Today
we celebrate the life and work of the Reverend Doctor, Martin Luther King Jr., the
sainted-prophet of our time; his was a voice of conscience, and like so many
prophets before him, he was he was murdered for speaking the truth,
assassinated in service to the good.
Martin Luther King Jr. wore the mantle of a prophet, not in the sense that he saw the future (though he did foresee his assassination); prophecy is not prognostication, assessing likely probabilities may be a tool of the prophet, looking to the future and expressing one’s convictions with the certainty of hope…these may be a part of the prophets stock-in-trade, but a prophet is not a seer or an augur, a diviner, a fortuneteller or a soothsayer.
A person is a prophet who delivers the word of God, and Martin Luther King did just that; he was not a prophet in the sense that he had a unique channel to the creator of the universe, or because God spoke to him in a privileged way. The Reverend Doctor made no pretensions to being that sort of person. He was an ordinary man who answered and extraordinary call, and in so doing he became transformed. Through his transformation he pointed out the way for us to follow, presenting a key for transformation of ourselves and thereby society-at-large, for taking Hobbesian world we have inherited, with nature red in tooth and claw, and making it into something new…the community of the beloved, as Martin Luther called it, though he was called away early and left the left the greater portion of that work for the rest of to do.
God speaks to all of us in the same way as God spoke to the Reverend Doctor, this is one of the things that the he spoke to us about, he clarified the responsibility we each bear, to listen to the demands of our conscience when we hear it speaking in our hearts; he called on us to do more than listen…the sainted-prophet called on us to act.
Martin Luther had no more and no less access to supernatural powers than any of us; he was not a medium nor a mediator, what made him different than most (human beings) was the choice he made to comply with the demands of his conscience, which was in fact the voice of God speaking in his heart, he clove to those demands even to the point at which it cost him his life…if he hesitated he did not show he it, he carried the grief of it with the strength of resolve.
Like Jesus whom he followed, the Reverend Doctor loved mercy, strove for justice, and walked humbly through the days of his life; he set an example for the rest of us to follow.
Today we are given countless opportunities to reflect on Martin Luther King Jr.’s likeness, to consider the wisdom of his words, carried in the baritone-tremulo of his golden-prose, to reflect on the life of an American Saint…and its meaning; we are wise to do so.
We are wise to remember the man, Martin Luther King Jr., a rare person, a man whose measure in our society exceeded the ordinary flaws that mark us all as human; he was flawed like the rest of us, and he lived with his flaws even while reaching beyond them.
The Reverend Doctor has transcended death; though he was taken by the assassin’s bullet he lives now in our collective consciousness, in our collective-conscience; he lives in the global psyche, speaking to us from the dimension of myth, a human being who was more than human, a child of God overflowing with grace and wisdom.
Today MLK calls us to service, to share his cup, so that upon drinking from it we may aspire to do the same as he did in our own small way, to live the same as he did and encourage others to do the same.
He spoke truth to power and offered hope to the powerless, and for that he was shot down. He was once considered by the director of the F.B.I. to be the most dangerous man in America and from that status he became our most beloved hero, the prime-exemplar of what it means to be an American, a radical-freedom-fighter, unparalleled and unforgotten.
He was beaten and arrested dozens of times for the crime of seeking justice; his life was threatened daily. His reputation was smeared without regard for the truth, or appreciation for his selfless works. He was killed for his efforts on behalf of the poor and the marginalized, but he was not destroyed…he was and continues to be an example to us all.
The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., our prophet; he still points the way, lighting the long journey along the arc-of-justice.
