This weekend is Martin Luther King Jr’s remembrance.
In his famous Letter from the Birmingham Jail, which he wrote more than six decades ago, Martin Luther King Jr. responded to white ministers who asked him to slow down and not press so insistently and stubbornly for equality and justice. “Can’t you be patient?” the ministers asked King.
He wrote,
“when you are forever fighting a denigrating sense of “nobodiness,” then you will understand [why we can’t wait].”
At the heart of Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership of the civil rights movement was not only a passion for social and political justice based on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but a deeply held theological conviction, a deeply held biblical truth, that human beings—every human being, regardless of color, race, station in life, nationality, income, sexual orientation—every human being is a child of God, everyone called by name, Precious, Beloved.
In this sermon , I contend that it takes the silence of good people for evil to thrive. The grace of God , however, that came to Jesus in baptism comes to each of us, whoever we are, and confers on us worth, value, identity, and dignity deeper in us than anything the world can confer or deny. We are precious in God’s eyes .
Dr. Willy L Mafuta,
Senior Pastor,
Hopewell United Methodist Church, Hopewell, NJ 08525