MLK Sermon

One Episcopal Priest’s sermon on Martin Luther King

King of the Commonwealth

“’I am the LORD, who made all things,
who alone stretched out the heavens,
who spread out the earth by myself,
who frustrates the signs of liars
and makes fools of diviners,
who turns wise men back
and makes their knowledge foolish,
who confirms the word of his servant
and fulfills the counsel of his messengers,
who says of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be inhabited.’”

Isaiah 44.24-26

I bring you Good News this evening. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob–the God who sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to live and die as one of us–loves you. God watches over you this night as He works out His plan of redemption in history. As we read in Psalm 37, “He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.”

We worship together on this second Sunday in Epiphany to praise God and to remember the ministry and witness of His servant, The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. In the season of Epiphany Isaiah’s prophecy proclaims that we shall see God’s promise of salvation at work in the world. In the words of our hymn, we see ‘God in man made manifest,’ just as the Wise Men saw a star. Epiphany means ‘revealed’ or ‘made manifest.’ Nearly fifty years ago, God’s will became manifest in the ministry of one man whose witness we celebrate, an African American who followed a Jewish carpenter to transform America. Epiphany offers a sign, like a dove descending, that our world can and will change. I bear witness tonight to the radical power of God, who changed how we live in this country–black and white, rich and poor—working through his servant The Reverend Dr King, making manifest the vision of justice and salvation.

I want to tell you the story of Martin, a preacher’s son. Martin heard the call of his father’s voice in the same Scripture you hear each week in the pews of this Alumni Memorial Chapel. Before there was a Doctor King, there was a boy named Martin. Martin faced all the challenges you faced as a child, realizing as he became increasingly conscious of the world around him that justice and equity did not reign. He saw barriers and divisions. He also saw God’s vision for humanity (in a world fraught with injustice) for all who would look. Martin saw in God a plan made manifest in history, a kingdom where no second-class citizenship exists, no barriers hobble God’s children because of the color of their skin.

Before Christmas, we gathered to hear Isaiah’s call to a world that changed forever by the birth of God’s son, the Messiah. Isaiah writes to a people who have eyes, but cannot see, and ears but cannot hear. Isaiah writes, “Here am I, Lord, send me, Lord.”

Nearly two thousand years later, Martin saw what Isaiah saw. Martin heard God’s call. Martin spoke. The victory he proclaimed from pulpit and lectern unfolds this very night, nearly forty years after his murder. We hear in Isaiah the words of a loving God who transforms lives and cultures, who beneficently rules a commonwealth in which the peace of Jerusalem is established, may they prosper who love her. Martin lived with that peace. It gave him strength and resolve to do God’s will on this earth, no matter the cost. The cost was his life, just like the Jewish carpenter he followed.

Martin listened to the Word in his Father’s church. He studied the Law and covenant of Scripture. Doctor King grew from a carefully cultivated and nurtured field that equipped him for the work of ministry. He took up his vocation to become (not a medical doctor), but a doctor of the church. He entered the mission field with the tools of a theologian.

In the entire Bible, we glimpse Jesus the young man only once, in the Gospel of Luke. After the Feast of the Passover, Jesus goes missing. His frantic mother leaves the great caravan returning north to Nazareth. Mary finds Jesus in the Temple precincts, arguing and parsing Hebrew Scripture with the rabbis, the doctors of the church. Jesus answers his bewildered mother, “Did you not know I would be in my Father’s house?”

As the young Jesus grew to manhood—the Messiah—to establish the peace of Jerusalem, so did young Martin grow to proclaim the message of the Acceptable Year of the LORD, a time when the blind see and the deaf hear, when the windowed and orphaned are loved, and the joyous shielded. As God’s servant, Dr. King pruned the choking weeds of segregation and injustice from the field given to him by his Father in heaven. He tended a civilization almost—but not quite–ready to break into blossom.

Tonight we sing praise to “God in man made manifest.”

This evening I bring Good News. Be radically transformed by the words of Isaiah and Luke and Doctor King. Leave this church tonight strengthened by this journey to the altar of God whose child, Martin, saw the vision of a world where divisions cease. See God manifest in the world. “Fret not yourself because of evildoers” as you follow the path. God’s power will sustain you. God’s power sustained Doctor King in his ministry, his proclamation of a citizenship in a commonwealth where no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, and no authority reigns except that of an All Loving and All Merciful creator. For a time, we gather as a community triumphant, ready to march forward strengthened by God’s word and sacrament, bearing joyous witness and praise and blessing and honor to our Everlasting King.—Amen.

–The Rev. William Marchl