It was almost sixty years ago that Doctor Martin Luther King visited Temple Emmanuel in Worcester: March 13th, 1961.
That was before the march on Washington, before the Voting Right bills and before the assassinations that marked the end of the long hard struggle against racism, discrimination and injustice. Dr. King, pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Atlanta, awakened the consciences of ministers, priests, rabbis and believers everywhere and began the march from hate to brotherhood that continues even to our day.
There were two secrets to Dr. King’s success. The first was his faith. While some biographers would point to certain character flaws or even sinful behavior, no one can deny that Martin Luther King was a man of faith.
Before his belief in civil rights or the formulation of any such movement, Dr. King was a preacher and one who based everything he believed and did on the person of Jesus. In a Sermon given in 1953, as a 24 year old doctoral student in Theology at Boston Univeristy, Dr. King preached this sermon:
Christianity has no meaning devoid of Christ. The noble principles of Christianity remain abstract until they are personified in a person called Christ. Christ is the center around which everything in the Christian faith revolves.
This is what the book of revelation means when it says He King of Kings and Lord of Lord. He is the center not only of our faith, but of history and all nations must bow before him. This is the ringing affirmation of Christmas—that a personality has come in the world to split history into A.D. and B.C. The thing that Christ brought into the world was not a new set of doctrines, not new teachings, but his person, in whom all truth is to be found.
So, the first thing that made Dr. King able to accomplish the great things he did was his faith, for, as the Psalmist says in today’s Mass: ‘It is to the upright that I will show the saving power of God.’
And his second great quality was his commitment to non0violence. For he accomplished the great things he did not with money or accumulated political power, but with an understanding of the message we just learned again at Christmas: that it is only in littleness, in dying to self and in loving like a baby in a manger or a man on a cross that we can accomplish great things.
For when they cursed and beat Dr. King and the courageous men and women he led, he would respond not with more hate, but with patient love. “Do to us what you will...” he proclaimed that day in Worcester, “and we will still love you. We will not hate you...We will wear you down by our capacity to suffer; we will win our freedom and we will win you too. It will be a double victory.”
Dr. King learned that lesson from the Christ in the manger and the Christ on the Cross, and, that, in the words of the Collect I prayed just a few moment ago, God, who governs all things, might mercifully hear the pleading of his people and bestow his peace on our times.
