Sayin Somethin Significant

I would like to use as a subject from which to preach this morning: "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution." The text for the morning is found in the book of Revelation. There are two passages that I would like to quote, in the sixteenth chapter of that book: "Behold, I make all things new; former things are passed away."

On March 31, 1968, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr visited Washington, DC to spoke these words at the famous National Cathedral.

The first thing that strikes me about the above introduction is the similarity between the words revolution and revelation. Using this history of the latin revolvere and this etymology of the latin revelare, we understand that revolution means more re-birth or renewal and revelation denotes more disclosure and revealing. For Dr King, just like today's pronunciation, the two were intertwined.

Dr King is quite up front in "Remaining Awake" about the triple evils of his day:

• poverty
• racism
• militarism

And he talks about the challenges for people of good conscience in facing those threats. Mainly, time is on the side of the oppressor. And a narrow worldview will always limit the possibilities of an international brotherhood of the human race.

Failing to develop new attitudes and mental responses is a symptom of sleeping through a revolution. With poor people from across America, Dr King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference planned to "call attention to the gulf between promise and fulfillment; to make the invisible [i.e. poverty, the poor] visible."

In addition to making demands of the government, Dr King's campaign was carrying out strategic boycotts of products and companies across the south: for failure to hire Black workers, invest in Black communities, and offer the dignity that humans deserve.

Before ending this eloquent and direct sermon, Dr King reminded us that standing against war was not popular. The media, along with people within the civil rights movement, lobbied Dr King to silence his opposition to the War in Vietnam. But Dr King did not seek the consensus. From his days in the Montgomery bus boycott, Dr King and the people there aimed to move the consensus.

Though his positions were not always expedient, they came from his conscience. Dr King was fatally shot only five days after this 'Remaining Awake' speech, giving his words, spoken in the nation's capitol, even more weight.

In his truly anti-war speech, Dr King noted that "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar....it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." This, indeed, is a revolution worth remaining awake for.