”Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” Paul wrote the Romans, adding: ”How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher?”
Out of the fecund South, out of the black church, came Martin Luther King Jr., with all his human eloquence and failings, and with all his people`s longing. Out of degradation came elevation, and out of suffering a preacher.
Martin Luther King Jr. did not preach for a system but against one. He preached against the artificial construct that went by various names-segregation, Jim Crow, States` Rights, the Southern Way of Life, Separate but Equal . . . but by whatever name it was equally fraudulent and odious. Even by the time of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, it was a system already crumbling, rotten, ready to collapse at the sound of marching feet and the blast of the trumpet.
This preacher understood that injustice is always ready to come tumbling down when truly confronted. He determined not to be conformed to this seemingly solid world, but to be transformed. He was not out to erect a new system that in time would grow as weak and brittle as the old, but to resurrect belief. He understood instinctively, in the words of John Chamberlain, that ”no political or economic system can save anyone if the spiritual origins of freedom and morality are forgotten.”
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And so the preacher made an old faith new-the faith that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. And the old words became undeniable, and justice urgent. And those who believed in them would not be moved. Not by force and not by ploy, not by Nullification or Interposition, not by police dogs and water hoses. The scales fell away from America`s eyes and not all the Faubuses and Wallaces, Ross Barnetts and Bull Connors, could put them back.
How did this preacher come to affect so many? Not by preaching a new ideology, but by going back to his roots, and ours. To the words of the Declaration of Independence. To the Exodus God. To the old, old wells from which are drawn the waters of salvation. To the rhythms and cadences of the black church. The stones this David hurled had been worn smooth by time, and even as he sent them flying, he knew he had an invincible ally in the conscience of his adversaries.
He triumphed, and with him all Americans. Yet today, a quarter century after that Second Reconstruction, there is no air of victory. Hope is diminished, and the celebrants of the victory look increasingly to the past, not the future. The freedom marchers have disappeared into the mists of nostalgia, their places taken by a tired old bureaucracy, by a ”movement”
that no longer moves but has become one more standpat special interest among many. Historical pageants replace the Dream. Phrases that once rallied hearts and minds-like Civil Rights-have taken on the grimy patina of special privilege and lawyerwords. ”Blacks and whites together” is now just a line from a forgotten old anthem; who sings it any more?
What happened?
A new spirit arose that knew not Martin. Even when he still led, the grumblers used to refer to him sardonically as De Lawd, and look around for more exciting models-Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Black Power, Marcus Garvey, Adam Clayton Powell . . . for this wasn`t the promised land that Dr. King had led us into, but a wilderness. And it had all the uncertainties and terrors of the wilderness, of freedom. Some now long to return to the fleshpots, to a new and improved self-segregation. Others wander off toward oases that always prove mirages.
How far we have come from Martin Luther King`s dream of a land where all would be judged not by the color of their skins but the content of their character. From the mountaintop to which he led us, we have descended to a slough of despond-and mutual suspicion.
There is a way out. It lies through the wilderness-not back to slavery or off in search of strange gods. It lies through the message Martin Luther King brought-to all. His birthday is now a national holiday. Like every great message, his was universal. Yes, it sprang from a particular experience-that was its power-but it transformed all. ”This little light of mine,” he let it shine, and it illumined a nation.
What will it take to see that light again, to hear his words anew? Walt Whitman said a great poem requires a great audience. So does a great sermon require a great congregation. Greatness begins in silence, in receptivity. Hearing again some of Martin Luther King`s words, perhaps those he uttered before the Lincoln Memorial that memorable August day in 1963, let us pause and listen.