In Honor of St. Martin the Man and Not the Shadow

Many of you have been wondering where your boy has been. I've been silent in the blogosphere, but very vocal locally in the classroom, the educational programs that I facilitate and the community projects I'm involved in. And I'm always speaking with my daughter and into her life. But, I would be remissed if I did not share what has been percolating in my mind on this particular Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

Today many words will be said in regards to Dr. King on this holiday designated to honor his commitment to equality, justice and human dignity. Some of the commentary will be eloquent and profound, other remarks will be titillating, yet rather shallow in comparison to the deep wisdom and courage of King's spiritual and intellectual thought and action. The question that I raise is, "Do we honor the man or the shadow of the man"?

Dr. King holiday is for me almost as bittersweet as the 4th of July. Though I am pleased to get a day off like anyone else, I can not truly rejoice and celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence knowing that my ancestors were languishing in the inhumane matrix of American chattel slavery. To gleefully wave a flag and eat my sumptuous grilled cheeseburger with no second thought to the glaring paradox of the holiday would be to dishonor the memory of those who suffered, so that I might have an opportunity to be all that God created me to be in these here United States of America.

Likewise, my celebratory mood on this particular day is tempered by the domesticated, sentimental representations of Dr. King I see paraded on the television or the video streams of the internet. Perhaps we need to stop making speeches about the man and instead recite his actual words at length, similar to the way in which the ancient Jews would read from the Books of the Prophets, and many still do. Then we would see how revolutionary King's faith was and how interwoven it was with the prophetic lineage of Jesus Christ. Let us start with a passage from his sermon on Romans 12:2 ("Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,)" from his classic text, Strength to Love:

Nowhere is the tragic tendency to conform more evident than in the church, an institution which has often served to crystallize, conserve, and even bless the patterns of majority opinion. The erstwhile sanction by the church of slavery, racial segregation, war, and economic exploitation is testimony to the fact that the church has hearkened more to the authority of the world than to the authority of God. Called to be the moral guardian of the community, the church at times has preserved that which is immoral and unethical. Called to combat social evils, it has remained silent behind stained-glass windows. Called to lead men on the highway of brotherhood and to summon them to rise above the narrow confines of race and class it has enunciated and practiced racial exclusiveness.

We preachers have also been tempted by the enticing cult of conformity. Seduced by the success symbols of the world, we have measured our achievements by the size of our parsonage. We have become showmen to please the whims and caprices of the people. We preach comforting sermons and avoid saying anything from our pulpit which might disturb the respectable views of the comfortable members of our congregations. Have we ministers of Jesus Christ sacrificed truth on the altar of self-interest and, like Pilate, yielded our convictions to the demands of the crowd?

Many of the young men and women of the hip-hop generation tend to gravitate more towards Malcolm X than Martin King, because they see X as someone whose image and legacy is beyond the control of the state. He remains uncut and uncensored. Yet, when we look at the totality of King's words and work, he is no less revolutionary than X and we who still believe that we are called to turn the world upside down can embrace both men as teachers and mentors. As a Christian, I have a special affinity to King because we share the same faith tradition, which in no way diminishes my love and respect for El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (a.k.a "Malcolm X").

If we Protestants followed the Roman Catholic, canonical tradition of sainthood, than surely Dr. King would be the patron saint of racial and economic justice in the church of the United States*. Dr. King was supposed to be in my city of Charlotte, North Carolina supporting the gubernatorial campaign of local civil rights activist, preacher and dentist, Dr. Reginald Hawkins, when he was assassinated. He decided to postpone his trip to Charlotte in order to assist with an African-American sanitation worker's strike in Memphis. Of course he never did make it to Charlotte, but instead died the death of a true martyr. Today, we ask St. Martin to forgive the injustice that we have done to his mission and his legacy and we pray to God that the same Spirit he mysteriously infused into the person of Jesus Christ and guided St. Martin with, may also lead us to live, and die if necessary, for the salvation of God's Kingdom on earth as it is heaven.

*My thoughts on the sainthood of Martin Luther King, Jr. were inspired by my good friend and brother Anthony Smith in his series, "If I could pray to St. Martin."