Mountaintop

This is the text of the Faith Forum that Marjorie D. Grevious, our Evangelist for Spiritual Healing, led in our series “A Call to Conscience: Loving Our Enemies.” This is a particularly fitting time to reprint it for the E-vangelist, giving us additional reflections around The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday yesterday and the upcoming MLK Day holiday.

by Marjorie D. Grevious

I want to start by acknowledging that I love to humanize my heroes. It is important to me to learn their feet of clay so that I understand that we are both imperfect beings made in the image of the same God. I bring up this point today because The Great Dr. Rev Martin Luther King Jr. has been given god-like status since his assassination 56 years ago. “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” has long been my most favorite speech of his. I think parts of his story that never get told, and the story of his famous last speech is just as inspirational and mystical as the content of the speech itself.

It has been noted that Dr. King attempted suicide twice as a young person and suffered from bouts of depression throughout his life. I want to quote from an article in Psychology Today written by Araya Baker a noted public health advocate, journalist and educator who wrote about Dr. King:

We cannot forget that Dr. King spent 15 years witnessing firsthand that there was no “best” way to debunk or disarm white supremacy. A doctorate didn’t help. Devout Christianity didn’t help. Colorblindness didn’t help. Disavowing armed struggle didn’t help. Invoking the innocence of children and the frailty of the elderly didn’t help. Not even critiquing the capitalist exploitation of poor whites helped, since he found that many wouldn’t help themselves if it meant helping Black people.

Imagine strategizing the most non-confrontational, religiously palatable, socially respectable method of advocating for your human rights and still getting beaten, spat on, hosed, cursed at, and having your family home bombed. Imagine protesting with other clergy, yet having horses still trample you and dogs still snipe at you. Imagine being deferential to authorities, yet still getting jailed and surveilled. Imagine many folks, including many who looked like you, telling you to tone it down.

At the time of his assassination at age 39, Dr. King’s reputation stood in stark contrast to how we canonize him today. Public opinion of Dr. King was surprisingly low from around 1958—when he rose to national prominence after leading a successful boycotting movement in Montgomery—until 1968. A Gallup poll from 1966 revealed that almost 66 percent of Americans viewed him unfavorably. Looking back today, the public seemed almost committed to misunderstanding his intentions in service of preserving the status quo…An autopsy of Dr. King revealed that despite being only 39, life had aged his heart to resemble that of a 60-year-old.

Dr. King himself once confessed, “I am afraid I have led the people into a burning house.”

(Existential Lessons of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Depression | Psychology Today)

For some personal context, many young black children of my generation who were raised in the church were often taught public speaking and presentation skills in the church. This happened through church plays, memorized scriptures recited in Sunday School, and special church days like the church anniversary, or Women’s Day, or Children’s Sunday. These live church performances were preceded by relentless practice runs at home by parents who made you do it over and over again so they, and all the elders in your family, could beam with pride and joy at your excellent elocution after the church congratulated them on your performance. In my home, like many others, Dr. King was the standard bearer for how we should present ourselves before the church , in public, and before God.

Memorizing his speeches was the norm for many of us in debate, speech, and drama classes in high school. Dr. King taught us public speaking, radical love, and how to present yourself to the world regardless of what was done to you or said about you. He taught us what living as a Christian person of faith really looked like. Today, I think you can still hear his familiar cadence in many well known black Americans who were raised in the black church. He created a mark of distinction beyond the church, beyond his education, and even beyond his professional accomplishments, for which we were to always reach.

His “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech is prophetic. In it he foreshadows his own death which happens less than 24 hours later. He has arrived in Memphis weary, sick, and tired. Dr. King was originally scheduled to speak at the overflowing meeting at Mason Temple in support of the black sanitation workers who were on strike. It has been said that he was possibly suffering from the flu. He asked his good friend the great Ralph Abernathy to speak in his place. Abernathy energized the crowd for half an hour. He then called and convinced Dr. King to come to the temple. He arrived to a standing ovation and spoke, feverish, exhausted and with a sore throat, extemporaneously, for over 40 minutes. His dear friend, Ralph Abernathy, seemed to catch him at the end of his fiery last words: as he spun around seemingly unsteady, Abernathy grabbed him and sat him down. 

Who is catching us now as we reel after an exhausting presidential election cycle that has left us feeling out of balance with and in fear of our own fellow countrymen. Who is our Ralph Abernathy catching us as we find our footing?

A photo taken the morning of the “Mountaintop” speech. From left, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, the Rev. Dr. King, the Rev. James Orange, and the Rev. Bernard Lee.

A historic figure in his own right, Rev Abernathy championed the causes of racial and social justice. He became president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference the day after after bearing witness to the murder of his best friend. Who is steadying us as we make ready for what feels like, yet is not, a new battle in the fight for justice and equality for all God’s people?

It is important to note that also in attendance at the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech were Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, Benjamin Hooks, and Rev Samuel Billy Kyles, who had planned to host Dr. King for dinner the day he was killed. Just as Jesus had his 12, Dr. King also had his close knit group of advisors, friends and comrades in the fight towards true freedom.

Dr. King begins his speech with this interesting premise of God asking him what age he would like to live in. He takes a panoramic overview through human history noting significant moments of great change and shifts in thought bringing about moments towards equality and justice. He notes the flight from Egypt, to the great philosophers of Greece, the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, his namesake Martin Luther, Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation all the way to Roosevelt’s famous quote on fear. He brings all of this learned history, to the present moment, in Memphis, TN centering the cause on the rights of the black sanitation workers in the same frame as the call for equality for all people everywhere. And I quote from Dr. King’s speech:

And that’s all this whole thing is about. We aren’t engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying — We are saying that we are God’s children. And that we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live.

Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.

Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice.

Being first and foremost a preacher, Andrew Young—who would serve in Congress, the United Nations and as mayor of Atlanta—noted that Dr. King almost always quoted from Jeremiah, Isaiah, or Amos. Young noted that the God of the Old Testament was one of action, leading people out of slavery to a promised land and they strongly identified with that. In the speech King goes on to recall their fight in Birmingham against the imposing Bull Connor who directed police to use dogs and firehoses on young demonstrators, many who were legally children. This image of children being battered by the water and attacked by dogs turned public opinion in favor of the demonstrators. In 1963 16th Street Baptist Church would be targeted with a bomb, killing four young black girls as it had served as headquarters for moving people out.

Dr. King goes on to name a few men in Memphis who were leading the organizing of the sanitation workers. Rev James Lawson was a longtime friend who had served as a missionary in India where he deepened his belief in nonviolence.  He had even been expelled from Vanderbilt due to his participation in a lunch counter sit-in in Nashville. Rev. Samuel Billy Kyles is thought to have been the last person to speak to Dr. King just before he stepped out on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel and was shot. He mentions Jesse Jackson who had informed the economic boycott of specifically named brands and businesses as part of the protest. Well known brands such as Coca-Cola and Wonder Bread were popular among the black community and withholding their buying power, and directing it towards supporting black owned businesses, was something Dr. King noted it as being important in showing the ignored economic power of the black community. 

Dr. King uses the story of the Good Samaritan as parallel to the civil rights movement.

And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked — the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” 

Dr. King goes on to recall in grave detail the assassination attempt he barely survived after being stabbed in the hall with a letter opener by a mentally ill woman in 1958 while promoting his first book which told the story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Although he received many well wishes from government officials, he recited in detail the one letter he remembered and held most dear: it was from a young white girl from White Plains, who wrote she was happy he did not sneeze as doctors had reported a sneeze would have killed him the 2 weeks following the attack. He then recalls all the gains in civil rights he was able to witness or be a part of because he did not sneeze.

As he comes to a close he recalls that his flight from Atlanta to Memphis was delayed as they took special care the night before to watch making sure nothing happened to the plane, all bags were properly checked before that was common practice. He arrived in Memphis to reports of the threats against him. 

His ending reminds me of this passage from Deuteronomy 3:23-29: “And I pleaded with the Lord at that time, saying, ‘O Lord God, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your mighty hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as yours? Please let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan, that good hill country and Lebanon.’ But the Lord was angry with me because of you and would not listen to me. And the Lord said to me, ‘Enough from you; do not speak to me of this matter again. Go up to the top of Pisgah and lift up your eyes westward and northward and southward and eastward, and look at it with your eyes, for you shall not go over this Jordan. But charge Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, for he shall go over at the head of this people, and he shall put them in possession of the land that you shall see.’ So we remained in the valley opposite Beth-peor.

Dr. King ends with:

And 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!!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/02/us/king-mlk-last-sermon-annotated.html

Reflections:

  • Practicing non-violence means we may face or be victims of violent acts against us, while remaining steadfast in our commitment to actions rooted in non-violence. Is that still possible today? Does it really work?
  • Who is in your sacred circle, squad, tribe of trusted advisors? Who is more than an ally but someone who truly stands in solidarity with you? Who will catch you when you falter?
  • What biblical stories, or scripture passages, never fail to inspire, uplift or comfort you?
  • How might you face ‘the enemy’ with love and curiosity? What if they are family or close friends with wildly differing views and beliefs than your own?
  • In these present times, who are you called to be, or do as a person of faith? As a believer in the examples set by Christ?
  • What are daily acts of lovingkindness that you can do in spreading the all encompassing radical love of God as exemplified in Jesus’ life and ministry?

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