Scripture: Jeremiah 6:10-16 and 8:18-21
On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King gave a high profile speech. Nothing unusual. By that time all of Dr. King’s speeches and sermons were very high profile. Every word he said, everything he did in public attracted attention. This speech of April 4, 1967 was especially high profile. It was well publicized. It was given at the famous Riverside Church in New York City before an audience of 3,000 people. Dr. King was the featured speaker but there were several other nationally known people on the program. Outside, people picketed. Inside and outside, the national news media were out in force.
The occasion was the speech you heard just a few excerpts from a few moments ago, “A Time to Break Silence”. It was Dr. King’s first full length statement in opposition to the war in Vietnam. Prior to this he had made brief statements here and there, in news conferences or tucked into longer speeches about other things, where he urged a negotiated settlement to the war or complained about how the resources being directed to the war in Vietnam were detracting from the war on poverty. But in his own mind, as the title of the speech indicates, he had been essentially silent about the war up until this time, and it was now time to break the silence.
There were some, many actually, who thought he had been right not to speak about Vietnam. In fact there were some who thought that even in his so-called silence he had already said too much.
I’m talking now not about people who didn’t think much of Dr. King anyway, or people who had no use for anyone who dared to utter a word of doubt about the war. There were friends of Dr. King, long time veterans of the civil rights movement, who urged him not to say anything, for the good of the movement. The movement needed all the support it could get, and the war was a divisive issue, and taking a stand of any kind—pro or con—would turn off a large group of people and alienate a group of potential supporters. Better to try and unite people of good will who disagreed about the war but were able to unite around issues of civil rights.
And much better not to alienate powerful people, such as the president of the United States, whose support would be needed if any further legislation or social programs were to come about. President Johnson was known to become enraged whenever Dr. King made a small noise questioning the wisdom of the war. There were those who felt very strongly that making a much bigger noise was a very big mistake. Yet Dr. King felt that up until now he had been silent and it was time to stop being silent.
There were a few people on the other side. James Bevel, for instance, one of Dr. King’s friends and colleagues and advisors, quit his position with SCLC, in order to work as an organizer and to devote his full energy to something called the Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam. Bevel’s belief was that the war had become a completely overriding issue in American life and that until the war ended no other issue could be constructively dealt with. For Bevel this was true both practically and morally. He felt he needed to devote all his time and energy to opposing the war and he tried to convince Dr. King of the same thing.
I bring all this up in worship today for several reasons. I wanted to recall Dr. King in some way today for obvious reasons. Tomorrow is the official holiday in his honor and tonight is the Charlottesville celebration of King Day. Yesterday, there were anti-war marches in Washington, D.C. and Charlottesville and throughout the country. I know many of the people who organized those marches and who marched were well aware of Dr. King’s involvement in the peace movement and I know the date was chosen in part because of it being adjacent to the King holiday. And I was very aware of that connection as I approached this sermon, knowing that I could not preach today without reference to Dr. King.
Unfortunately I have a feeling that in general in the United States we have come to celebrate King Day with about the same degree of serious attention we pay to the Declaration of Independence on July 4, the sacrifices of soldiers on Memorial Day, or the ideals of the labor movement on Labor Day—which is to say, not much.
Of course, we want everyone, or as many people as possible, to join in the celebration so that it can be truly a national holiday, so we tend to lift him up in a kind of nebulous way as a national hero. He was a man who had a dream and who gave a famous speech about it and who believed in justice and fair play and led marches to make American society better and more true to its ideals.
Nothing wrong with any of that, of course, except that the more we present Dr. King as just sort of a great man, in the sense of being famous, and portray him in safe and more or less innocuous ways, the less we are talking about the real man, and the less we are talking about the real world. I wanted to do my part today in recalling Dr. King in I hope a little bit less of an innocuous way.
I should make clear one thing I’m not doing though. I am not wanting to use Dr. King’s speech as the text or the pretext for an anti-war sermon with regard to Iraq. I’ve already made clear where I stand on that issue in other sermons. And as far as that goes the marches yesterday can speak for themselves, and there were a number of us who were among the marchers yesterday in body or spirit. Although I am opposed to a pre-emptive war on Iraq, have said so in the past and will not hesitate to say so again, I am also thinking today that whether or not there is a war, and especially if there is, Sojourners needs to be a safe place for people of varying opinions and needs to be a place where the whole range of mixed and complicated feelings that war or the prospect of war involves can be brought and expressed. That may not be such an easy task, because some of the feelings we bring are going to be very strong. Nevertheless, it is worth trying for. Our worship needs, our community needs, to have a place for people of differing feelings and for the different feelings each of us may have within us.
That said, here’s one thing I have gained from remembering Dr. King’s “coming out” as an opponent of the war in Vietnam. We all have silences we need to deal with—even Dr. King had silences he needed to deal with.
…Here was a man who was known for his voice, who spoke out in a way that most others were unwilling and with an eloquence that no one else could.
…Here was a man of demonstrated physical and moral courage, who on many occasions thought he was a dead man for sure.
…Here was a man who had made non-violence a cornerstone of the protests he was involved with and had had some painful conflicts with other people in the movement who didn’t agree with his stance.
…Here was a man who had already received the Nobel Prize for Peace…
…and this man was struggling with what he considered his own silence over the war in Vietnam.
Other people were asking him why he was speaking out, why he didn’t just keep quiet so as not to endanger the goals of civil rights and not to confuse the issue he was identified with and that he cared so deeply about. He, on the other hand, was wondering how he could keep silent and why it had taken him so long to speak out on this issue.
If Dr. King had issues of silence he was dealing with, it is not likely any of us are free of those issues. And so it is no shame for me to acknowledge that there are areas of silence in my life, where I either need to break some silence that has been going on too long or where I need to make my voice louder and clearer and more forceful. When I say it’s not shame for me to acknowledge that there are areas of silence in my life, I definitely do not mean that we should make peace with our silences, which is certainly not what King did. It’s that I should not let shame or guilt prevent me from being honest with myself about my silences. My recollection of Dr. King at Riverside Church causes me to reflect once again on where my silences are and when and how I am going to break them.
My recollection of Dr. King at Riverside Church also causes me to reflect on the connectedness of things. What I mean by that in this instance first of all is the connection between justice issues and peace issues. This is not at all a new thought or concern, just one of those things that it never hurts to be reminded of.
If there appears to be peace in a situation where there is injustice and oppression, it will not be a lasting peace. It can only be unstable and temporary. A lasting peace can only be achieved where justice has been achieved.
Calling for peace without equally calling for justice is just a cover for maintaining the status quo. There were always those who wanted Dr. King to call off his protests in order not to disturb the peace. Dr. King was always very clear that that was not acceptable or possible, that one could not seek a phony peace at the expense of justice. There have always been, as Jeremiah points out in the reading this morning, those who cry “peace, peace” when there is no peace.
In his speech at Riverside, Dr. King said that the journey that had begun at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama had led him to Riverside. This was no separate journey, no detour from his main concern. It was all part of the same journey. Many people wanted him not to go in this direction, stick to the main subject of civil rights. A few wanted him to put aside the civil rights movement to devote himself completely to ending the war.
King’s speech at Riverside laid out the reasons why he couldn’t do either of those things. It was not a matter of whether he should add another issue to his portfolio as it were. It was not a question of whether to speak about both issues. There were not “both” issues. It was all the same issue. And this was true not just because the two concerns were connected in very real and tangible ways. Ultimately it was because both the question of civil rights and the question of the war in Vietnam were rooted in the vision of the “beloved community”.
That’s really what Dr. King’s Riverside speech causes me to reflect on. It’s not just the connection between peace concerns and justice concerns. It’s whether all our concerns are rooted in a vision of what Dr. King referred to as the beloved community. That’s what was most important for Dr. King, and it’s what is important for us at Sojourners.
A visitor to Sojourners might question why we have people standing up at announcement time and talking about peace marches essentially as part of worship. If visitors don’t ask, we should. The answer, I hope, is that those announcements are made because we believe in the beloved community. The reason we make them, I hope, is not simply because there is this certain issue that any intelligent and compassionate person would obviously have this certain position about. It is because there is a dream at the heart of our life.
It is not Dr. King’s dream. He spoke eloquently about it, but it did not and does not belong to him. The dream of a beloved community is what Jesus called the kingdom of God, but it was not his dream either. It is a dream that belongs to all of us. Other people point us to it, but it belongs to all of us. And if there are those who believe that war is the least bad option at this particular point in our broken history, then that too, I hope, is because they believe in the beloved community.
Is there no balm in Gilead? Jeremiah asks in the scripture. I don’t have time to, even if I could, and I’m not sure any of us can, re-create Jeremiah’s time so that we could understand what it felt like to him. It’s pretty clear though that he was discouraged, that looking around him, he saw few reasons for hope.
…Pretty clear that there was violence all around and more violence looming on the horizon.
…Pretty clear that he and others were afraid of what the future held, maybe even terrified.
…Pretty clear that Jeremiah’s heart went out to his people who were confused and threatened and unsure what to do or where to turn. “For the sake of my poor people, I am hurt. I mourn and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead?
The answer to Jeremiah’s question is, probably not. Not if all we can do is identify issues, pick our sides, and set to fighting with each other, whether on an international scale, a local level, or a personal level. If, on the other hand, we can ground ourselves somehow in the vision of the beloved community, learn to speak the language and sing the songs of the beloved community, then maybe we can affirm with the hymn, that yes, there is a balm in Gilead. That in any case is my hope and my prayer. Amen.
Jim Bundy
January 19, 2003
READING FROM “A TIME TO BREAK SILENCE”
Martin Luther King, Jr. April 4, 1967
“A time comes when silence is betrayal.”
The truth of those words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, people do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in a time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on…We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak…
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.
In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Ave. Baptist Church—the church in Montgomery, Alabama where I began my pastorate—leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.