Sermons from Park Hill Congregational UCC Denver, Colorado Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] April 8, 2018 “Resurrecting Dr. King’s Revolution” Micah 6:8 God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” One of the most inspired writings of Dr. King, to me, was his Letter from Birmingham Jail, expressing his “grave disappointment with white moderates,” whom he considered more of a problem than members of the KKK. If you listen to the rhetoric today against Black Lives Matter, it’s like little has happened in 50 years. Some days it feels like little has changed since the Prophets like Amos and Micah. People always pressing to go more slowly. “We agree with your goals, but wait, don’t push so hard.” ― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail "Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, 'Wait.'
Letter from Birmingham Jail was written in 1963, one of nearly 30 times Dr. King was arrested. The bus boycott was ancient history. Passing the voting rights act in 1965 seemed like a long time ago. For most of America, the problem had been solved. By ‘68, Dr. King was no longer a hero. His Vietnam speech at Riverside Church in April the year before provided the nail to his coffin, pounded in by his own supporters who felt he was betraying the movement.[1] His approval rating was 30-something percent. In May 1967, King told the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that he envisioned a new campaign; a radical new beginning, broadening from civil rights to human rights, from the particular struggles of the black community to the intertwined triple evils of racism, poverty, and militarism. Critics of Black Lives Matter might try to equate that to – See, all lives matter. But King’s point was about shifting from a “reform movement” focused on desegregation and voting rights to a “revolutionary movement” that would demand nothing less than “a radical redistribution of economic and political power.” Integrating a lunch counter, King said, getting the right to vote, cost Americans nothing. Now it was time to pay. They launched a new campaign – a Poor People’s Campaign focused on economic justice. Eleven months before his assignation, a reporter from NBC asked Dr. King, “Why do black Americans face more obstacles than white European immigrants?”[2] King’s answer addressed the stigma assigned to color and then explained: “White America must first see that no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil. America freed the slaves in 1863 by the Emancipation Proclamation but gave the slaves no land or nothing, in reality, to get started on. At the same time, America was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest, which meant there was a willingness to give the white peasants from Europe an economic base. And yet it refused to give its black peasants from Africa who came here involuntarily, in chains, and had worked for free for 244 years, any kind of economic base.” (That really spoke to me, since my ancestors were among those who had been given 160 acres of land for simply showing up.) King continued, “And so the emancipation for the Negro was freedom. But the freedom to hunger. It was freedom but to the winds and rains of heaven, not a place to live. It was freedom without food to eat or land to cultivate and therefore it was freedom and famine at the same time.” ― YouTube Video – MLK and Economic Justice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORVRt5TytaE Back to his Letter from Birmingham Jail, which still resonates. You’ve heard Dr. King say, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” What would Jesus do? And what should our legacy as his followers be? ― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail “Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But they went on with the conviction that they were a 'colony of heaven' and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be 'astronomically intimidated.' They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest. Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.” ― A New “Poor People’s Campaign” Over 50 years ago. Today the Rev. Dr. William Barber, known for the successful Moral Monday movement in North Carolina, is spearheading a new national Poor People’s Campaign to coincide with the upcoming 50th anniversary. Rev. Barber delivers sermons on a topic known as "the trick." The trick is Barber's term for something he describes as a weapon of mass distraction. The trick is how politicians persuade poor white working-class people that the source of their pain is people of color, immigrants and other scapegoats. "You have to show them the trick," Rev. Barber said. "The majority of people in this country who are poor are white people. You have to undermine the trick and say, 'Listen, you want a living wage, but the people you voted for don't want you to have a living wage. You're upset that you don't have health care. Guess what, black and Latino people aren't your problems. It's the people who voted against your health care.' " Organizers for a "new Poor People's Campaign" will launch six weeks of "direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience" starting May 13, Mother's Day. To King’s triple evils of racism, poverty, and militarism, the new campaign adds environmental degradation, disproportionately affecting poor communities of all colors. Historians have often asked: What if King had lived to see his Poor People's Campaign through? Vietnam certainly intervened, sucking up massive amounts of money. But could it have worked? It was certainly daring enough. King and his staff were mobilizing an interracial army to occupy Washington, DC. He had recruited impoverished white residents of Appalachia, Latino farm workers from California and impoverished blacks from Mississippi. It was a Rainbow Coalition before the term was even coined. Naturally, the campaign was severely tested by King’s assassination. But it still happened. 3,000 people lived in “Resurrection City” on the National Mall for six weeks. During the day they took part in daily demonstrations at government facilities and at night they ate together and sang and told stories about the movement in their own local communities. Beyond the grief of King’s death, however, seven inches of rain fell in those six weeks, making the living conditions miserable.[3] Yet, they sparked a conversation around the nation. Not unlike the Occupy Wall Street movement, it might seem to have failed, but we’re still talking about the 1%. It changed our consciousness and vocabulary.[4] This week lots of people have been talking about remembering Dr. King’s dream. I think it is past time to resurrect Dr. King’s revolution. ― YouTube Video – Official Launch of the New Poor People’s Campaign[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thb4jsc6Stg ― Micah 6:8 God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you? Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with your God. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/opinion/when-martin-luther-king-came-out-against-vietnam.html [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/video/martin-luther-king-jr-speaks-with-nbc-news-11-months-before-assassination-1202163779741?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma%20transcript [3] https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/09/us/poor-peoples-campaign-william-barber/index.html [4] Read more about it at https://sojo.net/magazine/may-2018/power-poor-peoples-campaign-king-barber [5] Learn more at https://poorpeoplescampaign.org/
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