Epiphany #8: Martin Luther King Day.

 Jesus came preaching

   the gospel of God--

the good news that the

   kingdom of God is near. (Mark 1:14)

Sunday, April 7, 1968; Linda and I worshiped at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. We were there because the Thursday before, April 4^th, Martin Luther King, jr. had been assassinated. We knew at Grace Cathedral, King would be honored. After the service we joined in a Civil Rights march around Nob Hill to honor MLK.

The first line of the New York Times editorial page that morning read: “Martin Luther King was a preacher…” That’s how MLK described himself: “I am fundamentally a Baptist preacher.” That is how it all started thirteen years before in 1955, when the young new preacher in town was asked to say a few words at a Sunday evening rally of the African American churches gathered to protest the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to vacate her seat and move to the rear of a Montgomery city bus, to make way for a white passenger.

After singing the hymn, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” MLK peached:

Mrs. Rosa Parks is a fine person. (Well, well said) … Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus. (All right) She sat in the front of the bus because she was tired. …And just because she refused to get up, she was arrested. And you know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. [thundering applause] There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. (Keep talking) There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. (That’s right) [applause] There comes a time. (Yes sir, Teach) [applause continues] We are here, we are here this evening because we’re tired now.

From that sermon, that Sunday evening, in a poor big barn of a church, the “kingdom of God came near,” and the kingdom of this world would never be the same.