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        It’s not often that Martin Luther King Sunday falls on Dr. King’s actual birthday, but exactly 77 years ago today that great man was born in Atlanta, Georgia. So, please join with me in saying:

        Happy Birthday, Martin!

        His life and his work make it a happy day for all of us. On any given Sunday we can talk about all that is wrong in our world, the injustice that permeates our nation, and our all-too-human indifference to it. But today and tomorrow are days to celebrate the man who not only led a movement to liberate an oppressed people, but who also gave his life to redeem a nation torn apart by racism, poverty and war. And we who have embraced Dr. King’s dream can also celebrate the fact that, by God’s grace, we are working to make that dream a reality.

        We usually talk about Martin the dreamer, Martin the prophet, Martin the preacher, Martin the nonviolent resister, Martin the “drum major for justice.” He was all of those things, and certainly we honor his witness in our liturgy this morning. But if we limit our portrayal of Dr. King to those extraordinary, heroic qualities, we distance him from ourselves and we protect ourselves from the challenge of being anything like him.

        You see, it’s one thing to focus on Martin Luther King’s super-human courage, his challenging dream of a message, and the lasting impact of his life. But I think we can learn even more if we take time to think about where he got that courage, who gave him that dream, and why his legacy lives on. From the very beginning of his ministry to the very end of his life, his sermons and speeches are peppered with such phrases as “I heard a voice saying,” “I can hear the God of history,” and “I can hear God speaking.” Those phrases show us why Martin King changed the world, and how—before he was able to do that—he himself was changed by the righteous,  reconciling love of a God who stands with us, hopes for us and struggles with us. When we focus on Martin the Listener, we see that God has a word of hope and healing—not only for the prophets among us—but for each one of us. And if we listen for it and really hear it, we too can be transformed, and we too can help transform our world.

        But before talking about that I want to tell you a story, the story of two young boys. They were born thousands of years apart, but they both lived in a time when “the word of the Lord was rare; visions were not widespread.” Both boys were born into, or adopted into, the house of God. God began speaking to both of them when they were young. And both boys needed some guidance before they could recognize the voice of God, hear what God and to say to them, and fully live into whom God had created them to be. They had to seek out the word of God and then listen—really listen—to it before they could let their lives speak for God.

        Samuel, as you recall, was something of a miracle child. For many years his mother, Hannah, had been unable to have children. Finally, she went to the temple and bargained with God. “If you’ll just give me a son,” she prayed, “I will dedicate him to your service.” Scripture tells us that God “remembered” Hannah, and soon she gave birth to a son. Keeping her vow, she took Samuel to the temple, handed him over to the priest, and “left him there for the Lord.”

        Now we can all talk about dysfunctional families, but I suspect that Samuel had a stranger childhood than most. Think about it: He grew up in the temple and was raised by an elderly priest. He was more altar boy than child. The Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant and the lamp of God were part of his daily routine, and yet “he did not yet know the Lord.” But as our scripture reading begins, that’s about to change.

        It’s nighttime, and Samuel is finally lying down after another hard day serving old Eli when he hears a voice: “Samuel! Samuel!” it says. Being a good intern, he jumps up and says, “Here I am!” and runs to Eli. But Eli says he didn’t call Samuel, and tells the boy to go back to bed.

        Samuel is no sooner back under the covers than he hears the voice again, calling his name. Again he jumps up and runs to Eli, who again tells him he didn’t call, and then the cycle repeats for a third time. At this point, Eli, who is blind but not clueless, realizes that the voice Samuel hears must be God’s. “Go lie down again,” he tells the boy, “and if you hear the voice again, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So, Samuel returns to his bed for the third time. “Now,” the scripture says, “the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel says, in what I imagine was a somewhat shaky voice, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

        Well, our second boy was also a special child, born the son, grandson and great-grandson of accomplished Baptist preachers. But because of his skin color some people didn’t realize how special he was, and when he was just six years old, two white children were told they couldn’t play with him. Confused, this boy, Michael Luther King Jr., went to his mother, who told him about segregation and how, despite the laws, he was just as good as anybody else. He also went to his father, who told him the story of Martin Luther, the leader of the Reformation, and said that from then on, they both would be called by a new name: Martin Luther King.

        Well, Martin King Jr. continued to grow, and at age 15 he decided that he, too, would become a minister. He went to college, and seminary, even went up north to get his Ph.D. But when the time came to answer the call, he went back to the South, to a Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama. He had been there barely a year when a seamstress named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. 

        Before he knew it—and only because he believed God had told him to—this 27-year-old preacher was leading the African-American boycott of Montgomery buses, which lasted 381 days. The boycott grew into the civil rights movement, and again, Martin Luther King Jr. was at the forefront—preaching equality and nonviolence. But it was dangerous work.

        One night in 1957, Rev. King—much like our little boy, Samuel—had gone to bed. He was almost asleep when the phone rang. He picked it up and heard an angry voice, saying, “Listen nigger, we've taken all we want from you. Before next week you'll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery."

        Now, I wish I could tell you that Martin King Jr., like Samuel, jumped up and ran to his God with childlike faith and a sense of duty, eager to hear what God would have him do. But he was a man by this time, so he did the adult equivalent: He went to the kitchen, made some coffee, and tried to think his way out of his problem. But after a while he realized that he needed help.

            "I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right,” he prayed out loud. “But now, I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength or courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face them alone."

        “At that moment,” King later said in a sermon, “I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never before experienced him. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice, saying, "‘Martin, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world.’

        “Almost at once my fears began to pass from me,” King recounted. “My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything. The outer situation remained the same, but God had given me an inner calm.”

        Three nights later, the home of Martin and Coretta King and their children was bombed. But God’s comforting and challenging word—“Do what I’ve called you to do. Be who I’ve made you to be. I’ll be standing right beside you”—had made him whole and given him peace.

        Now this was not the first or the last time that Dr. King listened for God. But like the night God’s voice kept rousing Samuel from bed, King’s kitchen-table prayer—“Speak, Lord, your frightened, would-be servant is listening, desperate for help”—that night marked a turning point in his life.

        Hearing God’s voice can also turn our lives around—provide direction, meaning, purpose, healing, wholeness and peace. But how do we listen? How does God speak in 2006? How do we know God’s voice? Well, I think our stories provide some clues.

        First of all, God calls us by name. Until Samuel responded, all God  said was his name. For some of us, though, that doesn’t always work. If we’re struggling with questions of racial discrimination, sexual identity, body image, family position, vocational indecision, spiritual uncertainty, it may be that we haven’t fully accepted who we are—that we either don’t recognize our name when we hear it, or that we choose to ignore it because we think another name, another identity would be better.

        Parker Palmer, in his wonderful little book, Let Your Life Speak, says that living a life of service, leading movements and working for others requires that we first claim our “authentic selfhood.” “The people who plant the seeds of movements . . . decide to live ‘divided no more,’ he says. “They decide to no longer to act on the outside in a way that contradicts some truth about themselves that they hold deeply on the inside.” These people come to the point where they realize that “no punishment anyone might inflict on them could possibly be worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by conspiring in their own diminishment.”

        Dr. King spoke of this in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”: “When you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait” to push for equal rights, he said. “There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over . . .”

        Almost 40 years later, Lee H. Butler Jr., a Baptist minister and pastoral counselor, wrote of “protracted traumatic stress disorder,” the ongoing racial discrimination and daily diminishments that continue to damage the African-American psyche, weakening the black family and community. More flagrant discrimination still exists as well; just last week racial slurs were painted on two black churches and two schools in Montgomery County. And beyond those social and psychological injustices is the stunning economic reality that one out of every four African-Americans lives in poverty.

        Yet each of us—whether we are black or white, Asian or Latino; homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual or transgendered; male or female;  Muslim or Christian or Buddhist or Jew—is fully deserving of all God’s gifts. We are all “fearfully and wonderfully made,” the psalm tells us—created out of love, for love.  And God calls us by name to live fully into our God-given identity.

        Second, God is persistent. Most of us are tempted to give up after a couple of tries at something, especially if it involves trying to love someone who is non-responsive or resistant to our efforts. But God’s love hangs in there; God called Samuel four different times before Samuel responded.

        Unfortunately, many of the social conditions and spiritual issues Dr. King worked to address also persist, these many years later. America continues to wage costly foreign wars at the expense of its own citizens and people around the world. But God’s persistent grace, God’s persistent call to community and peace, requires us to be persistent in our work for justice. And this includes being persistent in our pursuit of God, going to God again and again, listening—listening.

        Third, God’s communication system is multi-layered and universal. When the direct approach doesn’t work, there are myriad resources, people, situations and experiences available to direct us to God’s voice. In Samuel’s case, it was the wisdom of an old, blind priest; in Dr. King’s case, a threatening voice of hatred prompted him to cry out to God. At other times, he listened for and heard God in the writings of Howard Thurman, the nonviolence of Mohandas Gandhi, the suffering of his people, the solitude of a jail cell, the poverty and militarism of the world’s most powerful nation, the loneliness of the mountaintop.

        Do you hear God speaking when you learn that hunger and homelessness in this country grew by close to 12 percent last year? Do you listen for God’s voice in your children, in people who hurt you, in people who are different from you, in the beauty of the earth, the mundane chores of an ordinary day, the Bible, the smile of one you love? “Listen to your life,” Frederick Buechner says. “See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.” Or, as Annie Dillard says, “I cannot cause light. The most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.”

        In other words, if you want to hear God, put yourself in places, surround yourself with people, immerse yourselves in the books and beauty, the struggles and pain that are likely to reveal something of the love and justice and healing of God. And, last but certainly not least—indeed, first and foremost, pray—with an open heart.

        Finally, even when God’s word is not getting through to us, even when we’re not listening, God is standing by. After God had called Samuel three times without success, the scripture tells us that “the Lord came and stood there, calling as before.” God’s word to Martin King at the kitchen table was, “I am with you; I will always be with you.”    

        In a 1957 sermon, King said, “It seems this morning that I can hear God speaking. I can hear him speaking throughout the universe, saying, ‘Be still and know that I am God. . . .’ And I say to you this morning, my friends, rise up and know that, as you struggle for justice, you do not struggle alone, but God struggles with you. And [God] is working every day.”

        Whatever your situation this morning, whatever your joy or pain—whether you’re in the prime or sunset of life; whether you’re standing on the mountaintop of achievement or drowning in a sea of grief and confusion—God is standing by with a word of grace and love.

        When we hear that word, and believe it, and live as if it is true, we—like Martin Luther King—can do amazing things. For Dr. King, claiming his true self and being who God created him to be meant living for others. 

        "I choose to identify with the underprivileged,” he said in Chicago in 1966. “I choose to identify with the poor … I choose to give my life for the hungry … for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity … I choose to live for and with those for whom life is one long, desolate corridor with no exit sign. This is the way I'm going. If it means suffering a little, I'm going that way. If it means sacrifice, I'm going that way. And if it means dying for them, I'm going that way, because I heard a voice saying, ‘Do something for others.’ ''

        The prophet Samuel prepared the nation of Israel for its first king.  Today we come to honor a King and to worship the God who called him by name, who stood by him and suffered with him. This is the same God who calls each of us by name, who stands by us and promises to make us whole, to make us new, to transform us so that we too might dream dreams that will change the world.

        God is still speaking. Speak, God, we are listening.

Amen.

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