Words of Dr. King should prepare us for the challenges ahead

As we face the challenges of the months and years ahead, it may be useful, on the day that Americans celebrate his life, to recall his wisdom.  Below are the readings from the Temple Emanuel MLK Shabbat Service last Friday night.  We have used these readings in the past, but they have particular resonance this year.

Martin Luther King is a towering figure of the 20^th Century. Not only did he lead the crusade for the non-violent dismantling of apartheid in our land, but his words and deeds inspired non-violent revolutions which led to successful democratic change in Eastern Europe, Asia, and South Africa. This evening we remember some of his words, as well as those of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, an important ally of Dr. King in the religious community: To quote our prayer book, "Let us learn in order to teach; let us learn in order to do."

In his famous 1963 Letter From the Birmingham Jail to the Clergymen of Birmingham, Dr. King expressed the sense of community that is so essential to a world made one:

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

Rabbi Heschel similarly observed that the Civil Rights Movement "is God’s gift to America, the test of our integrity, a magnificent spiritual opportunity. . . . Religion is a demand, God is a challenge, speaking to us in the language of human situations. is within the realm of history that man is charged with God’s mission. . . . To be arrogant toward man is to be blasphemous toward God."

The following are all words from Dr. King:

THE WORLD HOUSE

         

"Some years ago a famous novelist died. Among his papers was found a list of suggested plots for future stories, the most prominently underscored being this one: 'A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.' This is the great new problem of mankind.  We have inherited a large house, a great 'world house' in which we have to live together -- black and while, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu -- a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace."

                          

"If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. 

"Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective. 

"Now the judgment of God is upon us, and we must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools."

                          

 UNDERSTANDING HATE AND FEAR

"Hate distorts the personality of the hater.  We usually think of what hate does [to] the individual hated or the groups hated.  But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. 

 "You just begin hating somebody, and you will begin to do irrational things.  You can't see straight when you hate.  You can't walk straight when you hate.  You can't stand upright.  Your vision is distorted.  There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate."      

"Envy, jealousy, a lack of self-confidence, a feeling of insecurity, and a haunting sense of inferiority are all rooted in fear. 

"We do not envy people and then fear them; first we fear them and subsequently become jealous of them.

"Is there a cure for these annoying fears that pervert our personal lives?

"Yes, a deep and abiding commitment to the way of love.  Perfect love casteth out fear.  Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that.  Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it.  Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.  Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it."

"One day, here in America, I hope that we will . . . become one big family of Americans.  Not white Americans, not black Americans, not Jewish or Gentile Americans, not Irish or Italian Americans, not Mexican Americans, not Puerto Rican Americans, but just Americans.  One big family of Americans.

"God somehow called America to do a special job for mankind and the world.  Never before in the history of the world have so many racial groups and so many national backgrounds assembled together in one nation.  And somehow if we can't solve the problem in American, the world can't solve the problem, because America is the world in miniature and the world is America writ large. 

"And God set us out with all of the opportunities.  He set us between two great oceans; made it possible for us to live with some of the great natural resources of the world.  And there he gave us through the minds of our forefathers a great creed:  'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"

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In 1964, after the inspiring August 1963 March on Washington at which Dr. King delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech, but also in the wake of the 1963 deaths of President Kennedy and Pope John XXIII, Rabbi Heschel said:  "Our world, which is full of cynicism, frustration, and despair, received in 1963 a flash of inspiration; 1963 was a noble year, a triumph of conscience, a triumph of faith. It will depend upon us whether 1963 will remain a chapter in sacred history."

Dr. King was able to express to the American community not only the injustice of segregation, but the deeper ways in which it destroyed the social and moral fabric of all those involved in it. In his Letter From the Birmingham Jail to the Clergymen of Birmingham, Dr. King explained:

"All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority, and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an ‘I-it’ relationship for the ‘I-thou relationship, and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. So segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful."

Just as legal segregation created divisions which were destructive of the human soul, so, to, are the divisions created by prejudice and fear.  Dr. King’s teachings were a way of stating the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam – humankind’s effort to repair the world. They are lessons for us all.

Let us learn in order to teach.

Let us learn in order to do.