text as you blend the end of one sentence into the next with unforgettable linking refrains—I believe that the Spirit was upon you, inspiring those who came to you hoping for justice, but hesitating to believe that it was possible. I must also confess a more humorous jealousy of your ability to elicit exultant choruses of “Amen!” and “Yessir!” and “Go on!” from your congregations. Simply put, Catholic priests can’t preach like Baptist ministers, and the Catholic faithful just don’t contract the same Sunday morning fever that your choirs and churchgoers do!
Your dream of justice and equality for black Americans, and of a country capable of holding hands together and sitting at the table of brotherhood, galvanized millions into peaceful action. That action, coupled with its righteous request, pricked the nation’s conscience. No one doubts your singular role in startling our beloved nation out of its racist slumber and gaining for blacks across our land the right to use the same drinking fountains, restaurants, and hotels as whites, to vote, and to attend college as anyone else in America. Your life, so filled with what once seemed impossible dreams, was stopped when an assassin’s bullet woke you to the eternal now of God’s reality. Your cause, however, moved on, and many spoke of the election of an African-American President in 2008 as the crowning achievement of your movement.
But I write to you now, Dr. King, at another pivotal, and even perilous, moment in the history of our great nation. If anyone dared presume that America had successfully purged itself of the leprosy of racism in the decades following your death, they would be sadly mistaken. In recent years, the deaths of several African-American men at the hands of white police officers across the country have reignited the wrath of the black community, and outraged all peaceful Americans. The immediate availability of video allows everyone to judge the reactions of the police officers for themselves, and charges of widespread prejudice in some police departments have led to the formation of demonstrations to protest these abuses.
During one such protest in my own city of Dallas, Dr. King, a vocal but peaceful march was stopped by a madman’s bullets. The shooter, a black man incensed by the deaths of black men at the hands of police, targeted police officers who were protecting the Black Lives Matter protestors marching against the displays of police brutality. He killed five of them before he himself was cut down. The shock of these cold-blooded murders prompted an outpouring of sorrow and support for the Dallas Police Department. The police chief, Sergeant David Brown, was a stoic and resolute leader in the days following. He calmly challenged those who desire change to find constructive ways of doing so, and I pray that his words will have their desired effect.
In the aftermath of this tragedy, Dr. King, I turned to the words of your most famous speeches in the hope of finding the proper response to such horrific violence. While you would rightly sympathize with the anger generated by the injustices perpetrated by some police officers, you would categorically reject any recourse to bloody retaliation. Leaders like yourself are desperately needed now, men and women who are learned and patient, who walk on the high plain of dignity and discipline, and channel righteous rage toward constructive, not destructive, ends.
I believe that your Letter from Birmingham City Jail is essential reading by all people, regardless of color, if we hope to overcome this latest manifestation of racial hatred. What I admire most about this letter is how calmly you set forth your argument. They are words of peace, but written with a sword for a pen. You do not sugarcoat any of the injustices you experienced in the hope of placating “prudent” men who urged you to passivity, and you certainly attack the reluctance of white church leaders to associate themselves with your efforts. The Christian gospel, given to all nations, is by nature blind to color. But habit and hatred, however subtle, are hard to overcome, especially when racism is sanctioned by apparently religious sentiments. There are, I’m afraid, still white congregational leaders today much like the ones you lament in your letter, ministers who are “more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.”35
That sentence reveals the bold eloquence of a preacher, but the letter as a whole reflects a profoundly learned mind reaching back to the great thinkers of the past for inspiration in the present. Allusions and precise quotations form the backbone of the letter, and the people you enlist for your argument are mighty indeed: Socrates, Gandhi, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Martin Buber, and T. S. Eliot among them. As I read your letter, I wondered whether any political or religious leader today would be capable of marshalling the support of classical authors in defense of a righteous cause, such as overcoming racism. Our preferred means of national dialogue today seems to be a rapid-fire chorus of visceral reactions punctuated by screams and bilious rants on social media. They are a far cry from the reasoned and thoroughly considered letter-writing and speech-making which made your protests so successful. I would hope that the leaders of groups such as Black Lives Matter would return to you constantly to drink at the fountain of your wisdom and foresight, and that all African-Americans, who understandably feel threatened when they see such brutal videos, would continue to be inspired by your peaceful ways of resistance.
Just days after the shootings in Dallas, I stood at the podium of my church to proclaim the gospel and deliver a homily. The reading assigned for that Sunday was the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37). I would like to share that homily with you, Dr. King, because you were the primary inspiration behind it. In fact, the first quarter of my homily is a shameless copy and paste of an unforgettable speech of yours, though I withheld your name until I finished reading the quote for dramatic effect! My goal was to encourage an examination of conscience in my hearers through the characters of the parable, and to get my congregation to ask themselves what they could do to heal the wounds caused by the recent violence. What it lacks in rousing eloquence, I hope it makes up for in honest appeal to a properly formed conscience.
July 10, 2016
Cistercian Abbey Church
“‘We use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop. At times we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to [hurry along] so they wouldn’t be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that [a priest or a Levite] engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony. And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jericho to organize a Jericho Road Improvement Association. That’s a possibility. Maybe they felt it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect.
‘But I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road . . . In the days of Jesus, it came to be known as the “Bloody Pass.” And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking, and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked, [and] the first question that the Levite asked, was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”
‘But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” . . . Jesus ended up saying this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the “I” into the “Thou,” and to be concerned about his brother.’36
“Those words I just read, dear friends in Christ, are not my own; they came from the mouth of another pastor: Martin Luther King Jr. He offered this meditation on the Good Samaritan parable near the end of his ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ speech in 1968, delivered just one day before his tragic death at the hands of a mad assassin. The Church’s liturgical calendar invites us to ponder this unforgettable parable this weekend, and I felt compelled to share Dr. King’s words with you today, just days removed from the murders of
