Peace: King’s Other Legacy

Rev. Paul Sprecher

Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org

January 15, 2012

Reading: “Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech,” Martin Luther King, Jr.

I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice….

After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time - the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts….

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind…. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him….

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality…. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow…. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. "And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid." …. Today I come to Oslo as a trustee, inspired and with renewed dedication to humanity. I accept this prize on behalf of all men who love peace and brotherhood…. all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty - and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.[i]

Sermon: “Peace: King’s Other Legacy” -Rev. Paul Sprecher

I’ve only been arrested once in my life – so far. It happened in April of 1972 when I was one of the leaders of a demonstration against the Vietnam War in front of the federal building in downtown Boston. I had been opposed to the war since before I finished high school – I worked for Eugene McCarthy against LBJ during the 1968 Democratic primary in Wisconsin, and I wrote an editorial in our high school newspaper criticizing the war that led a new rule requiring that the principal approve all future editorials in the paper. Those of us who had been demonstrating against the war during those years could only hope that our protests would somehow energize others and help to end a war we considered immoral and unnecessary.

We demonstrators were not well regarded by the policemen who were controlling our demonstration that day – or by many of the citizens passing by, who just wished we would get out of the way and let them get on with their day. When the police surged in to clear us from the street, one of them came up behind me, arrested me, and wrenched my arm painfully behind my back and began frog marching me behind City Hall. I asked what was back there and he replied, “That’s where we have the machine guns.” I was pretty sure I wasn’t actually going to be shot on the spot, but I wasn’t so sure that the policeman who had arrested me would have minded if I were.

We were promptly arraigned after being held briefly in the jail; as college students, we were admonished about blocking the public’s access to public spaces and buildings and let off with a warning, and I believe the record was expunged. There was no Night in the Birmingham jail for us, as there was for Martin Luther King, Jr. There were no fire hoses, no vicious dogs, no pepper spray casually sprayed in our eyes. We may have been prophets in speaking against the war, but we were not universally cheered. Some of you may have thought that we were unpatriotic, disobedient and disgraceful. Many of you were concerned that some of our churches were preaching too much about politics and too little about religion. It was a time of great division and struggle in the nation – not, perhaps, utterly different from our own time, and Martin Luther King, Jr., placed himself decisively on the side of those who opposed the war.

His first and most thoroughly argued case against the war was put forward on April 4, 1967, one year to the day before his assassination in Memphis. King delivered his address “A Time to Speak Out” to a gathering at Riverside Church in New York City that was sponsored by Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam. The overflow crowd listened with close attention and responded to his words with several standing ovations. It was a controversial and prophetic speech and even today it can seem shocking in its forthright criticism not only of the war, but of American foreign policy more broadly. It has to a large extent been forgotten, and it is not frequently celebrated on the national holiday we have dedicated to honoring his life and work. It seems appropriate at this time of division and anger in our nation, again at war, to remind ourselves of Dr. King’s other legacy.

King started his remarks by listing the reasons he felt compelled to speak out against the war. First, he said, he had come to realize that the costs of the war were starving the funding for the anti-poverty programs that had been created to counter the consequences of centuries of enslavement, segregation and oppression of his people. Then, he noted that African Americans were dying in disproportionate numbers in the war. He went on to note how the war was undermining his own attempts to prevent violence in the inner cities. He promoted his doctrine of non-violence in the ghetto, but the angry young men

… asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government.[ii]

He said that his calling as a minister compelled him to proclaim the message that Jesus had proclaimed. That calling raised his eyes beyond national allegiances. He continued,

To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? …. I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God.[iii]

King laid out a slashing critique of the war. He denounced our nation’s policy of opposing the independence struggle of the people of Vietnam, and our siding with the French attempt to regain Vietnam as a colony after the Japanese occupiers were defeated in World War II. Despite our promises of democracy to the Vietnamese, he said, we had instead supported a corrupt and inept government that had no support from the people of Vietnam. He described their condition this way:

Now they languish under our bombs and consider us – not their fellow Vietnamese – the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met….

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees…. So far we may have killed a million of them – mostly children…. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.[iv]

Nor, he said, is the reach of America abroad confined to Vietnam. He went on to speak of other conflicts in which the United States was actively involved in suppressing other people’s rightful protests. He said that it seemed that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution, that we had military involvement in Venezuela, in Guatemala, in Columbia and in Peru. He said

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

…. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.[v]

These were tough words in 1967, and they are tough words today. King was widely denounced for standing up against the Vietnam War. He was told that he had no place speaking out, that his purview should be restricted to the struggle for Civil Rights, that he was betraying his own country, and that he would no longer be welcome in the corridors of power. Like Jesus when he returned to his hometown of Nazareth, he was stripped of honor. As Jesus said [Luke 4:24], “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his own country.” When Jesus had read from the prophet Isaiah about his mission to bring good news to the poor in the synagogue, the people were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. But when he added that the prophets had honored people not from the land of Israel, they [Luke 4:28-29] “…were filled with rage. ²⁹ They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.” King, too, was no longer welcome in his native land.

And how might we King’s words apply today, in 2012? We are hearing loud proclamations of American Exceptionalism on the campaign trail. We are told that we are the greatest and most righteous nation that has ever existed on the face of this earth. We are told that we have been divinely commissioned, a “city on a hill” that is a beacon of freedom, of democracy, of free markets, of The American Way. And we are great. And we are powerful. And we do have a great calling in the world.

But we are great as a nation only insofar as we live up to our American credo, our Declaration of Independence which declares that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” All men. And women. And black. And gay. And Muslims. And Chinese. All men and women.

Since the founding of Plymouth Plantation, we have claimed to be a chosen people, set up on this continent to bring righteousness and freedom to the world. We claim the mantle of a Chosen People with which Israel was blessed. But we forget that when Israel strayed from the paths of righteousness. When they chose privilege for the rich over responsibility for all, when they tolerated vast inequalities among their people, some wallowing in luxury while widows and orphans were left surviving on a pittance, when they chose war over peace, they were called to account by their prophets, whom they scorned. The prophets were reviled in their own country, denounced by the rulers, thrown into dungeons, exiled, and sometimes stoned.

Being chosen does not convey the right to do whatever we please in the world or in our nation. Being chosen – being exceptional – is about committing our nation to righteousness, to the proposition that “all men are created equal,” that all human beings “are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.” Being exceptional means really living up to the Golden Rule Jesus taught to “love our neighbors as ourselves,” and not just to love our families or those who live near us but to love the stranger, to love the foreigner, to love the ones who are discounted because they live in nations that have not been chosen as we want to believe we have been.

Martin Luther King, Jr., chose tough words to speak out against an unjust war. That legacy is harder to hold up and honor. That legacy reminds us of the brotherhood and sisterhood of all human beings everywhere. That prophetic legacy calls into question our arrogant claims to be the greatest and the best unless we are truly righteous, and just, and fair.

That legacy challenges each of us to stand up bravely against war, against oppression, and against violence in its many forms. It challenges us to be prophetic and self-critical rather than self-congratulatory. And this is a matter not only for our nation, it is a matter for each of us in our daily living. It is a challenge to live out the true meaning of our national creed, but it is even more a challenge to love all of our neighbors as ourselves. We are indeed privileged, and as Jesus said [Luke 12:48] “… unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.”

These are tough commandments, and they are not political – though they have political implications. They stand at the heart of our religious commitment, of gathering and living as our covenant promises “in the spirit of Jesus.” Truly Martin Luther King, Jr., was a prophet, sometimes without honor in his own country, and truly he has left a legacy that calls to us not only to promote justice and equality for all people, but also to speak out for peace.

May we remember his prophetic words in our living, and Amen.