Feb. 19, 2017 Forum,
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
December 10, 1964
When Laura approached about what I’d like to do with this series, it didn’t take me long to choose this piece of it, with its focus on two remarkable prophets, and how two “simple” verses were woven into Dr. King’s acceptance speech.
The Peaceful Kingdom
Isaiah 11
1 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
2 The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
3 His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
6 The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
9 They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
Peace and Security through Obedience
Micah 4
1 In days to come
the mountain of the LORD’S house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised up above the hills.
Peoples shall stream to it,
2 and many nations shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
3 He shall judge between many peoples,
and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
4 but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.
5 For all the peoples walk,
each in the name of its god,
but we will walk in the name of the LORD our God
forever and ever.
*The film clip …*
Both Isaiah (the text for today) and Micah (737-696 bce) are 8th Century Prophets, a time wherein the Judean Kings were at their greatest level of power in a kingdom now divided.
After Solomon’s death, his son, Rehoboam, assumed the throne and issued a number of mean-spirited “executive orders” (1 Kings 12.6-11) and so the Kingdom split into Northern (Israel) and Southern (Judah) … ultimately the Northern Kingdom fell to Assyria (722 bce) and the Southern, or Judah, fell to Babylon (587 bce) and led to the “Babylonia Captivity.”
The Northern and Southern Kingdoms were often enemies and combatants. After Israel’s fall (the remnant of which was know in the New Testament as Samaritans (treated by the Jews {Judeans} as half-breeds and spiritually defective).
Jesus, himself, from the “northern” area, while not a Samaritan, was still considered an outsider to the true land of Judah that saw itself as the pure expression of faith and blood.
By the time of the 8th Century, Israel was gone, so the prophets in our purview are directing their thoughts to the Southern Kingdom, i.e. Judah and its capital city, Jerusalem.
The prophets grew in influence as the kings/queens grew in power, along with their religious support staff (ha!) … the prophets challenged the kings/queens and the priestly guild of Jerusalem, with all of its pomp and circumstance and its enormous wealth (certainly the case which Jesus addresses time and again). The prophets were bold, frequently in trouble, accused of treason and heresy, suggesting that if Judah continued on its way, it would all end badly.
Yet the prophets also looked to better days … days of peace and prosperity … the peaceable kingdom wherein opposing realities would come together and people were no longer prepping for war, but for peace, and would thus experience a great sense of safety and comfort - not just psychologically or spiritually, but materially, with everyone enjoying their own figs and vines.
All of this and more was in the mind and heart of Dr. King, a man of the Bible, engaged intelligently (as opposed to ideologically, or literally) with the text, and with theologians who tackled the vast social questions and systemic systems of the day, as well as the personal matters that so occupied evangelicalism (i.e. swearing, drinking, dancing, smoking, card playing, theater attendance) … on these good thinkers, like Paul Tillich, Dr. King built his ideas, his resistance and his blueprint for a just society, upon their work, and that of the Prophets, and the Prophet we honor in life and faith, Jesus of Nazareth.
Gandhi, and others, too, were influential … those who worked for peace, but never at the expense of justice, those who saw life in all of its wholeness … and for his work, Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and for his work, his faith, his vision, we honor him today.
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