Answering the Call of Love
MLK Jr. Sunday
Pastor Bob Henry
January 14, 2024
Good morning, Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections. This morning we are celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday. The scripture I have chosen is Matthew 5:43-48 from the New Revised Standard Version.
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
I believe last year on Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday, I took a moment to read to you the Letter from the Birmingham Jail which King addressed to the white churches of his day. This morning, I want to emphasize only one of the points he makes in that letter. It is not one that we can quickly unpack or respond to, but rather it is a call and a hope. Listen to King’s words,
“Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”
As I unpack this, I am going to borrow some thoughts from Jeremy Lallier who in many ways echo’s Kings call. He says,
“Bigotry mars the pages of history, and it’s still alive and well today. But God calls us to rise above prejudice and promises a world where it CAN’T exist.”
The calendar turned another year and we are again ramping up to another crazy political season. It is clear we live in an extremely polarized world where bigotry and prejudice runs rampant, and often I am not as optimistic as King or Lallier and continue to question if we can ever really rise above our prejudices.
But what if I told you that every form of social injustice birthed from our prejudices could be solved by answering a single query?
You might think I’m nuts or watering things down to make my point —and understandably so.
Folks, the world is filled with injustices, many of which are deep and complex, with roots stretching back hundreds or even thousands of years. And yes, even if you read your bibles, you will find these struggles with prejudice and bigotry throughout.
It seems almost impossible that a single query could untangle and solve all those issues in one fell swoop. But I believe it might be able to begin a needed process.
Racism. Sexism. Nationalism. Xenophobia, Homophobia, Transphobia…Bigotry in all its shapes and forms, every last scrap of prejudice in the world—it could all be ancient history if we all agreed and acted on the answer to one short query:
What determines our worth?
Ponder that for a moment. What determines our worth?
It’s not exactly a new query—philosophers and common people have been trying to sort it out for ages, and everyone seems to have their own answer.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. answered that question in his most famous speech saying,
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Yet sadly, for many people, especially right here in America, the answer to what determines our worth is not character but rather money, possessions, stuff.
The more we have, the better we are—and right there, we can see the start of a prejudice.
“I have more than you, which makes me better than you.” Or, on the other end of the spectrum, “I have less than this person, and that makes me less than this person.”
Folks, wrong answers create prejudices.
And money isn’t the only answer that causes trouble. There are thousands of variables we could plug into this equation, and the result would be a thousand different prejudices.
At best, that approach can leave us with a false sense of superiority around others. We might judge them by the clothes they wear, the brands they buy, the teams they cheer for, the subdivision or retirement community they live in, the car they drive, or even the people they vote for or the party they proclaim.
Maybe these are some of the issues you are fearing to discuss as we enter this year.
Yet the ugliest, most dangerous prejudices happen when we answer the question of worth with traits people are powerless to change. Things like,
Race
Sexual Orientation
Age
Country of birth.
When we make those things the measure of human worth, when we start believing that others have less worth because of the color of their skin or the place they were born or some other trait, that’s how we create some of the most horrifying moments of history:
The Nazis and the Holocaust.
The Hutus and the Rwandan genocide.
Sudan and Darfur.
Israel and Palestine.
But also, right here in America –
The genocide of the First Nations people,
African slavery, Jim Crow, and reconstruction.
The Tulsa Race Riot (or what we call the Black Wall Street Massacre).
Or more recent events like Charlottesville or the Killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Even when prejudice is fueling something other than genocide and death, the resulting injustice can leave marks that take generations—even centuries—to fade.
Folks, slavery in the United States didn’t “officially end” until a little over a century and a half ago (and some would question if it ever ended in our country but rather just evolved) - its impact through the years is unmistakable:
The Three-Fifths Compromise.
The Jim Crow laws.
The Ku Klux Klan.
Police brutality
And I could go on…
Let’s be honest, the prejudice remains, and we are setting ourselves up, if we think it best not to teach these atrocities to future generations. Because this will ensure that we will make the same mistakes again.
That’s what bigotry does. It becomes a catalyst, an excuse, a justification for every kind of injustice.
“The other side deserves it,” prejudice says.
“They’re inferior. They’re not as important. They’re the problem.”
That’s not what I read in my Bible. Galatians 3:28 reads,
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ.”
As Quakers, we believe that there is that of God in EVERYONE we meet. It’s a radical idea. At one time, people thought it was so radical that they hung and burnt Quakers at the stake for believing it.
But when we take a moment to try and see that of God in our neighbor, what we are really doing is trying to see their worth. It changes things when we can see our equal worth because of 'that of God' in each of us.
No longer are our neighbors, relatives, and friends, inferior, less important, or the problem. Actually, “that of God in them” makes them no different than you and me.
What determines their worth is the potential of the Divine or the Imago Dei (image of God) within them. Not the color of their skin or the arrangement of their chromosomes or the place of their birth - no, it is the simple and irrefutable fact that there is that of God within them.
A long time ago, a prophet named Samuel recognized this very truth. He said,
“…the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
Bigotry and prejudice cannot survive under the weight of our worth in God’s eyes. One day all the people of the world will come to understand this truth—but until then, it’s our job to begin seeing “that of God in our friends, relatives, and neighbors.”
Consider that throughout this year – I guarantee at times it will be really difficult and challenging. The people sitting around you this morning, the people you work with, your neighbors, your relatives, your friends are worth being thankful for, simply because there is that of God in them, and then all the other things that make them unique.
Dr. King speaking on the Image of God said it gives each person a uniqueness, a worth, a dignity. And he declared that we must never forget this as a nation: there are not gradations in the image of God…We will know one day that God made us to live together as [siblings] and to respect the dignity and worth of every [person].”
But folks, we all have that one neighbor, or relative, or co-worker that drives us nuts or that we work hard to avoid – or maybe is someone we would consider an enemy.
Jesus addressed this, too. In our text for this morning. He said,
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
On that note, I want to close this morning with the words of Martin Luther King Jr. on “loving your enemies.” Like Jesus, King spoke on this subject more than any other. In a sermon to the Council of Churches in Detroit, Michigan in 1961 King said the following.
I would say the first reason, and I’m sure Jesus had this in mind, we should love our enemies is this: to return evil for evil only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. And somewhere along the way of life, somebody must have sense enough, somebody must have morality enough, somebody must have religion enough, to cut off the chain of hate and evil. And this can only be done by meeting hate with love. For you see in a real sense, if we return hate for hate, violence for violence, and all of that, it just ends up destroying everybody. And nobody wins in the long run. And it is the strong man who stands up in the midst of violence and refuses to return it. It is the strong man, not the weak man, who stands up in the midst of hate and returns love.
Some time ago, my brother and I were driving from Atlanta, Georgia, to Chattanooga, Tennessee. He was driving the car, and it was late at night, and for some reason most of the drivers were discourteous that night. They just didn’t dim their lights as they approached our car. Everybody was forgetting to dim lights that night. And my brother got angry, and he said, “I know what I’m going to do. The next car that comes along this highway and fails to dim its lights, I’m going to refuse to dim mine, and I’m going to keep these lights on in all of their glaring outpour.” And I looked up and I said, “Wait a minute. Don’t you do that. For if you refuse to dim your lights, there will be a little too much light on this highway [laughter], and may end up in destruction for all of us. Somebody will have to have sense enough on this highway to dim their lights.” [laughter] And maybe here we find an analogy to the whole struggle of life. Somebody must have sense enough to dim their lights. (Right) Hate begets hate. Force begets force. Violence begets violence. Toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral ending in destruction for everybody.
And so Jesus is right. (Yes) Love is the answer. The other point is this: that we should love our enemies because hate damages the personality and injures the soul.
I think it is ironic that psychologists have coined the term - “Social/Political Road Rage” to describe the hostile interactions we see in the media and in politics today. It continues to be the struggle of life and we still are seeking people to answer the call of love. It starts with us – let us answer Jesus and King’s call once again to love our neighbors and enemies and change our world for the better!
As we enter waiting worship this morning. I would like us to take a moment to ponder those words of Dr. King and reflect on how we would answer that important query from earlier.
What determines my worth and the worth of those around me?