Epiphany 2 Sermon (MLK Weekend)

Almighty God, by the hand of Moses your servant you led your people out of slavery, and made them free at last: Grant that your Church, following the example of your prophet Martin Luther King, may resist oppression in the name of your love, and may secure for all your children the blessed liberty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

…now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits... (1 Corinthians 12)

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, He talks of the Holy Spirit coming upon the followers of Jesus. In that spirit that rests on us, it is bestowed on each of us as a gift… we call them the gifts of the Spirit.

To one is given through the Spirit:

• the utterance of wisdom
• the utterance of knowledge
• faith
• gifts of healing
• the working of miracles
• prophecy
• discernment of spirits
• various kinds of tongues
• the interpretation of tongues

None of us has all the gifts. But in community like ours, St. Peter’s, there is someone amongst us who has each of these gifts.

It is the same Holy Spirit from whom all these are activated and who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. And why?

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

And that is an important statement because these gifts are not meant to puff us up, to act proudly as if one was more important than another. They are given to us for the common good. To build each other up, to tear down the injustices in our society and to help bring about the Kingdom of God, the Beloved Community as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once put it.

When I think about the spirit and Dr. King, I think about one who was given the gift of prophecy and the discernment of spirits. He discerned where America was and the ills that it faced in our society of racism, poverty and militarism. Issues that still befall us today. In a speech from 1967:

Three major evils—the evil of racism, the evil of poverty, and the evil of war. These are the three things that I want to deal with today. Now let us turn first to the evil of racism. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racism is still alive all over America. Racial injustice is still the Negro’s burden and America’s shame. And we must face the hard fact that many Americans would like to have a nation which is a democracy for white Americans but simultaneously a dictatorship over black Americans. We must face the fact that we still have much to do in the area of race relations Now to be sure there has been some progress, and I would not want to overlook that…Now let us be sure that we will have to keep the pressure alive. We’ve never made any gain in civil rights without constant, persistent, legal and non-violent pressure. Don’t let anybody make you feel that the problem will work itself out …

And to that he is right. Until we work at it in our lives, in our society, in all the ways it manifests itself in bias, in discrimination, in privilege, racism will continue to haunt us.

The second evil that I want to deal with is the evil of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus it spreads its nagging prehensile tentacles into cities and hamlets and villages all over our nation. Now there is nothing new about poverty. It’s been with us for years and centuries. What is new at this point though, is that we now have the resources, we now have the skills, we now have the techniques to get rid of poverty. And the question is whether our nation has the will …

There once was a war on poverty. And yet poverty continues. We have people working full time jobs getting food from food banks. What is the will of this nation? Too often I think we have lost our sense of community because we are so caught up individual lives and individual identity that the common good does not exist unless there is something in it for me. This is a profoundly unchristian idea.

Now I want to deal with the third evil that constitutes the dilemma of our nation and the world. And that is the evil of war. Somehow these three evils are tied together. The triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. The great problem and the great challenge facing mankind today is to get rid of war… We have left ourselves as a nation morally and politically isolated in the world.

We follow under the banner of the Prince of Peace. Jesus taught us to love one another as he loved us. He taught us to fight against the sin we ourselves do in our world. To often we have turned to make war so we don’t have to deal with the realities of our own lives and the sin we do. War should always be the least and last solution to our problems. And our military should never be the number one thing in our budget. We have made war profitable at the expense of our lives.

For those who are telling me to keep my mouth shut, I can’t do that. I’m against segregation at lunch counters, and I’m not going to segregate my moral concerns. And we must know on some positions, cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” Vanity asks the question, “Is it popular?” But conscience asks the question, “Is it right?” And there’re times when you must take a stand that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but you must do it because it is right. (from here)

And of course, his positions made him unpopular with many in our country. Such hate would ultimately take his life on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis just a year later.

But his prophetic words and his discernment of America still ring true. And his mantle has been passed to us to do what is right.

Over the centuries men have sought to discover the highest good. This has been the chief quest of ethical philosophy. This was one of the big questions of Greek philosophy...What is the summon bonum of life? I think I have an answer America. I think I have discovered the highest good. It is love. This principle stands at the center of the cosmos. As John says, "God is love." He who loves is a participant in the being of God. He who hates does not know God. (from here)

The Rev. Dr Martin Lither, King, Jr. preached those words in 1956. His life and his preaching focused on love, even as his challenged America to live better so that everyone could experience liberty and justice for all.

Let us in 2019, do what is right, do the hard work to combat racism poverty & war, to live into God’s love, and share that with America so all can have that liberty and justice for all. Amen.