In the Deep with Martin Luther King

Today is the day our country honors Rev.Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (his birthday). How to ‘remember’ him fully, though? How to pause and reflect on the God-given, inspiring, tumultuous role in American public life that he held that ultimately made him a martyr – leaving his wife and young children, a movement of faithful African-Americans, a civil rights struggle with people from across all backgrounds, and an entire country in upheaval? How to not trivialize his life and death, but pause to remember, and in some small way, perhaps embody ‘the dream’?

An amazing movie that portrayed racism and prejudice in many of its overt and insidious forms, “Crash,” came out a few years ago. The moving song that is played at the movie’s conclusion (sung by Bird York), “In the Deep,” has become a favorite of mine – partly because it reminds me of the movie’s reality, rawness, beauty, and truth, but also partly because it produces fitting emotions that describe part of my own experience of working through race, white privilege, and racial righteousness. “Thought you had all the answers to rest your heart upon…Now you’re out there swimming in the deep, in the deep…shed your pride and you climb to heaven and you throw yourself off, now you’re out there spinning… living… in the deep.” Today, how do I remember Martin, my own journey, my realization that I don’t have the answers, and how God is calling me to stay ‘in the deep.’  

I took a class a few years ago on Martin, Malcolm X, and Neibuhr (looking at their interactions in American theology and life, and the school of personalism). I loved absorbing many of Martin’s sermons and speeches and learning more of the truth about his life – he was at first a convenient leader, a young (only 26 yrs old), stand-in for leadership when the Montgomery bus boycott began, the son of influential ‘daddy King’ and a PhD graduate who had debated taking an academic position before heading back to Montgomery to preach and fulfill his pastoral calling. But Martin grew; under the intense spotlight of the boycott, out of the frays of dissention within his own group and the violence pending across the nation, he drew on profound insight and spiritual maturity beyond his years to lead an entire people group to become the Civil Rights movement, using tools as diverse as strategizing, praying, non-violent action, and political pressure to a world that was almost always hostile. He stood up to fear, attempts to respond to racism with prejudice, violence, threats, demeaning treatment, imprisonment, and a luke-warm church reaction (from many non-blacks) to march toward the vision, the dream that God asked him to follow. He used theology, study on non-violent resistance from Ghandi, keen understanding of community organizing, his congregation, preaching, a formed group (SCLC), sheer commitment, marching, singing, prison demonstrations, and he worked with anyone of any race who believed in overcoming racism and prejudice. I have often wondered, what deeper reality within Martin’s own spiritual life grounded him to be able to tell hundreds of demonstrators, “When they come at you with the hose, don’t fight back; when they call you names and spit on you, drop to your kness and pray for them.” What let him continue to preach and lead with death threats on his head, after bombs were lobbed into his home while his children slept inside?

Our professor stated that ultimately, all of his many accolades and accomplishments fell second to that fact that Martin was a pastor, a leader of a people who looked to the Word and to the promise of Christ’s kingdom. The power behind the movement was a faith so strong it made Martin give away his financial compensation (even his payment for winning the Nobel Peace Prize), it attracted whites and blacks together to join and be part of the struggle, and it changed the church and America forever. Martin was not perfect, but he was someone that let God use him powerfully and as a result, is the 4th person ever to have a ‘day’ named after him as a holiday.                           

I like to think that I mostly understand race, whiteness, and all the related issues. I can feel fairly comfortable with where I am when I look at the books I’ve read, the friendships I’ve made, the advocacy I engage in, and the cultural awareness I seem to have