My highlight today is dedicated to one of the heroes in my life – Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, a Baptist minister who died on April 4, 1968 at a young age of 39. How ironic, 1968 was the year I was born and 39 is now my age…err hitting the big 40 later this year! We independent-thinking modern women who don’t wear high heels (haha!), need not hide our age lah. The more important question is, how have we impact people’s lives or the community we live in during the prime of our lives?
Contemplative thoughts aside, King’s efforts in disbanding racism at policy as well as cultural levels, brought about God’s Kingdom of justice and righteousness on earth and literally in Christ’s words’ “setting the captives free.” Like Christ himself, King’s life was a sacrifice for the community as well as for the generations ahead of him who could now enjoy equal rights in the land.
Two years ago, during a tour to the Martin Luther King’s Centre in Atlanta on the Religion and Society Exchange Trip sponsored by Asia Foundation, I saw photographs of King and protestors who went on peaceful marches despite police beating them up, with some badly injured and bleeding. They DID NOT retaliate or hit back. It was a painful sight. King learned the peaceful demonstration methods from Ghandi, who himself although not a Christian, was inspired by Jesus’ non-violent way of getting justice done.
My pastor, who happened to have mentioned about King in his preaching this morning said that people remembered King’s remarkable preaching on the need to love our enemies, expounded from Matthew 5: 43-48 (You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even the pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect.)
King’s life itself was a testimony of Christ’s love. Even when people tried to kill him, or when his own people betrayed him, he forgave them. (His background is at the end of this page.) In a world where professional killers are hired to gun down enemies and terrorists bombing whom they considered as enemies, Christ call for love for all, including our enemies, is the only way to heal the world. Loving one’s enemy is impossible unless the Divine is sought.
To return evil for good is devilish, to return good for good is human, but to return good for evil is divine was aptly described in the sermon.
During the trip I mentioned earlier, Dr Drew Smith, director of the Public Influences of African-American Churches Project at Morehouse College in Atlanta, explained to us the role of the African American churches in leading the civil rights movement. It began in the 1900s and peak in the 1950s and most protests took place in the south eastern part of the US, especially Montgomery, where King held peaceful demonstrations.
Interestingly, the support from the churches for the civil rights movement were only 10% while most were more interested in evangelising rather than be involved in social activism. Nevertheless, those involved were a main force in the struggle, with other social organisations joining in, said Drew.
Looking at the changes that have been going on in the country, Malaysians may not need to go through such painful history in order to achieve a more just society. It seems to be taking place gradually ever since March 8, and I hope that it will continue if we want to see the country reconstructed into something better.
King’s background:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html
Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of 15; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.In 1954, Martin Luther King accepted the pastorale of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement. On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment