Appreciations: Sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today, it might do well for us to do something than argue about which Presidential candidate does or does not come closest to fulfilling his ideals (an enterprise that’s probably thankless, in any case).

What I’m talking about is doing something that seems to have gone out of fashion in an increasingly visual culture: i.e., read—in this case, his words.

Before he rose to national prominence as a civil-rights activist, and throughout his martyr’s journey from Montgomery to Memphis, Dr. King, of course, was a preacher.

Just how superbly he could summarize the lessons of the Gospel was something I learned nearly 10 years ago when I picked up a copy of A Knock At Midnight: Inspiration From The Great Sermons Of Reverend Martin Luther King.

An early sermon, “Rediscovering Lost Values,” from 1954, provides a glimpse of the pithy phrasemaking and the powerful moral vision underlying it that called hundreds of thousands to the call of equal rights over the next decade – not just in America, but all over the world:

“The trouble isn't so much that we don't know enough, but it's as if we aren't good enough. The trouble isn't so much that our scientific genius lags behind, but our moral genius lags behind. The great problem facing modern man is … that the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live.”

I discovered this in book form, at the Donnell branch of the New York Public Library. I understand now that it’s available in book-audio form. No matter in what form you experience this, however, King’s words remain today, as they were then, urgent, prophetic, and memorable. It's especially useful to read this in close conjunction with the work of another preacher-martyr of the 20th century, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Also, in one of the best op-ed pieces that The New York Times has printed in many a year, Sarah Vowell, actress-author (Assassination Vacation), delivers a masterful summary of King’s life in “Radical Love Gets a Holiday”.

This smart, opinionated, provocative piece will hardly please everyone (especially conservatives who still want to carve out a place on Mount Rushmore for Ronald Reagan). But amazingly, this self-described “culturally Christian atheist” (i.e., a Pentecostal who lost her faith in childhood) treats religious faith with something other than the condescension that has infected so many members of the mass media—most especially The New York Times itself.