What Would Martin Say?

By Aleeda Crawley

On my first trip abroad, I met a Hungarian woman, Marta, in Paris; she and I continued to correspond for many years, and finally I persuaded my travel buddy Michelle to take a trip with me to Budapest. Marta spoke very little English, and I spoke very little French, and no Hungarian. Over the years, her husband translated my letters for her, and Michelle and I, having misunderstood a dinner invitation joined them for our second dinner one evening. We talked about the U.S., and the flow of many East Germans into Budapest, anticipating the fall of the Berlin wall. Over dessert her husband leaned back and said, “So, you are from Harlem? As it turned out, neither Michelle I lived in Harlem at the time, and we explained that all black Americans did not live in Harlem. We still laugh about t hat evening to this day. Stereotypes make it easy to understand the world, but they make for a humorous and sometimes dangerous shorthand.

I often see bracelets and bumper stickers with the letters WWJD, standing for What Would Jesus Do? In a lot in Maplewood Village, I’ve seen a strange twist on this question: Who would Jesus bomb? My question today is yet another version: what would Martin say? Here’s what Martin said: “the most segregated hour in America is 11 a.m. on Sunday morning.” In my personal experience, I would add to that any hour in barber shops, beauty salons, country clubs, board rooms. I don’t doubt that Dr. King would see this church as progress--seeing how far our nation has come, but I think he would be shocked at how far we still have to go. Maplewood/South Orange is one of only five communities in the U.S. where integration is visible on a block-to-block basis, and we are an anomaly in the fourth-most segregated state in the union. Within a few miles of this church there are marginalized citizens who do not have access to affordable housing, quality education, or basic healthcare. Within a few feet of my voice, there are friends who are denied the right to marry, which may seem frivolous to those of us whose partners are not denied insurance benefits, hospital visitations, or public displays of affection.

Dr. King is celebrated, and rightly so, as a civil rights leader. Unfortunately, so many people have characterized his work as being on behalf of African Americans, and this is a gross oversimplification. Dr. King was a human rights leader, speaking in favor of social justice for ALL people, and in favor of peaceful conflict resolution. He spoke of economic inequality, of a debilitating poverty that ultimately will impoverish everyone. The world seems so much more complex than it did 50 years ago. Still I looked at Dr. King’s words as I was preparing my homily, and believe that had he lived 3,000 years ago, like Isaiah, he would have been called a prophet. Today’s old Testament reading, with just a few changes, might have been spoken by him: For America's sake I will not keep silent, and for Washington’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch. If he were living today, he would be considered a visionary. His ideas are as powerful and valid now as they were to his audiences in the middle of the last century.

In a 1967 rally speech in Montgomery Dr. King asked the question: Are we really making any progress? He described three attitudes leading to different answers on the question. In it I saw that these attitudes haven’t changed, whether we are discussing race, or poverty, or human rights. The extreme optimist argues we’ve come a long, way, and society has just about solved these problems. The extreme pessimist says we’ve not seen meaningful progress; we’ve created more problems than we’ve solved because our flawed human nature cannot be changed. Dr. King concluded that both these arguments had one thing in common; they both led people to do nothing to change, one side because the work is done, the other because it cannot be completed.

Clarence Clark, a fellow parishioner, once told me that it was very strange coming to NYC from the south. In the south, the demarcation was clear; you knew where you could go, and where you would not be welcome. In NYC the lines were never so clearly drawn. I never understood, until I was older, why my parents resisted my frequent requests to “come on over” to Palisades Park as they invited us to do on those radio jingles. A post-civil rights era, young Yankee girl does not always recognize the slights of discrimination. As you get older, you notice awkward silences when you enter a room and NYC taxicabs passing you by in the evening. Martin said there is a third attitude, the realist: “The realist seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites while avoiding the extremes of both.” The two conclusions are not mutually exclusive. Martin would say the realist understands we have come a long way since Clarence’s days in NYC but we still have some way to go in Aleeda’s time.

Dr. King stated that the realist, unlike the pessimist and the optimist had the responsibility to do something about righting a wrong. He said it many different ways: ‘Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.’, and ‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” A couple of years ago, I was asked to be on the nominating committee of an African American group I belonged to. We had chosen someone who was highly qualified for the office and was in every way just like her predecessors, with one exception: she was white. On the day of the election, another African American member not only asked the chosen candidate not to run for that office, but had the temerity to ask her to consider a lesser office. This member saw no wrong in doing this, but I was appalled, and left the group. I expressed my disappointment, asking if it was 1957 or 2007. The candidate, in her graciousness, did run for the lesser office, and was elected. I’m here to say today that racism is not dead, presidential elections notwithstanding, nor is discrimination limited to a particular group. I’ve heard it said that one type of discrimination is not the same as others. I’ve heard the bible quoted in support of some of these discriminations. Martin said: “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” I remind all of these folks that the bible was used for hundreds of years to support the morality of slavery. Separate but equal is always more separate and less equal. Discrimination is immoral and unjust, and on this Martin was clear: ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’

We substituted today’s New Testament reading for the words of Dr. King, but part of today’s Epistle is truly appropriate for the celebration of Dr. King. 1 Corinthians says: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. When I look out at you, I do not see black, white, Hispanic, Asian, straight, gay, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, agnostic, atheist, Democrat, Republican, young or old. I see mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters…friends. We are different, but the humanity that links us is more powerful than all the labels we use to divide us. More powerful than nationality, race or religion. More powerful than sexual orientation, gender or class.

In times of natural disaster, we look more like the world Dr. King would have wanted. We suspend our divisions and work together on a common task . The earthquake that struck Haiti this week brought me to tears. They were the same as the tears I shed when I watched the World Trade Towers collapse, when I saw the devastation of the tsunami in Asia, when I watched people waving for help from their rooftops in New Orleans. My horror turned to anger when hearing Pat Robertson condemn the victims as receiving a punishment they deserve. How wonderfully convenient to see the world as sinner and saved. Pat Robertson does not speak for me or my God, does not reflect my kind of Christianity. I want to tell Pat Robertson that I believe Dr. King would be ashamed of him and his lack of compassion for the suffering of another human. I also believe that Martin would say: Put aside your anger. Pray for Pat Robertson. Do whatever you can to ease the suffering of the Haitian people.

This world unity soon fades, and we slowly slip back into our old –isms and phobias. I have often thought the only time when we will abandon our tendency to see differences in each other is when some powerful alien attacks Earth, determined to annihilate the human race. The alien won’t ask how you voted, what your nationality is, who you slept with or what God you worshiped. They will unfortunately possess the unity humans have abandoned.

Martin thought that Jesus’ most important lesson was "Love your enemies." He said: "There’s another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. You begin hating somebody, and you will begin to do irrational things. You can’t see straight when you hate. You can’t walk straight when you hate. You can’t stand upright. Your vision is distorted. There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate. If you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. If you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption."

Martin’s book Where do we Go from Here? Chaos or Community?, published posthumously, contains a powerful essay, The World House, in which he writes: “We have inherited a large house, a great "world house" in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.” He continues: “Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, too late." I hope it’s not too late for us and our children, and our children’s children. Sometimes, when hearing or seeing how creative mankind can be in its divisiveness man I fear that it is too late. I see dismissive labels and stereotypes that give people permission to denigrate, deny and defame the humanity of people seen as “other”. What sustains me is those glimmers of proof that may not be too late. My parents grew up in an America where they could not live, eat or shop where they chose; where they could not vote freely, where opportunities for higher education were limited, where their lives could be threatened for some imagined slight. My dad never lived to see an African American elected President of the United States. I could not have imagined peace in Ireland, or a post-apartheid South Africa in my lifetime. Who could have predicted that Iowa would offer their gay citizens the right to marry before we saw such legislation passed in NY or NJ? The Red Cross raised $9MM within 72 hours following the Haitian earthquake. We have, for the moment, turned swords into plowshares; the military forces of several countries are there helping the people of Haiti. The outreach of support and aid has been as rapid as the destruction. I could not have predicted it, but Dr. King wrote of such things: This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This often misunderstood and misinterpreted concept has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man.

We have a responsibility to love everyone, and ultimately to forsake the idea of enemies versus allies, of them versus us, of inferior versus superior, of any type of OTHER. We are one, connected not by those things which separate us, but the one thing that is within us all, no matter how scarred: our humanity. We simply cannot survive as a species if we continue to identify people as “other”. There is a Cherokee proverb: One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked, "Which wolf wins?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed." To this I can only think Dr King would say: let the church say Amen.

© 2010 Aleeda Crawley