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As the kids lined up at the Communion table, I introduced our Children's Ministry Moment to the congregation:
"I believe how we tell history, especially to children, is important. This weekend, as we celebrate our nation's hero, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it may be tempting to condense the breadth of his life and work to the famous words, "I have a dream." But when we reduce this great man to a dreamer, we neglect to remember all he did and said for the here and now. We forget what he challenged not just the nation but the Church to be and do. Today we'll share part of his Letter from Birmingham Jail -- words that are difficult to hear, but that I hope we will hear with an open mind and a ready spirit."
Then the children presented this speech I adapted
from The Year They Walked by Beatrice Siegel and Letter
from Birmingham Jail by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I've shortened just a few sentences from MLK's excerpts; mainly the punctuation has been simplified for the children's ease of reading (fewer quotation marks and no ellipses). In our preparations the previous week, we talked about any vocabulary that was unfamiliar to them and they tackled it all with grace and persistence.
R: As a young minister, Reverend King was patient and cared for the needs of his church. His deep passion for social issues had not yet been tapped, but he knew some things for certain.
A: He wanted freedom and justice for all African-Americans.
M: He also knew that violence was not an answer to their problems. Violence was not the way of God.
L: But Reverend King’s nonviolence was not passive. He was patient, but also persistent. He did not believe in waiting for justice and equality to come in their own time.
I: Some ministers and rabbis said they believed in justice and equality, too, but that Reverend King was going about it the wrong way. They wanted to wait until a more “convenient” time. Reverend King wrote a letter to them from jail.
M: You spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergy would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. But as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist.
L: Was not Jesus an extremist in love? “Love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Pray for them that despitefully use you.”
A: Was not Amos an extremist for justice? “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I: So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?
R: There was a time when the church was very powerful. Early Christians suffered and sacrificed for what they believed. The power structure convicted them for being “disturbers of the peace.” But they went on with the conviction that they had to obey God. They were small in number but big in commitment.
L: Things are different now. The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo.
M: Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s often vocal sanction of things as they are.
I: If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for [this] century. I meet young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust.
A: I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour.
