Martin Luther King, Jr - Gospel Preacher

This past Sunday – January 18, the Sunday before the Martin Luther King, Jr holiday – I read a portion of a sermon by Dr. King as part of my own sermon.  I chose not to reveal whose sermon it was until just before the end, saying to start with that it was “an important sermon from the history of the United States.”  Dr. King’s sermon “Loving Your Enemies” from Matthew 5:43-44 was a good application of the sermon I was preaching from Matthew 4:1-4, and I hoped it would give highlight to Dr. King as a preacher of the Gospel as well.  And let me be honest.  It is a GREAT sermon on its own.  I read it myself four different times that week.

A few friends mentioned to me afterwards that they could have listened more intently and with greater interest if they had known who the preacher was from the very beginning.  I always (try to) appreciate the feedback I get because my target is communicating, not drawing compliments, so let me apologize.  My choice was my mistake.  Aiming for a dramatic high point, I missed the target.
 
Let me back track and fill in some gaps:

First, Click Here to go to Dr. King’s sermon in full.  

I edited a bit for time and updated language.  This sermon was apparently written while Dr. King was in jail because of his leadership in the Montgomery Bus Boycott from 1955-56.  There are references to it being preached in November after his release in 1956 as well as at Christmas 1957 – perhaps in slightly different forms.  We preachers do that sort of thing.

Here is the closing paragraph: 

To our most bitter opponents we say: "We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory."

Second, for bonus points, Click Here for a great article from Relevant Magazine on Dr. King’s spiritual legacy.  

The author, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove makes an important point that Dr. King’s legacy as a Civil Rights Leader is the fruit of his calling as a believer in Jesus.  Wilson-Hartgrove writes of a transforming moment in Dr. King’s life months before he would have written the sermon.  We preachers need these encounters.

Jesus came calling. He came late on a winter night, when King was overwhelmed by fear after receiving yet another call from someone angrily threatening his life. At his kitchen table, King bowed his head in frustration and bewilderment. Then, by King’s own account: “Something said to me: ‘You can’t call on Daddy now, you can’t call on Momma. You’ve got to call on that something in that person that your daddy used to tell you about, that power that can make a way out of no way.'” In the dark of night, Jesus came calling. King was never the same.

Maybe all of us need encounters like this.