I Will Be With You Always
Matthew 28:16-20

Tomorrow is a national holiday.  Banks are closed, no mail is delivered, kids are out of school.  It is a day set aside to honor Martin Luther King. King was a great man whose life was cut short by an assassin’s bullet almost 40 years ago.

  The more time passes by, the fewer of us really remember or even know his story.  His was a story that stands out as a legacy against racism. 

The truth is, most of us sitting here this morning have no idea what it means to be discriminated against. 

Put yourself in the mind and heart of an African American fifty years ago.  How would it feel to have to endure separate drinking fountains for whites and blacks or to be relegated to colored balconies in movie theaters.

How would you feel when a thoroughly respectable African American seamstress, named Rosa Parks is thrown into jail and fined simply because she refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus so a white man could sit down?

Or when a six-year-old black girl named Ruby Bridges is spit on by a white New Orleans mob simply because she wanted to go to the same school as white children? 

What do you feel inside when you hear that a 14-year-old black boy named Emmett Till was hunted down and murdered by a Mississippi gang simply because he had “supposedly” made suggestive remarks to a white woman?

I don’t think that many of us can imagine the pain it must have caused to be told you could not eat at lunch counters, register in motels or use whites-only rest rooms; that you could not buy or rent a home wherever you chose.

Did you know that in some rural communities in the South, African Americans were even compelled to get off the sidewalk and stand in the street if a Caucasian walked by?

These were real examples of conditions in the America that we call “the land of the free” and “home of the brave” ... less than 40 years ago.

Philip Yancey, a popular Christian author, grew up outside of Atlanta, Georgia.  He wrote the following about a church he attended in the 60’s.

“My pastor taught that God consigned Blacks to life as lowly servants when he cursed the son of Noah their ancestor. He would say from the pulpit:

‘That explains why black people make such good waiters and household servants. Watch a black waiter move thru a crowded restaurant, swiveling his hips, balancing a tray of food above his head. He’s good at that job because that’s the job God destined him for.’”

Is it any wonder why Martin Luther King felt called to not just stand up and speak out against this racism – but to also do something about it? 

Jesus said, “Many are called but few are chosen.”  Martin Luther King was definitely one of the chosen ones.

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, a black woman named Rosa Parks got on a city bus. She sat down gratefully in the first empty seat she could find, her feet tired after a long day.

A few stops later a white man demanded that she give up her seat to him and move to the back of the bus. She was too tired and told him she wasn’t getting up from her seat. As a result she was arrested.

In response, the black community began a boycott of the city buses, the primary transportation for many blacks in the city at the time.  Instead some car-pooled, but most walked. To lead this boycott, they chose the new minister in town, 26 year old, Martin Luther King.

As soon as King’s leadership of the boycott was announced, the threats from the Ku Klux Klan began against him. And from the police. Within days, King was arrested for driving 30 mph in a 25 mph zone and thrown in the Montgomery city jail.

The following night King, shaken by his first jail experience, sat up in his kitchen wondering if he could take it anymore.  Should he resign? It was around midnight. He felt agitated and full of fear.

See, a few minutes before, the phone had rung. “Nigger, we are tired of you and your mess. And if you aren’t out of this town in 3 days, we’re going to blow your brains out, and blow up your house.”

King sat staring at an untouched cup of coffee and tried to think of a way out. In the next room lay his wife, Coretta, already asleep, along with their newborn daughter, Yolanda.

Here is how King remembers it: “I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me at any minute.

“And I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted and loyal wife, who was over there asleep. And I got to the point that I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was weak. ...

“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 it 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 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 to me 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.”

Three nights later a bomb exploded on the front porch of King’s home, filling the house with smoke and broken glass but injuring no one. King took it calmly.

Later he said: “My religious experience a few nights before had given me the strength to face it.”

King came back to this “visitation” at the kitchen table every critical moment in his life. For him, it became the bedrock of personal faith.

And Jesus’ promise to Martin Luther King is one he makes to each of us.  Jesus is with us always.  No matter what we are facing in our lives: depression, loneliness, health issues, unemployment, divorce, poverty, brokenness … whatever … We are not alone. We are not alone.

Martin Luther King’s ministry – was a short one.  It lasted only 13 years. (pause)

Because of tornado warnings and torrential rains the night of April 3, 1968, only 2,000 people rallied at the Mason Temple in Memphis to support Martin Luther King, in the strike planned on behalf of the city’s sanitation workers. Three weeks earlier King had spoken to 14,000 supporters in the same cavernous venue.

At about 9:30 p.m. King addressed the faithful who had shown up. In an eerie recollection from his past that foreboded his future, he shared with the crowd how he nearly died in 1958 when a deranged woman stabbed him in a Harlem book store.

He then related how on his flight from Atlanta to Memphis that morning, a bomb scare caused the pilot to announce to the passengers that a threat to King’s life necessitated placing a special guard on board. King continued:

“And then I got into Memphis, and some began to relay the threats that were being spread, and what would happen to me from some of our white sick brothers.

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now, because I have been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind.

“Like anybody I would like to live—a long life—longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now; I just want to do God’s will....

“So I’m happy tonight! I’m not worried about anything! I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!” (pause)

At 6:01 p.m. the very next day, escaped convict James Earl Ray assassinated King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. King was only thirty nine years old.

Four days later, on April 8, more than 300,000 people attended his funeral.

MLK died when he was just 39 years old. Can you comprehend that?  I think of all I accomplished by the time I was 39 … well … let’s not go there.

Part of King’s success came from his philosophy, like that of Jesus, that we must accept the dual commandments to justice-making and to radical love, to loving your enemies.  The goal is to free them from evil as well, because they, too, are its victims. 

If we are to be who God calls us to be – to be his emissaries to the world, then we too must act out of that radical call to universal love along with our justice making.

Dr. King once said. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige and even his life for the welfare of others.”

So, the question this morning is: what are we going to do to address the challenges we still experience as it relates to the inequality and bigotry that is a blight on our nation and the world?

But before you answer that, I would like to share with you a poem that I read recently entitled “The Cold Within”

Six humans trapped by happenstance in black and bitter cold
Each possessed a stick of wood, or so the story’s told.

Their dying fire in need of logs, the first woman held hers back
For on the faces around the fire she noticed one was black.

The next man looking ‘cross the way saw one not of his church
And couldn’t bring himself to give the fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes he gave his coat a hitch,
Why should his log be put to use to warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought of the wealth he had

          in store,
And how to keep what he had earned from the lazy, shiftless

          poor.

The black man’s face bespoke revenge as the fire passed from

          his sight,
For all he saw in his stick of wood was a chance to spite the

          white.

And the last man of this forlorn group did naught except for

          gain,
Giving only to those who gave was how he played the game.

The logs held tight in death’s stilled hands was proof of human

          sin,
They didn’t die from the cold without, they died from the cold

          within.

Our lives and the lives of our children don’t have to be like these six people. Our actions or shall I say our inactions ... will determine the course of our future.

Making a difference will require action on our part. It is going to take the efforts of countless everyday people like you and me and many others whose names we will never know who decide that they can not sit around idle and allow the cup on injustice, suffering, and pain spill over any longer.

We can make a difference, one small win a time. You can help somebody rise from the depths of despair on the wings of hope by changing your heart.

We can begin today by changing our minds on how we view things.

We can make a difference in our communities, in our neighborhoods, in our cities and in our state ... if we put down hatred and pickup love.

We can continue to live out the dream of Martin Luther King ... if we put aside our differences and pick up togetherness.

Put down division and pick up tolerance and understanding for all of God’s people.

We can make a change today ... if we will be willing to unball our fist and extend to our fellow brothers and sisters the handshake of brotherly love.

We can make a difference in our community by agreeing to help somebody ... instead of gathering all of the world’s riches for ourselves...

Let us remember the widowed and orphan; the homeless and the hungry. Let us speak out and act against injustice, discrimination, bigotry, and prejudice wherever we find it.

Martin Luther King had a dream.  It is up to us to make that dream a reality.  And remember – just like King, we don’t go it alone.  We go with Christ.  And with Christ, how can we not succeed?
          Amen.