Here is the Homily I used for the day:
The central
element to Martin Luther King Jnr’s philosophy was his belief in a divine loving
presence that bound all life together.
This belief was behind all of his quests to eliminate social evil, and
what he referred to when he preached of “the interrelated structure of reality”
in one of his sermons.
He said:
“all [of us] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a
single garment of destiny. Whatever
affects one [person] directly, affects all indirectly.
I can never
be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be
what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.”
His wife
wrote in 1981, “Even the most intractable evils of our world – the triple evils
of poverty, racism and war … – can only be eliminated by non-violent
means. And the wellspring for the
eradication of even these most economically, politically and socially
entrenched evils is the moral imperative to love.”
She goes on
in her forward to “Strength to Love”, a collection of Martin’s sermons, to
quote Martin in explanation of this:
“When I speak of love I am not speaking of
some sentimental and weak response. I am
speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen in the
unifying principle of life. Love is
somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist
belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first Epistle of
Saint John: “Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth
is born of God and knoweth God.”
The world we
live in today is just as much in need of this dream, this vision of mutuality
and commonwealth, as the world into which Martin Luther King Jnr spoke 50 years
ago.
This is not
to say that nothing has been achieved for the better in those years. Certainly not. Much has been achieved, even to the extent of
the American people electing a black man to be President not just once, but
twice.
But there is
still an enormous amount of social disadvantage based on racial grounds both in
the USA and our own country, Australia.
As Coretta Scott King observed “the triple evils of poverty, racism and
war [things which are at the heart of social disadvantage] … [are so]
economically, politically and socially entrenched” that they will only be
eradicated when we take seriously this radical imperative to love.
We are very
much aware of the effect of pressure on housing stocks of our mining boom years
that has made affordable housing something meaningless to the poor. Homelessness is an epidemic of our time for
far too many.
We are very
much aware of the structural inequality that keeps the marginalised – our
indigenous and refugee people – in the lowest paid jobs if they are able to get
work at all.
We are very
much aware of the life-expectancy and health outcomes gap that exists between
most of us and our indigenous brothers and sisters.
When we say
these things we are talking about the lives of real people – people who for the
most part are invisible to the policy makers and politicians of our day.
They will
only become visible as we are able to mobilise a view in our society that our
well-being is inextricably linked to their well-being. We are unable to be the best that we can be
if we have failed to enable these to be the best that they can be.
This is at
the heart of the dream, but where are the dreamers and idealists of our day?
Where are
the protest singers of our time, challenging the new frontiers of disadvantage
that asylum-seekers will be condemned to, as well as the entrenched frontiers
of poverty and disadvantage and lower life-expectancy of our indigenous people?
There is
still much to be done.
Martin
Luther King III speaking at the World Council of Churches’ International
Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Jamaica in May 2011 was asked to address the
topic of “affirming the dignity and rights of all and nurturing values of
mutuality and interdependence.”
He said,
“Today, as we strive to affirm the dignity and rights of all people, many
tenacious forms of discrimination continue to undermine human rights.
“There is still racial discrimination. There is still discrimination based on religion, nationality, age, gender and sexual orientation.”
“There is still racial discrimination. There is still discrimination based on religion, nationality, age, gender and sexual orientation.”
He sees the
beginnings of our ability to dismantle this entrenched discrimination and
disadvantage in affirming the importance of cooperation and connectedness. We have lost sight of these over these past
50 years as we have glorified competition and individualism.
On our
political stage we rarely hear the term “commonwealth” – I sometimes hear the
phrase “common good” in the prayers of the people in my Anglican church – and
most public policy is framed in terms of how much the average punter will think
is in it for them.
Another term
we have lost, perhaps because of its gender bias, is “brotherhood”. This term speaks of more than our common
humanity – our brothers and sisters are those who are most closely related to
us biologically, and perhaps we have been very good at looking after “our own”,
as some might say. In reality, though,
we need to begin thinking of all other human beings – and some might even say
all of creation – as our kin, our relatives, our biological family and to love
one another accordingly.
I am not
underestimating how hard this will be – for ourselves individually as well as
as a nation. That is perhaps why we need good protest songs to sum it all up
for us. That is why we will need some
good moral leadership that can challenge the systems of power. That is why we all need a dream of what could
be.
