Listen Again, with the Fierce Urgency of Now
Several years ago, members of the Presbytery lent their voices to bring life to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”
Three score and two years ago when Dr. King first delivered it, it marked the zenith of a gathering of a quarter-million people at the Lincoln Memorial in support of Civil Rights. In soaring rhetoric, King invoked the values of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and challenged the nation to live up to what the founders put down on paper.
Two thousand years ago, the first followers of the same Jesus Dr. King followed, forged an identity through scripture and witness. They incarnated a covenant community of love and justice in the Lord’s name that we also claim as Christians.
This weekend, we commemorate Dr. King’s birthday in the year of our nation’s 250th anniversary. Providentially, we find ourselves living in the very city where those founding national documents were crafted, seeking to live out our Christian faith in such a time and place as this.
As we struggle with what it means to embody our citizenship in both the kin-dom of God and this nation, we invite you to listen again to Dr. King’s speech through the voices of our colleagues in ministry.
Listen, and then speak – through your actions as well your words – the gospel of the Prince of Peace, with all the energy, intelligence, imagination, and most importantly, love God has granted you.
