Sermon Archives : 2005/2006

M.L.K., Jr. – Religious Exemplar

The Rev. Gail Seavey  ·  January 18, 2006

“Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”
Martin Luther King, Jr

In 1966 Martin Luther King Jr. was invited to give the Ware Lecture, the major address at the Unitarian Universalist’s Annual Association General Assembly. He was invited to give this address because he had become, for us, a religious exemplar – a person like Jesus or Ghandi, who showed us how to live – ethically – spiritually – fully as human beings.

King began by assuring us that we were his friends. He meant this in a very personal way. He attended worship services at Unitarian churches when he was a student at Boston University. In the early years of his ministry, he made friends with three UU ministers: David Cole, Alfred Hawkins and Homer Jack, who encouraged him when he most needed it, during the years of the bus boycotts in Montgomery Alabama.

It was during the events in Alabama during 1965 that UU’s started to look up to King as more than a friend and colleague. UU minister Richard Weston-Jones told about the first time he, along with almost 1/3 of all UU clergy, heard King speak. They went to Selma, Alabama to protest the murder there of UU minister, James Reeb. Richard stood in the crowded balcony of Brown Memorial Chapel, a black Baptist church, awed by King’s sermon integrating the Christian gospel with Gandhi’s principles as a means to bring an end to oppression.

The protests went on for a week. Richard Weston-Jones was arrested when he was inspired by King’s call to carry the protest into the white parts of town. He joined a small integrated group and started strolling through the neighborhood were the city fathers lived. They were charged with being mentally ill in a public place. Police held the protesters for hours at machine gun point, while they stood in a parking lot in the blazing Alabama sun. New groups of arrestees joined them until they numbered 350 – black and white together. Eventually they were marched into a black community center, and finally told to leave. But the protesters said they would not leave unless they were taken back to the places that they had been arrested from. The police came back 3 times telling them to leave, the last telling them that the Klan was outside and they wouldn’t protect them unless they left immediately. The protesters refused. They spent the night at the community center, so crowded they had to take turns lying down to rest. The next morning they all walked in total silence back through the white section of Selma to the homes of their black hosts. Weston-Jones said, “Martin had inspired us, transforming us into a community of righteousness overnight. He empowered us to conduct ourselves with peace, resolution and love in the face of danger.”

That week in 1965 Martin Luther King Jr. reminded many Unitarian Universalists who we are and inspired us to make a great leap towards justice. He became one of our religious exemplars. It was no accident that King was able to call us back to ourselves. During his academic studies, several Unitarians and Universalists had themselves been religious exemplars for King. He wrote his doctoral dissertation about two modern theologians, one the Unitarian Henry Nelson Wieman. King was profoundly influenced by Wieman’s great description of the work of God in the world through “Creative Interchange”: the dialogue between different traditions and beliefs that brings about a synthesis of new possibilities when people take each other seriously.

We can see how Creative Interchange shaped King’s great synthesis of Ghandi’s non-violence with Christianity. King learned that Ghandi was influenced by the Russian writer Tolstoy’s writings on moral resistance. In the 1890’s Tolstoy corresponded with the American Unitarian Universalist minister Adin Ballou, who developed a theory of passive resistance as an active and planned response to human violence. Ballou was inspired by Jesus’ radical call in the Sermon on the Mount, “but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek , turn to him the other also.” (Matt. 5:39)

Seeking to walk this talk, Ballou founded the Hopedale Community in 1842, a communal farm dedicated to peaceful living. A year later he became president of the Non-Resistance Society and in 1846, published his book Christian Non-Resistance In All Its Important Bearings, Illustrated and Defended. Two years later, Unitarian Henry David Thoreau tried out some of Ballou’s ideas when he spent a night in jail for tax resistance to protest the Mexican American War. He called his act of non-resistance “civil disobedience.” Martin Luther King Jr. entered into a creative interchange with all these thinkers, Hindu, Christian, Unitarian and Universalist to raise the theory and practice of “non-violence” to a new level. You could say that Weiman and Ghandi, Tolstoy, Ballou and Thoreau were some of King’s own religious exemplars. They helped remind King who he really was. They helped inspire him to make the great leap towards justice.

King never became a Unitarian Universalist. Did you ever hear Thomas Starr King’s great quip about us? Like Ballou, this 19th century King had served both Unitarian and Universalist churches. When asked how they were different, he responded: “Universalists believe that God is too good to send anyone to hell. Unitarians believe that they are too good for God to send them to hell.” Martin Luther King Jr. never believed human beings were that good. He, himself, believed that his power to lead came from a power greater than himself, a power from Jesus that was of God. His greatest religious exemplar, I suspect, was the man who taught him that– his own father.

In 1955, King, only 25 years old, was thrust into becoming the spokesperson for the civil rights movement in Montgomery Alabama. For two years, he had to cope with very real threats and fears that as the well-educated son of a Baptist minister he had never encountered before. His father had taught him that ‘no one can make a slave of you as long as you do not think like a slave.” But first he was arrested, then, at home, he began to receive between 30 and 40 threatening telephone calls and hate letters a day. He was told of plots to kill him.

One day after yet another threatening call to his home, he started to fear for his life. He went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. Then he sat down at the table and wondered how he could leave Montgomery without appearing to be a coward. He thought about his father. Then a voice inside him said, “You can’t call Daddy now. He’s up in Atlanta, a hundred and seventy-five miles away. You have to call on that something, that being, that your Daddy told you about, this power that finds a way where there is none.” Later King said that he discovered then that religion was for real, and that ‘I had to get to know God for myself.” And he did. He felt God’s presence, his fears suddenly left him, his uncertainty vanished and he was ready to face anything (The Silent Cry, Dorthee Soelle, pgs 270-272). In the end, it was the example of his father that reminded King who he really was and God’s presence that supported him as he made the great leap towards Justice. Yet Martin Luther King Jr. has become a religious example to

Christians and Humanists alike. When he spoke to the Unitarian Universalists in 1966, they were working with him in a campaign to end slums and the conditions that create slums in Chicago. Because he knew he was among friends he called us to remember who we are. Because the arc of justice is long, some of his challenges to us 40 years ago sound as if they were given today. First he challenged us to move as churches into the arena of social action. “The church must engage in social action programs to get rid of the last vestiges of segregation and discrimination.” Two specific areas that he called for still need action today. “I am convinced that if we are to have a truly integrated society we must deal with the housing problem. The school problem is difficult and it will never be totally solved until we solve the housing problem.” I have lived in every section of the country in the last 20 years, and I have seen no real improvement in the true integration of housing. North and South, we all know were we are supposed to live if we are black or if we are white. For instance, when we moved here, the well-intentioned realtor needed our guidance to show us homes in mixed-race neighborhoods.

The second area for social action is economics. The statistics he gave for white vs. black unemployment, pay scale and poverty rate has changed in 40 years, but as King warned, we tend to exaggerate the progress. The arc towards justice is long indeed. If we are to make the leap towards justice, we are going to need to take action on these issues of housing, economics as a church. Our Church’s commitments to Tying Nashville Together and our relationship with Corinthian Baptist Church are two ways we have take a leap to turn our religious ideals of mutual interdependence into action. Please come this afternoon to our worship service with the good people from Corinthian. We have one very important thing in common, we all hold Martin Luther King Jr as religious exemplar. Maybe we can remind each other who we are. Maybe we can encourage each other to make the leap towards justice.


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