Sunday,

Tomorrow is the national holiday marking the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Today is traditionally the Sunday in which we here at Christ Congregational Church not only remember Dr. King, but also take the occasion to reaffirm our identity as a congregation devoted to justice and peace - we are a Just-Peace Congregation of the United Church of Christ.

If you ask the average American who Dr. King was you might be told that he was a civil rights leader during the sixties; that he organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott, that he spoke eloquently at the March on Washington in 1963, that he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and that he was assassinated in 1968 while in the midst of yet another effort to speak on behalf of the downtrodden, in this case the sanitation workers of Memphis, Tennessee. But we should also remember that Dr. King was first and foremost a minister of the Christian gospel. There is no doubt that he himself was always clear about his identity.

This is especially important for us to remember today here in this sanctuary, because at the heart of his life and message was the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now Dr. King was especially sensitive to those of other faiths. He was a genuinely inter-faith leader. During the height of the civil rights movement, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews worked side by side. His religious spirit was expansive, inclusive, welcoming and humble.

But today it is important to affirm that Dr. King's message of justice and peace was not just a civil rights message, and not even a message limited to the context of racism in America in our time. For his deep message to us of the Christian Church is that it is in Christ, that the walls of separation are broken down.

For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.

Christ destroys the barriers between people and groups. Paul was speaking of Jew and Gentile during the days of the early church. But you can supply your own groups, as Paul indeed does himself - Jew and Gentile, male and female, black and white, Latino and Asian, rich and poor. Even slave and free. And, of course, if the barrier between slave and free is shattered, how can we permit one person to continue to enslave another? For the spiritual message that Christ has destroyed the dividing wall of hostility is a message that, if taken seriously, has unavoidable consequences in the real world.

How does Christ break down the dividing wall of hostility? Why is there hostility between groups in the first place? Why is there hostility between individuals? Why is celebrating true diversity and honoring our differences so difficult?

Begin with individuals. It is very difficult for each of us to accept that life is hard and that we are alone. In our relationships with others we yearn for those moments in which we feel like we are one and the cares of the world lift. They may be mystical moments in which we feel our souls connect, or those times in which we feel fully and wonderfully understood. But the reality is that those moments are brief and fleeting. A healthy relationship between two people must aim for and build for the possibilities of such communion. But a healthy relationship cannot be built on euphoria. We must recognize that we are separate and must stand alone in life. We can never, ever fully know and understand another person. Even in our most beautiful moments of togetherness, we must accept the "otherness" of others. In fact the paradox is that the more we get to know another person, the more we get to know how different they may be.

And life is hard and frequently unjust. Our aloneness in the universe is hard to accept. For a long time we hope that mothers and fathers will protect us, shield us from what we fear is an impersonal cosmos. The early years of Dr. King's pastorate in Montgomery were happy and productive. Part of his feelings of security had to do with the fact that he always knew he could call up his father, The Rev. M.L. King Senior, whom he greatly admired and get advice and support. Knowing that God is our parent can be used as a way of making religion help us to feel better. Often we come to church to feel good and have our cares lifted.

We are gravely mistaken to think that religion protects us from the pain and agony of mortal existence. Life is not a euphoria of unalloyed comfort and untroubled ease. Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear.

One of the ways we often attempt to shield ourselves from hard reality is to seek comfort among people we see as "like ourselves." Whether it be marriage, family, clan, tribe, race, or nation, such groupings reassure us that everything will be well because really we are not alone at all. We know who we are because we are part of something larger than ourselves.

This is not necessarily bad since being part of a group helps us to bring order and meaning to life in the midst of its seeming chaos and help others. It does provide the comfort of being among those we believe we can depend on, those we can trust. Especially those we can readily recognize.

But the problem is that ultimately nothing can protect us from our aloneness in a hard world. That anxiety is always there as a kind of lurking dread, a fear of life itself perhaps. Instead of dealing with this anxiety, we work all the harder to defend the group. The lines between us and them, insiders and outsiders, the good guys and the bad guys, all become more and more fiercely defended.

It has long been recognized that racial prejudice is illogical. Yet it endures in one form or another throughout the world. Many well intentioned attempts to solve the problem help, but only go so far. We should not give up on education, communication, consciousness raising, studying history, and so forth, to focus attention on the problem. But we eventually run up against the wall of hostility.

I believe this happens because these approaches alone fail to recognize the spiritual nature of problem. For the challenge is within each of us. Racism, a fear of diversity, is really the fear of our aloneness in an impersonal universe, and our fear of the otherness of others. The dividing wall of hostility is not so much between us as within each one of us. And that is what Christ breaks down.

As Christians how do we believe that God in Jesus Christ does this? First of all, I believe we must face our aloneness in a hard world with courage. No one relationship, no family, clan, club, country or even church will ultimately protect us from the hard reality. But our fear is that if we accept this, we will sink into despair - that we will literally or spiritually die. But it is in the facing of it that we can find life.

I would like to quote now from David Garrow's book on King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, BEARING THE CROSS. It describes a transforming moment in King's life at the time of the Montgomery bus boycott.

I didn't have to worry about anything. I have a marvelous mother and father. They went out of their way to provide everything for their children . . . I went right on through school; I never had to drop out to work or anything. And you know, I was about to conclude that life had been wrapped up for me in a Christmas package.

Now of course I was religious, I grew up in the church. I'm the son of a preacher . . . my grandfather was a preacher, my great grandfather was a preacher, my only brother is a preacher, my daddy's brother is a preacher, so I didn't have much choice, I guess. But I had grown up in the church, and the church meant something very real to me, but it was a kind of inherited religion and I had never felt an experience with God in the way that you must, and have it, if you're going to walk the lonely paths of this life.

Everything was done [for me], and if I had a problem I could always call Daddy -- my earthly father. Things were solved. But one day after finishing school, I was called to a little church, down in Montgomery, Alabama. And I started preaching there. Things were going well in that church, it was a marvelous experience. But one day a year later, a lady by the name of Rosa Parks decided that she wasn't going to take it any longer.... It was the beginning of a movement, ... and the people of Montgomery asked me to serve them as a spokesman, and as the president of the new organization . . . that came into being to lead the boycott. I couldn't say no.

And then we started our struggle together. Things were going well for the first few days but then, about ten or fifteen days later, after the white people in Montgomery knew that we meant business, they started doing some nasty things. They started making nasty telephone calls, and it came to the point that some days more than forty telephone calls would come in, threatening my life, the life of my family, the life of my child. I took it for a while, in a strong manner.

But that night, unable to be at peace with himself, King feared he could take it no longer. It was the most important night of his life, the one he always would think back to in future years when the pressures again seemed to be too great.

"It was around midnight," he said, thinking back on it. "You can have some strange experiences at midnight." The threatening caller had rattled him deeply. "Nigger, we are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren't out of this town in three days, we're going to blow your brains out, and blow up your house."

I sat there and thought about a beautiful little daughter who had just been born.... She was the darling of my life. I'd come in night after night and see that little gentle smile. And I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me any minute.

And I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted and loyal wife, who was over there asleep. And she could be taken from me, or I could be taken from her. And I got to the point that I couldn't take it any longer. I was weak. Something said to me, you can't call on Daddy now, he's up in Atlanta a hundred and seventy-five miles away. You can't even call on Mama now. You've got to call on that something in that person that your Daddy used to tell you about, that power that can make a way out of no way.

And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee. I never will forget it . . . I prayed a prayer, and I prayed out loud that night. I said, `Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right. I think I'm right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now. I'm faltering. I'm losing my courage. And I can't let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak.'

Then it happened:

And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, `Martin Luther, 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.' . . . I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.

That experience gave King a new strength and courage. "Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared." He went back to bed no longer worried about the threats of bombings.

For Dr. King this was a defining religious moment. So it can be for each person. To be in Christ is never again to be alone - or perhaps it is to be alone in a different way. It is now to stand clear of all attachments that blind us and offer false promises of security. Yes, it is to be in relationships with others, but those very relationships are transformed, healed and liberated.

And to be in Christ is to understand the true source of oppression, and to be free to struggle to change what can be changed. The external ways in which people are oppressed and beaten down - political, economic, cultural, interpersonal - can be changed. And to say, at the same time, that the root causes of injustice are in the human heart, is not and cannot be an escape from social responsibility. For it is really to trust that God can change the human heart as well. Dr. King's great phrase that God calls us to be "transformed nonconformists" is really a call to celebrate the possibility of change both within our hearts and in our world. AMEN.