Dr. King also learned ”” and taught ”” the utter futility of being consumed by animus. In a 1963 sermon, he explained: “Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”
Though clearly on the side of the righteous, he urged magnanimity against those who had persecuted him and his people. As he wrote in his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”: “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.”
Through his total sacrifice and noble example, Dr. King, despite living less than 40 years, succeeded in his improbable quest to bring out much more of the good in this country. He didn’t just uplift one race. He uplifted the human race.
And he still does. His message, and his legacy, live on, making us better people, and this a better nation.
In the Church’s calendar of lesser feasts and fasts, the day set aside to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is April 4, the day of his murder. But his birthday, Jan. 15, may also be used for that purpose. Here is the Collect for for this day:
“Almighty God, by the hand of Moses your servant you led your people out of slavery, and made them free at last. Grant that your Church, following th example of your prophet Martin Luther King, may resist oppression in the name of your love, and may secure for all your children the blessed liberty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen”
While King was clearly inspired by the preaching of Jesus to pursue a non-violent course against racism, he was also inspired by the exmaple of Gandhi, who was in turn also inspired by Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. One of Gandhi’s closest associates was an Anglican priest, Charles F. S. Andrews, a missionary to India, who published a book on the Sermon on the Mount. King was also influenced by the 20th century African American mystic and teacher, Howard Thurman.