in this moment This is so because, internally, we seem so often to get caught up targeting others, other philosophies or theologies, other political ideologies, other persons, as threats. Targeting them through very subtle, yet pervasive judgments, emotional reactions, ominous intuitions. I contend that everyone here in this room engages in this kind of inner self defensive maneuvering: labeling, warding off, relegating others to positions of lesser than elevating ourselves to positions of better than Or, again in sometimes subtle, and sometimes not so subtle ways, selecting out what we want to see, recreating, as it were, the story that is unfolding in front of us, and reinterpreting it so that it feels safer, more palatable. And it is this process, of reinterpretation, of denying the full story, the gritty or challenging story, that causes us, literally, to whitewash the memory of Dr. King. We make him over into a bland, peace loving, kind man with only one issue, the issue of race. Ahhh, God, how complex we are!

Ahh but that issue, of which Dr. King we choose to let in, is part of his very legacy. For this issue of which Martin King can we see, can we dare to see, this issue brings us up against the very core of what it means to live ethical lives; what it means to live lives open to, committed to, a mature spiritual sensibility. (When I use ethical here it means principled, honest, real, seeking good for all, and truth if possible. And spiritual means being open to our depths, open to a variety of meanings; and it means being intentional about seeking and honoring what is sacred in ourselves and in this world.)

Martin Luther King, Jr. brings us to the core of the religious life because his story challenges us across the entire field of our social experience, down to the deepest well-springs of our connection to life. In my first newsletter for this year, 2002, I posed a number of questions for the new year. One of them, in particular, resonates with the same urgency and intensity with which Dr. King's life confronts us.

In my column I asked:

Remembering Robert Frost: The woods are lovely, dark and deep. / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep: What vow have you made---what understanding about life have you accepted---that is so deep it holds you here, against all pain, dissatisfaction and difficulty, so that you fill your lungs without regret to take the next step, and then the next---so that, in spite of all the suffering and oppression in this world, you choose LIFE?

What vow is it that leads you there to such a choice?

The Martin Luther King, Jr. that I want to lift up for us today is the Martin King who turned from the loveliness of the dark woods, who also turned from the accolades of the world, as well as from the easy path of accommodation. It is the Rev. Martin King whose faith in the moral power of the universe called him out of his fear. It is the Martin Luther King, Jr. who faced the principalities and powers of this country and spoke radical truth. It is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr who was unable to do nothing, who was compelled to take direct and committed action to face and fight oppression.

Three things, then, from the legacy of this amazing son of Atlanta, from the life of this courageous man---three things: Faith. Speaking the radical truth. Radical commitment.

Radical Commitment

Let me start with the last, first: Radical Commitment.

In 1960, the same year that he was arrested in Atlanta for trespassing while he was leading a restaurant sit-in, King said, history has thrust upon me a responsibility from which I cannot turn away. I have no choice His commitment was born out of his belief that History (with a capitol "H") had him in its grip. Events had conspired to thrust him into leadership, and he knew no other response than to fully assent.

By the end of that decade, however, he said this (your remember it from Lauri's chalice words:) "I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind The value of his terrible commitment, so at odds with the prevailing ethos of the time, was a gift; he began to deeply comprehend the meaning of his commitment to action, to comprehend it as a legacy of enduring value, a legacy that was the result of his choices wrought out of the work to which he was called.

A year later, in 1969, he said, you have to give yourself entirely, then you are prepared to do anything that serves the Cause. I have reached that point. I have no options anymore. I have given myself fully.

Giving himself fully. That is the first dimension of the legacy of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I want to lift up. He helped us further the task of dismantling racism in our country through leadership that was so radically and fully committed, we are called to account in ways we deny only at great negative cost---cost to our own integrity as individuals, and to the health of our entire social fabric. Our own Rev. Theodore Parker, Unitarian minister and one of the most important figures in nineteenth century Unitarianism, who was ostracized by the professional ministry of his time because he denied most of the traditional supports of Christian belief (such as the miracles)---and because he was one of the most committed and outspoken clergy voices for the abolition of slavery---Theodore Parker said this: "If the watchman see the foe coming and blow not the trumpet, the blood of the innocent is on him." In other words, our capacity to act in the face of oppression, against the insidious power of racism, which is alive and well in America and on this peninsula and in this city, bears upon us an accountability we ignore at our peril.

The question that his legacy raises for us is, to what degree are we giving ourselves in our lives, and to what? How fully are we giving ourselves . . . and to what work, what commitment?

Martin King's vision and his direct experience of suffering as a black man in this country, would not let him live an uncommitted life. And it was his belief that we, especially we here in this affluent bastion of the crown jewel of the west, we are dangerously poised for failure. In his letters from Birmingham City Jail, Alabama he wrote: "I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people . . . for the appalling silence of the good people. . . for the appalling silence of the good people People like us.

Speaking the Radical Truth

Speaking the Radical Truth is the second characteristic of King's legacy for me on this day, in the year 2002, forty-six years from the first time Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested for the first time because of his leadership of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott---and over thirty-two years from the day the life was torn from his body by an assassin's bullets.

There is good reason to believe that those assassin's bullets struck Dr. King because his Speaking the Radical Truth had become too threatening, not to just those who clung to their overt, hate-filled white supremacy, but rather because his expanding message and challenge threatened the illegitimate interests of far larger and more terrible brokers of power. Two years ago, in a Memphis, Tennessee courtroom, a jury of common women and men, a jury composed almost entirely of white people with no ideological axes to grind, found that a conspiracy existed between the federal, state and city governments in the assassination of Dr. King! Amazing!

Those assassin's bullets found him only one week after he had led, yet again, a large public protest. But this time, as a result of his creation of a special campaign by the SCLC, the Southern Christian leadership Conference, this time the protest was in support of both blacks and whites, blacks and whites who made their meager, underpaid, living as sanitation workers. This time he came with a history of standing before numerous large public gatherings, as co-chair of Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, attacking the government's Vietnam policy.

Now whether you believe that these actions really resulted in a wide-ranging conspiracy to eliminate him or not, there can be no denying that his message had evolved beyond just matters of integration. He had become a class warrior, whose message also ever more directly and pointedly attacked militarism. Not the military, mind you, but militarism. That is, a government that used its military willingly, and even eagerly, to wage a futile, unnecessary and outrageously costly war against a foreign power of non-white people, building their forces for that war from the under class of this country, and particularly from the class of people who were poor African Americans.

Both those issues, class and militarism, in themselves offer us prodigious challenges, shake the foundations of our secure middle-class culture. They are, in themselves, enough for us to want to repaint the image of Dr. King. But for purposes of this Sunday service . . . for purposes of our gathering here today in this sanctuary of peace and deepening . . . let us take our lead from Dr. Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer was a world renowned Unitarian physician, who though paternalistic and bigoted in many ways toward the very black African people he served, Dr. Schweitzer left a legacy that can offer us profound guidance in embracing Dr. King. It's one of our Centering Thoughts. Schweitzer wrote, "I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know---the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

I believe that. I believe that Schweitzer is speaking the truth in these words. Real happiness has to do with going beyond ourselves, going beyond ourselves from out of selves that are deeply and securely rooted in integrity and self respect. What I want to suggest to you today is that the only way to serve, with true compassion and in ways that really can make a difference, is if we are willing to tell ourselves the radical truth, the truth about ourselves to ourselves, and about the social circumstances surrounding us in which and to which we wish to serve.

To engage in social service projects, to offer our supportive services to others, without being clear about our motives, and without clearly understanding what the social, economic and political circumstances are that have created the need in the first place, to do so blunts what we offer, and may, in the long run, result in causing more harm than good.

Whether, then, we are engaged in good works, building religious community, such as this one, or tendering care to those we care about, telling our selves the truth about what we are doing, why we are doing it, and understanding the context, the full context, no matter how difficult---doing all of that is what is required to live authentically in community. How fine an example Dr. King set us in this regard.

Faith

Lastly, I want to speak about faith. Faith is what made it possible for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to stand so boldly against oppression, against hateful crowds, against lawless police. I want to tell you a story about one UU and his journey with faith in order to open a way to understand Martin Luther King Jr.'s experience of faith, and its importance in his work as an activist for change.

In the late summer of 1996, Marshall Hawkins, who had been a staff member of the UUA, spent five weeks in Boligee, Alabama, helping to rebuild two Baptist churches destroyed by arsonist's fires. After having returned to New England, Hawkins began, "I was going to write a report about the volunteer work and its social justice implications. But I found myself writing instead about religion and how deeply I was affected by what I encountered there. Here is some of that writing:

. . . though spirituality has been increasingly important to me, I was theologically a stranger in a strange land, in Alabama. But I discovered something during those five weeks in Boligee---something essential to religion, yet curiously missing from my own experience of it: faith.

I found the faith of the people of Boligee to be very powerful. It made my own seem puny and contrived by comparison. It says, Trust in God. In painful moments and insecure times, trust in God for strength.

Faith is the rock when everything gets shaky---when a loved one dies suddenly, or when your church burns down in the middle of the night. It was something an intellectual morality could never provide. It was something so powerful to witness in the people of those congregations. I could almost touch their belief, like there was a presence around us all. There was also a certain dignified humility that allowed for that faith. It gave space for [something very, very deep, it gave space for] God. Many of their prayers began, Lord, I come before you today as humble as I know how. . . or Lord, I come to you this morning with bowed down head and humble heart. It reflected an acceptance that we are just small parts in the great turnings of the universe.

I compared it to my own religious life. In my family we didn't take bowed-down heads and humble hearts to our religious services. In fact, my church had a certain resistance to bowing our heads or kneeling in prayer. And I think we lost something in that resistance. How few were the times we took a knee before the enormity of the universe, and acknowledged our smallness and its greatness---and the greatness of our smallness.

This type of faith and humility lets God be there. It lets divinity have a place in our lives. And I think it lets magic happen. The work project was full of magic and miracles---at least they seemed like miracles. People were always coming back from their work sites at the end of the day with some story of a miraculous event---either a feeling or some amazing occurrence. I couldn't help but feel that God, whatever God was, was there.

He goes on to say, "I will always be an intellectual, critical Unitarian Universalist. My colors have been dyed in the wool for too long. But I am deeply grateful for the gift of the people of Mount Zion and Little Zion Baptist churches. They showed me the spirit of Christianity.

We cannot understand the life of Martin Luther King Jr. unless we can understand what Hawkins means when he says he was shown the spirit of Christianity even though he is clear that that particular denominational path is not his own, and does not, ultimately fit his religious sensibilities. You see, it was Martin King's deep, deep belief that he was held, that he was supported, that he was loved, and that his vision for a liberated humanity was affirmed by the spirit of the very creative power that created the very universe, that Martin Luther King, Jr. found the strength to go on. He once said that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice---but he believed, deeply believed, that that moral arc was the very rebar of God.

Unless we theologically liberal Unitarian Universalists can find a way to appreciate that belief---to truly, authentically and openheartedly appreciate that belief---we will never be able to be adequate, supportive, fully present allies with the majority of African Americans and an increasing number of people of color in this land. And if we cannot be authentic allies of the people who bear the brunt of the degrading forces of racism, racism will never, ever, be dismantled in this country. Because it is we, the white majority, who have the largest share of the responsibility for making that happen.

I think Martin King's faith suggests one more thing that I want to lift up here today on this weekend when we celebrate the life of this hero for all Americans. His faith calls us to, challenges us to, ask ourselves some very important questions: In what do we, as individuals, and as a Unitarian Universalist congregation, put our faith. And, Is our faith profound enough, and strong enough, and authentic enough, to support us through the worst of life's events---such as oppression, marginalization and violent assault?

Furthermore, I think that the questions In what does this congregation put its faith? In what do you, as a collective, you as a community of Unitarian Universalists, put your faith?---these questions are at the core of what needs to be answered, fully articulated, and firmly embraced, if you are ever to fulfill the dormant possibilities that are at the heart of your true and fullest potential as a Unitarian Universalist community.

I have committed a year of my life to help you answer these questions. It is my fervent hope that you will all find the courage, the commitment and the love to discover answers that are honest and true.

May the blessings of the creative power of the ever-unfolding universe mysterious beyond all word and thought and feeling--- may they rain upon us all may they refresh our vision renew our hearts and stimulate our courage as we go.

Ashé. Amien. Shalom. Blessed Be. Namasté.

What is your reaction to this sermon? Please send comments to Reverend Kurt Kuhwald