First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta, Georgia
Sermon by The Honorable John Lewis
Urban Ministry Conference – January 18, 2003
“The Living Legacy and Influence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”
Scripture: Micah 6:6-8; Luke 4:18-30
Good morning. Dr. Wirth, thank you so much for having me here this morning. I feel more than lucky; I feel very blessed to be here. Thank you Rev. Black, Rev. Lee, Rev. Sparks and all of the officers and members of this great and historic church. This is a wonderful and lovely, just a beautiful place in downtown Atlanta. Earlier this morning, I felt the spirit here. There is a sweet feeling of family, of community, and to be here I am thankful to God almighty, and to be here on this Sunday, Urban Ministry Sunday, in this urban setting, when there are so many things happening all around us in Fulton County, in Dekalb and Cobb, in Gwinnett, in East Point and Palmetto, College Park and Snellville and Decatur, but in a real sense we are one community; we’re one family; we’re one house; we are all children of God Almighty.
Sometimes, Dr. Wirth, I feel very troubled and then again I feel lifted up that God Almighty has allowed me to live in this special, special time in the history of our world. During the past few days I prayed, meditated and thought about what I should say today. I did go to the gospel of Matthew the 10th chapter and the 34th verse, and again I read the words of Jesus, where Jesus said, “Do not think that I come to bring peace, but a sword”. Then I reread the words Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in Montgomery, Alabama in December of 1955 during the beginning of the bus walkout. Dr. King said, “I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate myself. I’ve seen the hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, on too many white citizen councilors, and too many clansmen of the South to want to hate myself, and every time I see it, I say to myself, ‘hate is too great a burden to bear’. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our opponents and say we shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we will still love you, but we can not in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust systems, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. So throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, but we will still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”
Neither Jesus, nor Martin Luther King Jr., was talking about a physical sword, but a spiritual sword. Whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, other parts of the Middle East, or in Africa in the past few weeks, the past few months, the past year, few years, it has been one of the most dramatic, moving periods in human history. We have seen nations rise and nations fall; we have seen great powers become instruments of evil in the hands of ruthless and fanatical leaders. We have seen all humanity aroused including the long-suffering and exploited people throughout the world. In our own city, in our own state, in the nation’s capital, on the streets of New York, or Los Angles or Chicago the homeless, the toilers, the underfed and the underpaid are all on the march. People just want to be treated like human beings; we all want to be treated like human beings. So today I believe that we are in the midst of a worldwide revolution, a revolution of values, a revolution of ideas. The struggle is being waged in every nation, among every people, by peaceful means, by propaganda, diplomacy, financial pressures, bluffs, strikes, ballots, bullets and bombs.
In all times and in our own age, we have seen churchmen keep silent, while Christians speak. We’ve seen men sacrifice truth for a false and negative peace. Ancient Greek philosophers and modern day scientists share the view that everything in the universe is in constant change; nothing stands still. The beginning becomes the end; today becomes yesterday; the future becomes the past; the young become the old; life becomes death; ideas become reality, and the old gives way to the new. The very coming of Jesus, the Christ, into the world was revolutionary. Even his teaching was extremely radical, seemingly contradictory and paradoxical to many people of his day and to many of us today. On one occasion he said, “He who finds his life, will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it”. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” A few days later he said, “Think not that I come to bring peace, but a sword”. Again, Jesus was not talking about a physical sword, he was saying, in effect, when I come, I stir up things. I come to make things anew; whenever I come a struggle sets in between the forces of darkness and the forces of light; whenever I come a struggle sets in between the forces of good and evil, between the forces of hate and love.
The cry for peace is as old as the dawn of civilization and as fresh as the rising sun. Several centuries before the coming of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah broke forth and said, “How beautiful up on the mountain are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace.” When the Hebrew prophets foretold the coming of Jesus, they said his name would be “Wonderful, Councilor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Jesus came to bring peace, and I say to you today, members of this great church, some may ask, is Jesus being consistent with what the prophets said before his birth and during his life when he said, “I come not to bring peace, but a sword”. In today’s language, law officials would accuse Jesus of disturbing the peace, of disorderly conduct, maybe the Chief of Police of Atlanta, or maybe the Sheriff of Fulton County or Dekalb County would have Jesus arrested. They would judge him guilty for malpractice for healing without a license, and maybe guilty of civil disobedience for doing it on a Sabbath.
When I was growing up outside of Troy, Alabama, fifty miles from Montgomery, during the forties and the fifties, my mother, my father, my grandparents, my great grandparents told us over and over again as young children, “Don’t get in trouble, don’t get in the way”. But one day I heard the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. I heard Dr. King speaking on an old radio during the Montgomery bus walkout, talking about the streets of Montgomery, talking about ending segregation and racial discrimination on the buses. I felt him saying, “John Lewis, you’ve got to get in the way, you’ve got to get in trouble and disturb the peace; you’ve got to turn things upside down in order to set them right side up.” As Christians, as people of faith, we are called to speak up, to speak out, and be witnesses for the Lord.
About fifty years ago, after the buses stopped rolling during the bus boycott in Montgomery, a well-meaning and influential white citizen in the city of Montgomery came up to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at his church on Dexter Ave. about a block from the capital and met with Dr. King, and he said, “Dr. King, over the years we have had such peaceful and harmonious and good race relations here; our colored people are happy and satisfied. Before you came, we didn’t have all of this trouble.” Dr. King replied, “Sir, you never had real peace in Montgomery, you had a sort of negative peace in which the Negro too often accepted his state of subordination, but it’s not true peace. True peace is not merely the absence of tension and conflict, it is the presence of justice, and as Christians, as followers of Jesus, we must seek justice, for the tension we see in our society today, whether in Atlanta, or New York, or in Washington is the necessary tension that comes when the oppressed rise up and start to move forward toward a positive peace.” Dr. King went on to speculate that this was what Jesus meant when he said, “I’ve not come to bring peace, but a sword”. Jesus did not mean that he came to bring a physical sword, he seemed to be saying in substance, “I’ve not come to bring this old negative peace with a dead passivity, I’ve come to lash out against such a peace, and whenever I come a diffusion sets in between the forces of justice and injustice. I come to bring a positive peace, which is the presence of justice, love, the beloved community, even the kingdom of God.”
When I was 15 years old in the tenth grade back in 1955, as I said before, I heard Dr. King; he spoke to me; he changed me, and a few years later I had an opportunity to meet him when I was 18 years old. I wanted to attend a little school called Troy State College, now known as Troy State University, about 10 miles from my home. I applied to attend the school. I sent my application, my high school transcript; I never heard a word from the college. I wrote a letter to Martin Luther King Jr.; he wrote me back and sent me a roundtrip Greyhound bus ticket and invited me to come to Montgomery. I went off to school in Nashville. Dr. King heard that I was there, and got back in touch and suggested when I was home for Spring Break to come and see him. It was in March of 1958. By this time I was 18 years old. My father drove me to the bus station one Saturday morning. I boarded the bus and traveled the 50 miles from Troy to Montgomery. I had never seen a lawyer before, black or white, but a young black lawyer by the name of Fred Gray who was a lawyer for Rosa Parks, for Dr. King and the Montgomery movement, met me at the Greyhound bus station, picked me up and drove me to the First Baptist Church, pastored by the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and ushered me in to the pastors study. I saw Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy standing behind a desk; I was so scared. I didn’t know what I was going to say, and Dr. King spoke up and said, “Are you the boy from Troy? Are you John Lewis?”, and I spoke up and said, “Dr. King, I am John Robert Lewis.” I gave my whole name; I didn’t want there to be any mistake that I was the right person. And that was the beginning of my relationship with Martin Luther King, Jr.; the beginning of my involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
I didn’t study at Troy State; I continued to study in Nashville, and it was there that I got involved with some sit-ins. We would be sitting in at segregated lunch counters, restaurants and someone would come up and spit on us, put lighted cigarettes out in our hair or down our backs, pour hot water on us, but we didn’t strike back, we kept the faith, we kept our eyes on the prize. We had been taught to love, to be able to forgive and not to hate. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us all to stand up and say “no” to evil, to do good. This man spoke to the hearts and conscience of all of us who believe that peace and love offer a more excellent way. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the hearts and conscience of all of us who believe in nonviolence and the way of faith. This good man, this God-fearing man gave us hope in a time of hopelessness. This good man using the tools of Gandhi had the ability and the capacity to bring the dirt and the filth from under the American rug, out of the cracks and out of the corners into the open light in order for us to deal with it.
When I was growing up there was so much fear in Alabama, in Mississippi and here in Georgia. I grew up seeing those signs that said “White Men” and “Colored Men”. I grew up seeing those signs that said “White Women” and “Colored Women”. I grew up seeing those signs that said “White Waiting” and “Colored Waiting”. As children, we tasted the bitter fruits, and we didn’t like it, and Dr. King came along using the teachings of Jesus, saying, “There is a different way, there is a better way”. He taught me how to get in the way; he taught me how to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble. As Christians, as people of faith, there comes a time when we must get in the way, get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble, to build the kingdom of God, to build the beloved community. That is our calling; that is our mission, to create a community at peace with itself.
I told a group earlier this morning that when I was growing up I used to raise chickens; I wish I could tell you that story, but I don’t have time. I used to preach to the chickens. If it hadn’t been for Martin Luther King, Jr., I don’t know what I would be doing; I could still be preaching to chickens. But if someone had told me when I was growing up in rural Alabama that one day I would get arrested 40 times, that I would be beaten and left bloody and unconscious in the streets of Montgomery in May of 1961 during the Freedom Rides, that I would have a concussion at the bridge in Selma almost 39 years ago on Bloody Sunday and left for dead; if someone had told me that I would march on Washington with Martin Luther King, Jr. and others and later meet with President Kennedy; if someone had told me that I would be elected to Congress by the good people of Georgia, black and white, I probably would have said, “You are crazy, you’re out of your mind, you don’t know what you’re talking about”, but as people of faith, we believe that all things are possible. As people of faith, we must never ever give up or give in or give out. We must never get lost in a sea of despair; we must keep the faith, we must keep our eyes on the prize, because only the peace of Jesus can lift a man from the lowest valley of hatred to the highest mountain of love. Only the peace of Jesus can transform our minds into the minds of saints and angels.
In my own life I’ve faced the storms; I’ve heard the thunder roll and I’ve seen the lightening flash. I am going to tell a little story and then I will be finished. When I was growing up outside of Troy, Alabama, fifty miles from Montgomery, only about a three hour drive from here, I had an aunt by the name of Seneva, and my Aunt Seneva lived in what we call a shotgun house. I was born in a shotgun house, so I know what I’m talking about. I remember when I was 4 years old, but when I was about 41/2 or 5 we were out playing in my Aunt Seneva’s dirt yard, and I will never forget it as long as I live. First of all, most of you don’t know anything about a shotgun house, never seen one. My Aunt Seneva didn’t have a green manicured lawn; she had a simple plain dirt yard. Sometime at night you could look up through the ceiling, through the holes in the tin roof of this shotgun house and count the stars. When it would rain, she would get a pail or bucket or what some of us may call a foot tub or tin tub and catch the water. From time to time she would walk into the woods and take branches from the dogwood tree and tie these branches together and make a broom, as she called it the brush broom, and she would sweep this dirt yard very clean, sometimes two and three times a week, but especially on a Friday or a Saturday, because she wanted that dirt yard to look very good during the weekend. My Aunt Seneva lived in a shotgun house. For those of you that are so young and for those of you who lived in urban America, urban Atlanta all your life and have never seen a shotgun house, let me tell what it looked like in a nonviolent sense. There’ll be an old house, one way in, one way out, maybe a tin roof, where you can bounce a basketball through the front door and it will go straight out the back door. In the military sense, a shotgun house is an old house where you can fire a shotgun through the front door and the bullets will go straight out the back door. My Aunt Seneva lived in a shotgun house, but one Saturday afternoon a group of my sisters and brothers and a few of my first cousins, about 12 or 15 of us young children were out playing in my Aunt Seneva’s dirt yard and an unbelievable storm came up. The wind started blowing and the thunder started rolling and the lightning started flashing and the rain started beating on the tin roof of this old shotgun house. My Aunt became terrified: she started crying; she thought this whole house was going to blow away. She started singing; she started praying; she got all of us little children together; she told us to hold hands. We all started crying; the wind continued to blow, the thunder continued to roll; the lightening continued to flash, and the rain continued to beat on the tin roof of this old shotgun house, and when one corner of this old house appeared to be lifting from it’s foundation, my aunt had us walk to that corner to try to hold the house down with our little bodies; when another corner appeared to be lifting she had us walk to that side to try to hold this house down with our little bodies. We were little children walking with the wind, but we never, ever left the house. As people of faith, as members and friends of this great church, you must never ever leave the house; don’t leave the house of faith.
I used to ask my mother why, and she would say that’s the way it is. She would say trust in God, pray, and she would say be particular. I think she was saying, be watchful, be mindful; don’t get in trouble; don’t get in the way. I got in trouble; I got in the way, but I stayed with the house, and you must stay with the house; that’s what we’ve been trying to do. Just maybe our foremothers and our forefathers all came to this great land in different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now. It doesn’t matter whether we are black or white, Hispanic or Asian America or Native American, we are one people, we are one family; we are one house. Call it the house of the First Presbyterian Church; call it the house of Atlanta; call it the house of Georgia; call it the American house; call it the world house; we all live in the same house. So I say to you, don’t just walk with the wind, but as people of faith, as children of God, we must walk with God; we must let the Holy Spirit be our guide. Peace be unto you.