22
Love Opens the Door (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
A friend of mine, who is editor of Stoop Magazine, reminded me of a sermon which Martin Luther King, Jr. preached titled ‘The American Dream‘.
But be assured that we will ride you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we will win our freedom, but we will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and your conscience that we will win you in the process.” And our victory will be a double victory.
Oh yes, love is the way. (Yes) Love is the only absolute. More and more I see this. I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate myself; hate is too great a burden to bear. (You bet, Yes) I’ve seen it on the faces of too many sheriffs of the South—I’ve seen hate. In the faces and even the walk of too many Klansmen of the South, I’ve seen hate. Hate distorts the personality. Hate does something to the soul that causes one to lose his objectivity. The man who hates can’t think straight; (Amen) the man who hates can’t reason right; the man who hates can’t see right; the man who hates can’t walk right. (Yeah) And I know now that Jesus is right, (Yeah) that love is the way. And this is why John said, “God is love,” (Yes, sir) so that he who hates does not know God, but he who loves (get in the door) at that moment has the key that opens the door (Yeah) to the meaning of ultimate reality. So this morning there is so much that we have to offer to the world. (Yes, sir)
I love it, not only for the charismatic exhortations to the congregation in brackets, but because this is what the story of Jesus offers the world. Another story. A second story. The story which is the hope of the world and puts an end to the world’s violence. MLK embodies this story, and most pointedly the Sermon on the Mount. Rather than seeing the Sermon on the Mount as a ‘Christian ethic’, he sees it as the ‘Christian identity’. Jesus sermon on the mount is not list of things Christians must do (though we certainly must do them), but a description of the Kingdom that is coming as Jesus gathers his community of disciples. This is the story we belong to, one in which victims do not retaliate, one which doesn’t tell delusional stories about one’s self righteousness, and one that treats women with respect and not as a possession. To live this way is to live the story of Jesus. MLK understood this and so he was blessed because he lived the story of his blessed Lord:
“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matt 5:11–12)
19
The Truth and False Prophets (Matthew 7.15-20)
The philosopher Michel Foucault says that claims to know the truth are always grabs for power. You simply cannot separate truth and power. Behind any metanarrative there lurks a power play, knowledge claims are violent impositions by powerful institutions, universal truth claims are simply masks for ideology and the will to power. I think we know this to be true, and have seen this play out politically in nations and organisations.
Yet Christians believe they have been given a true story which, far from being a tool to legitimize power, ‘presents a vision of community life which resists claims to power by modelling itself on the self-giving and powerlessness of Christ.’[1] The truthfulness of this story does not make it violent. On the contrary this story is about the cross where the violent took our Lord and killed him so that those who were oppressed would be liberated.
This is part of the sermon I recently preached on Matthew 7:15-20. As you listen you will find out why I found this teaching of Jesus very confronting.
The Truth and False Prophets (Matthew 7.15-20)
MP3 | St Philips, York Street (6PM) | 4 July 2010
[1] Graham Tomlin, The Power of the Cross: Theology and the Death of Christ in Paul, Luther and Pascal (Carlisle, Cumbria, U.K.: Paternoster, 1999), 99.