Amos 5:18-24
If you're ever in Atlanta, and you've never been, you owe it to yourself to visit the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in the heart of the city.
A word of warning, however: the Memorial is in a rough neighborhood. At least when I lived there in the late 90's, it was not an area you'd want to wander after dark. Every once in a while, you'd hear some German tourists got mugged down there.
It wasn't always that way. When King grew up around the corner from where he lies now, it was a solidly bourgeois neighborhood. For many years, Auburn Avenue was the center of America's black middle class. In the 70's, the area took a nose dive, along with the rest of downtown Atlanta. The 80's brought crack, and in the 90's, the King family finally moved Mother Coretta out, in part due to safety concerns. A short hop from the King Center is Grady Memorial Hospital, which treats the vast majority of the city's gunshot wounds.
The
MLK National Historical Center sprawls across seven city blocks, and involves parts of others. At one end is King's boyhood home and the Center that continues his legacy.
Across the street is a visitor's center and a modest Civil Rights museum. At the end of the block is Ebenezer Baptist, still a functioning church. In fact, in the 90's, it outgrew its original home, and built a new one across the street. They share the historic sanctuary with the Park Service now; it's mostly used for tours these days, but the congregation still holds services there occasionally.
Not too far away in one direction is the Carter Center. A long walk in the other will take you to First Congregational UCC, Andrew Young's home church (and one of the places I attended in seminary).
The Historical Center is not much to look at, and actually is something of a misnomer. The emphasis in this district is decidedly on the work that remains to be done, especially in this neighborhood. Part of the reason Ebenezer Baptist expanded was to provide better facilities for its outreach programs. A large Catholic congregation provides free parochial schooling to families in need. The King Center itself stresses its ongoing work.
But it's the tomb that everyone wants to see, with its stepped fountain framed by a moving quote from the prophet Amos: "let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."
It was a favorite of King's; he used in his Letters from the Birmingham Jail, among other places.
But perhaps its finest setting in King's preaching was in his "I've Been To The Mountaintop" sermon, delivered the night before his death, when he declared:
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now. Because I've 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. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! 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!
This comes from a man whose house had been bombed, who talks in the same speech about being a sneeze away from death by a stab wound, whose life had been threatened probably more times than anyone could count. He lived in Amos' world, where the day of the Lord is darkness, not light, where
It is darkness, not light;
19as if someone fled from a lion,
and was met by a bear;
or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall,
and was bitten by a snake.
And yet,
King had warned in previous sermons that he might die before the struggle ended. It was not the first time he told listeners he'd "seen the promised land." King had been living with death threats for years. No one in King's circle thought this was his final address. Later, Young wrote: "Did [King] know? He always knew some speech would be his last. Was he afraid? Not on your life!"
Young said the next day was one of King's happiest. "Surrounded by his brother, his staff and close friends of the movement," Young wrote, "he laughed and joked all day until it was time to go to dinner at 6 PM." King stepped onto the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel, checking the weather to decide whether to bring a coat. As he leaned over the railing, talking with Jesse Jackson and others below, King was fatally shot.
I think about this in these evil days. Just as when King preached in Memphis, our country faces an enormous amount of work to do. As Armando says on the front page this morning, it is "criminal behavior that has led us to one of the most precarious strategic positions the country has faced since the end of the Cold War." It will take decades to recover from the damage that has been done in Iraq. It will take decades, most likely, to recover from the unnecessary damage done in New Orleans. It will take decades to recover from the cronyism and corruption that have perverted the economy. It will take an entire generation to recover from the lies, manipulations, and thuggery that have marked this administration's political agenda.
I read Dr. King's Mountaintop sermon, and I am struck by how much of what he points out is social phenomena, and by comparison how much can be laid at the feet of one group of people these days. I am sorry for that. It is not partisanship that leads me there, but the awful knowledge that a nation that seemed to be on the course of justice has undertaken a sharp and painful reversal in these five years. Had President Bush capitalized on the spirit present after 9/11, had he and his administration "been true to what they said on paper," to paraphrase King, he could have gone down in history as one of the great Chief Executives.
As it is, he will go down as one of the worst. And the people of Auburn Avenue still need help.
We need to keep the issue where it belongs, as King says. The issue is injustice. Injustice for the poor, injustice for the victims of an illegal and immoral war, injustice for Valerie Plame, injustice for all those who have been hoodwinked, taken advantage of, or just plain ignored by this administration.
God will not be satisfied until justice is done, and neither should we.
But at the same time, let us not forget the other side of Amos' call: let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. That righteousness is not adherence to a code of moral (read sexual) purity, but the establishment of right relationship, where the lion can lay down with the lamb in peace, where plenty for some does not mean want for the many, and where all people know the grace and mercy of the Lord. It means a world in which the self-sacrifice of a person like Martin Luther King is no longer exceptional, but where all live for all and in all.
We seem to be very far from that kind of world. We seem to live in days of darkness and gloom, when the end is very near.
I wonder if anyone has the strength or the courage to live as though this were not the case? Could I live as King did, in the joyful knowledge that the next day could be my last? Could I live knowing that my death by violence was almost an inevitability?
Could I live that way, knowing that that is what was required?
My friends, the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Center is an amazing place, and it is a must-see in Atlanta. But it is not, and never should have been, a necessary place. If we are to live in a world where Dr. King's work is finally completed, where there is no poverty, no racism, no war; if we are to live in a world where our nation is returned to us and is governed according to the interests of all, it will have to be by our stepping forward without worry about anything, without fear of any man. We will have to face the darkness squarely, with the vision of the promised land before us, and the knowledge that we too may not make there with you.