I honestly can’t tell you the full range of my emotions right now. Having just returned home from the Martin Luther King Jr. Tribute, I am overwhelmed.

The evening began fine enough, dinner with old friends and new, white and black. I saw simple graces exchanged; a smile from a black man to a white man, a firm handshake, sharing desserts. I reminded myself not to drift back into comfortable conversation with my white friends, but that this was a dinner that was for cultivating all relationships.

We met in a church’s lobby for dinner, then moved into their auditorium for a presentation. We began in worship, with voices from nearly every tongue, tribe, and race in Abilene, TX. It was a picture of Revelation 7, where all people come together under their love for a common Father. Powerful. Videos of King’s life and dream were presented. I promise you: if I listened to his words every day, my whole world would fall apart and a new, vibrant world of God would emerge.

Martin Luther King had a dream, but 40 years ago today, someone killed the dreamer. He was assassinated in Memphis, TN while calling for worker rights. He was shot in the jaw; as if to silence his mouth from uttering another word. But his dream lives on. His words can still be heard - they were heard again tonight.

King “had been to the Mountaintop,” and he had pointed to the Promised Land - a land where all peoples could live in harmony together. But we as a country and as a world have spent the last 40 years in the wilderness.

We did not believe his dream. Like so many prophets before him, King was silenced by a doubter, and we listened to the lies of the mob rather than the passionate cries of the preacher.

Our schools and churches are more segregated now than they were 40 years ago. They are filled with more fear and hate than they were 40 years ago. And maybe worst of all, King’s message has message has been tamed, and his memory is confined to the naming of bridges and streets - many of which subtly demarcate boundaries of class and race.

We now stand after 40 years in the wilderness at the edge of the Promised Land. Much like the Israelites, we have seen a generation pass since Dr. King’s blood mixed with the blood of Christ’s in the pool of martyrs and saints. Where is our courage? What are our next steps? Where do we go from here? Can we have the courage to go where Dr. King was leading us? Knowing that his path led to his death? When will we have the dream so clearly in our minds, that it won’t matter if we see that dream realized alive or dead? How can we non-violently resist the principalities and powers that assail our nation, our communities, our own selves?

One of my fellow graduate students, Kavian, (the only black male in the GST,) spoke at the Tribute. His words were bold and provocative. They tore at my heart. I repented of participating in a system of sin that is so completely fused into our society. I begged the Lord for forgiveness, and feeling his intimate love, asked him for the power to seek only peace in the midst of a world of swords. Afterward I approached Kavian, who was speaking with a black student I had met a few days earlier. Feeling the move of the Spirit, I asked their forgiveness, got down on my knees, and told them I was so proud to be considered their brother in Christ. Tears welled up in my eyes, and theirs.

I write these words to proclaim God’s power. Outside of anything we could’ve accomplished on our own power, God’s dream (spoken through King) was spied by my heart for just a moment tonight. If it cannot start tonight, it will never start. We can’t wait for another Martin Luther King Jr. The revolution of love must continue in you, in me, and continue in all of us.

Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day; for most the first chance to fire up the grill after December snows. For others, a chance to stand up to current injustices and pronounce a new Kingdom economy in the United States of America.

In Abilene, there is a large bridge that crosses HWY 80 over a large, undeveloped, wooded lot. Nearby there is an abandoned energy plant with busted windows, teetering smoke stacks, and weed-smothered fences. I know that about 350 homeless frequent this “Hobo Jungle” as the locals call it. Many of its inhabitants are children. A little village of the mentally ill, socially discarded, and abused live right underneath and around one of the busiest bridges in the city.

This bridge has two names:
1. The Martin Luther King Jr. Bridge
2. The “Singing Bridge”

Why the “Singing Bridge”? It got this nickname because of the rivets in the street to help drain the rainwater off the bridge. These rivets, as tires drive over them, create a “hum” that sounds eerily like a choir of human voices singing.

What in all of this might God be saying to his people in Abilene? What obvious (or unfortunately, not so obvious) connection might there be in these circumstances?

MLK was a saint - “an incarnated capsule of the Kingdom” that I talk about in this post - I imagine his cries for freedom and justice and equality in this land, and I mourn. I see such devastating prejudice, such insurmountable inequality, and I wonder if MLK failed completely. I wonder if anyone can see or is willing to do anything about the irony of the situation on HWY 80’s “Singing Bridge”.

On Martin Luther King Day, how will we spend it? I know that every year there is a small parade that march across the MLK bridge. Maybe I’ll go this year. Only maybe I won’t just walk over the top of the bridge, but head down underneath it - and meet someone new…maybe Martin Luther King himself.

Last night was an amazing time of intergenerational “discernment of the Body”.

One of our great friends here in town, Karen, had invited us to meet with her church family because Father had moved her to pray for the people in the state of Texas. Trina and I are always looking for excuses to hang out with Karen and her husband Kent (my prof and mentor), so we asked our church to come along with us.

The conversation was incredible. Meeting with several older couples was very enriching to our group. After some time of solid prayer and singing (how long has it been since our church has done any a cappella singing?) Kent mentioned that it might be a good time to hear what we have been hearing from the Spirit in our own lives…then he corrected himself and said we really need to share what we’d heard from him, since it edifies the whole Body…then pausing, he said, “so you’d jolly-well BETTER NOT hold back!” with a smile on his face. That really got the conversation rolling.

While we came to focus on the state of Texas, we found ourselves moving toward issues of climate change and how industrialized nations are “raping the earth” in their quest for economic prosperity and political supremacy. The utilization of fossil fuels has allowed nations like the United States to live on the “high hog”, careening through a lifestyle that capitalizes on resources that have been building on this planet for millions of years, and tearing through the majority of them in just the last 100. One man said that as he was flying home from Europe two weeks ago, he looked down on Greenland, once a huge sheet of solid ice, now has massive blue lakes all over its surface. This fresh water is boring down through fissures in the ice and becoming a lubricant for the ice on top to slide into the warm ocean. He went on to say that for the first time in recorded history, Antarctica’s peninsula failed to connect to the larger ice formation last year, meaning we have reached a threshold that is now impossible to recross.

The times they are a changin’.

As we talked about our earth, and the greedy lifestyle of so many industrialized nations, I just kept getting a picture of the Prodigal Son. For years he has lived “high hog”, blowing his inheritance on reckless living, and now he (we) are just beginning to wake up, staring down at the bottom of an empty trough, wondering how we got here.

“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it,” the LORD said to a riotous Israel. I believe we as a nation are hearing these words afresh.

I guess you could say I feel sort of jipped. I mean, what do I say to generations who went before us, who put personal wealth before their call to nurture the earth? My theology of creation has shifted.  No longer will I simply “have dominion” over the earth.  Being a follower of Christ for me now is inextricably linked with a nurturing relationship to the Earth.  With everything that I have in me, I want to pray for and protect “sister earth”.

A prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

The Canticle of the Creatures

Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord,

All praise is Yours, all glory, honor and blessings.

To you alone, Most High, do they belong;

no mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your Name.

We praise You, Lord, for all Your creatures,

especially for Brother Sun,

who is the day through whom You give us light.

And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,

of You Most High, he bears your likeness.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars,

in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

We praise You, Lord, for Brothers Wind and Air,

fair and stormy, all weather’s moods,

by which You cherish all that You have made.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Water,

so useful, humble, precious and pure.

We praise You, Lord, for Brother Fire,

through whom You light the night.

He is beautiful, playful, robust, and strong.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Earth,

who sustains us

with her fruits, colored flowers, and herbs.

We praise You, Lord, for those who pardon,

for love of You bear sickness and trial.

Blessed are those who endure in peace,

by You Most High, they will be crowned.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Death,

from whom no-one living can escape.

Woe to those who die in their sins!

Blessed are those that She finds doing Your Will.

No second death can do them harm.

We praise and bless You, Lord, and give You thanks,

and serve You in all humility.

I am reappropriating spiritual mentors in my life these days. Most of my life my list of “saints” has been tragically truncated since I grew up in a religious fellowship that shunned the idea of “sainthood” and the basics of Church history. As a child, I had heard of the Christian Calendar, but thought of days like Christmas as a day associated with Santa Claus and presents (certainly not the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ).

Recently however, I have been discovering saints like Francis of Assisi, Benedict of Nursia, and Augustine. As you know, I am never one for putting the lid on any box, so I have been starting a unwritten “list” of people that might or might not be in any denomination’s list of saints, but are nevertheless a saint in my (and the world’s) mind.

What is a saint? To me, a saint is simply a man or woman who are a incarnated capsule of the Kingdom of God. In other words, they uniquely remind me of the already/not yet reality of God’s pervasive heavenly presence.

A recent addition to my own personal list of Kingdom capsules (saints) is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He is absolutely a genius, and if you haven’t just sat and listened to some of his speeches, stop whatever it is you’re doing right now and listen to them! (Check out this and this).

King looked at the world through compassionate eyes. His relentless pursuit of a transformed society grew both from grassroots levels and from policies made in Washington. His active commitment to nonviolence in revolutions most likely reoriented the quickly devolving civil rights brawls into a respectable movement that went places and changed the nation. His “dream” for his country was spoken out of the goodness he saw in peoples’ hearts as he spoke the reality into existence with powerful words before those realities would even have a chance to take hold. In other words, much like God at creation, or a minister presiding over a wedding service, his “words created worlds”. His compassion dug deeper than simply “flinging coins to a beggar”; he believed that the world could actually become a better place for ALL, and he gave his life to that end.

King’s view of social change in the Kingdom of God:

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”    (emphasis mine)

Thus saith the KING!

This is language that points to another world; an alternative reality that is more real than the rotting and corrupt world order set before us.  We have a choice: live in the world that King describes, or continue ripping each other apart.  That is why he is a saint - he speaks and acts in a Kingdom that is still coming.  I lift him up as a fellow brother, and as a incarnate capsule of the Kingdom!

Click below for an added bonus for reading the post! ~ by my beautiful wife!