THE MOST ENDURING POWER
A speech delivered by J. Keith Motley
Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Boston
at the Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts
on Sunday, January 13, 2008
Good evening to all of you. I feel honored to have been asked to speak, as well as to be able to be, at this important occasion—at a time when people throughout the nation seek to commemorate an exceptional human being and great leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his life, and his spirit.
That life, as you know, was one defined by struggles—moral, social, political, and spiritual struggles—to achieve nothing less than the transformation of the lives of individuals, of peoples, and of nations; and to affirm, without qualification in that transformation, the sisterhood of humankind and the inherent dignity of all.
Over the years since his untimely death, his “I Have a Dream” speech has taken the front seat in efforts to commemorate him; and rightly so, because that speech comprehensively looked to the past; at that past’s degradation of human promise; and at the future elevation of human beings, including the humiliated and the abased. But I would like to share with you tonight some other areas of his writings and his thought, and use as an entry to those areas a statement attributed to another great man, Jesus of Nazareth.
That statement, contained in the Book of John, Chapter 12, verse 24, says: “Truly, Truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
In one sense, influenced by the Greco-Roman view of history, as represented by the passing and return of the seasons, the author of the Book of John was representing death as one of the phases in the process of what we today call nature and nature’s rhythms of death, generativity, birth, life, and death again. The Judeo-Christian view of history, however, is not a cyclic one (although the cycle of nature is fully acknowledged and affirmed); it is one that recognizes a beginning and an end; but it is also one that envisions an eternity. There is a seed of that eternity within us—in you and me, and this is where we return to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Although he died—as all mortals do—in obedience to the cycles of biological nature, he left with us many features of his spiritual nature. Among them is “the most durable power”—a power that has eternal attributes. That power is love, and that power resides within you and me.
For centuries humans have reflected on what Aristotle called “the greatest [or the highest] good.” For some, it is justice; for others, it is beauty; and still for others, it is freedom or equality. Christianity says that the highest good is love; and for Dr. King, a devout Christian, it was not only the highest good; it was, as well, the most durable power.
That durability has its expression in many things—each deeply imbedded in the essence of love. First, one finds it in love’s dynamism and its generativity, that is, love’s capacity to give birth to, or to bring into being, something new. This capacity is part of what the author of the Book of John was talking about in the preceding quote, when he made reference to death and its association with “much fruit”—fruit resulting from death. Dr. King sought something new—in the individual, in people of color, in people at large, and in societies.
And one way in which love, the gift that keeps on giving, fulfills itself is that it demands that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. We, today, live in a society in which one’s neighbor cannot be someone of a non-Christian religion—certainly not Islam; of another country, especially if she or he is a recent immigrant or an immigrant from certain countries; or of a certain color; or of certain racial, ethnic, or linguistic backgrounds; or of certain socio-economic outlooks that manifest a rejection of the economic fundamentalist thinking called the “free market.” So tolerance is threatened, and the idea of one’s neighbor becomes so narrow and parochial (limited to someone we already know) that it bears little or no relationship to the comprehensive compass of love. In that compass of love, one’s neighbor is someone who is in need of our help and regard. And where may such a someone be? Where may we find such a person who is in need of our help and regard? EVERYWHERE!
It is that love, that embrace, that sense of the neighbor and neighborliness, that urged Dr. King to say, at the time of his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, that—and I quote:
I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.
Today, we could add medical care for their health. He went on further, as he extended the reach of his concern and the optimism which love confers—something we find in the pronouncements of one of Dr. King’s “disciples,” Barack Obama: “I still believe,” Dr. King said, “that what self-centered men have torn down men [who are] other-centered can build up.” Indeed, the self-centered do not build up; they do not embody love—and only love, in the form of regard for all (other-centered) can truly “build up.”
Love is the most enduring power because it is other-centered. In that other-centeredness it promotes (and actually makes possible) moral and social unity. That unity, however, cannot come about unless one of the other attributes of love is in full play—that of equal regard for all. And here I share with you, from the Book of James, Chapter 2, and verses 1-4:
My brethren, show no partiality as you hold the faith of our Lord…. For if a man with gold rings and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and you pay attention to the one who wears fine clothing and say ‘Have a seat here, please,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘stand there’…have you not made distinctions?
Have you not acted with partiality?
What is being offered here is the principle of moral equality, from which comes the ethic of equal regard for all. Dr. King’s statement, on behalf of people everywhere, is an expression of that equality; it is also part of a wider unity which recognizes that human beings constitute a single family, the welfare of whose members must be the consistent center of our individual and collective concerns.
Love is the most enduring power, because it stands in stark contrast to, and even highlights and makes more visible, an almost equally enduring opposite—hatred. Hatred is the least other-centered of human traits. Dr. King, himself a victim of hatred, taught us (and, in some instances, it took his death for us to have paid detailed attention to his thoughts) that we should “let no man pull [us] so low as to hate him.” Why? Hate corrodes the soul, imprisons us in bitterness, and impels us to degrade “the other” with impacts that bequeath untold miseries to generations and generations.
Hatred comes from the absence of an equal regard for all, the absence of a recognition of and a commitment to the moral equality of humans, and from the absence of a recognition and acceptance of the inherent dignity of all human beings. It is from the platform of non-recognition that we have violence, first violence against the self, in the form of hatred and its corrosion of the soul, then violence against others—from the humiliation which it sometimes routinely visits on others to their physical destruction, be it in the form of murder, genocide, or warfare. Need I mention lynching? Our young people and some old folk are looking in the mirror and hating themselves.
So Dr. King preached non-violence as an instrument to combat violence, including indirect violence in which the application of force is not necessary. Why? Oppressive power becomes so well established that it does not have to resort openly to what Thomas Merton called the “method of the beast,” because unjust laws and other institutions exist to carry on that violence. In other words, when a social system can, without the use of overt force, compel people to live in conditions of abjection, helplessness, and wretchedness, those conditions are violent. Culture, including the culture of racism and social injustice, is part of that indirect violence which we see in the sub-mortgage lending to minorities and others. And how many of the people in this country are forced to live, today, making choices between staying warm and dying?
Let us return to where we, in part, began with the Book of John: “I say unto you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Part of the meaning of death, as used here, is that of death as a passing of one type of person—of self (the person attracted to hatred, for example)—and the concomitant birth of a new self, one in whom love triumphs. In that triumph, we find a calling to causes beyond ourselves, to service which empowers the human spirit, a calling to the belief that all humans are precious, each having something to teach, and to the wombing of an empathy, which is so in touch with the feelings and thoughts of others that violence cannot be part of us. Let us not fear to die, for in the death of the self-centered self and the birth of the other-centered person, we will find much fruit. It is from that fruit that the transformation of societies derives; societies which embody an ethic of care.
Dr. King bids us to persist in educating the young, in enriching our culture, in feeding the spirit, until the spirit of love occupies a greater sphere in all our lives. In that persistence lie the unlimited possibilities of our individual and collective future. His struggles are integrally a part of our struggle, as a people, as a nation, as members of global society. We are part of the spiritual seed from his physical death. We continue the struggle with the hope that it will bear “much fruit.”
Blessings to all; peace be to you.
Our Father who art in Heaven, we come humbly before you today to honor your great servant Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Lord, we know all things are possible in the tenacity of faith. When we cannot hear your voice or see your face, live out our dreams, or envision the future, help us to press forward in our belief in you, ourselves, and each other. No matter the obstacle or discouragement, may we always have the faith to believe in those, like Dr. King, who continue to fight and believe in the righteousness of the struggle. May your assurance give us the energy to speak your words. And as the great Dr. W.E.B. DuBois pleaded, help us remember, O Lord, in this beginning of the year, that the man or woman who makes and breaks his or her New Year resolves is at least better than the man or woman who has none. Give us the courage to fail in a good cause and determination never to cease striving toward that which God, his word, and our hearts tell us is worthwhile.
Amen.