First Baptist Church on Littleton Common    

Consideration of “A Christmas Sermon on Peace.”
Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

at Ebenezer Baptist Church,  Christmas Eve 1967

How many people can you think of, who when their name is mentioned, brings to mind a single characteristic of their personality, a quality, a cause or practice of their life?

Mother Theresa – might make you think of caring for the poor.

Al Gore - may make you think of caring for the environment.

Thomas Edison - may bring to mind the light bulb.

Bono - may make you think of music or Africa. 

Closer to home, is there someone in your life who you think of as an angry person, or a cheerful person, or a driven person?   Have you ever wondered what people say about you?  What characteristic or practice so defines you - that it is noticed by those who know or know of you? 

When I hear the name Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I automatically think of two things; the characteristic of love and the practice of non-violent resistance.   It seems rare that one person could so easily be identified by a single characteristic or practice, but Martin Luther King Jr., whose life, ministry and work we remember tomorrow, is one of those persons.   Rev. King’s life and his faith was grounded in a deep agape love, a transformative love, which he lived out by practicing and encouraging non-violence, while giving his life to build the beloved community where there would be justice for all of God’s children.   

Martin Luther King Jr., was the son and grandson of Baptist preachers.  At the age of seven he was baptized at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where his father was pastor.  He gave his first sermon at age 18 and was licensed to preach at age 19.  After finishing Crozer Seminary and his PhD. work in Systematic Theology at Boston University, he became the pastor of Dexter Ave. Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama through 1959.  He then returned to work at his father’s church in Atlanta, where he would serve as Associate Pastor until his death in 1968. 

As a preacher for over 20 years, Rev. King would have preached hundreds of sermons including those that we have come to know well, that wove together a faith and theology that empowered the civil rights movement.  He also would have preached sermons not as well known, delivered on any given Sunday morning including holidays such as Easter and Christmas, or for weddings and funerals.   This morning I would like to continue my practice of looking at the faith and life of Rev. King, a fellow Baptist, by offering a look at one of those inspirational sermons. 

Just about four months before he would be shot and killed on April 4, 1968, Rev. King delivered a sermon on Christmas Eve 1967, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church entitled A Christmas Sermon on Peace.  It was a sermon that contained a number of spiritual themes and methods that one would have heard in previous sermons, but it was also a sermon that showed the strength and clarity that King had developed throughout the years.

In this message, Pastor King begins by acknowledging the fearful times that people were living with in 1967.  I say Pastor King, because it seems to me he was first acknowledging people’s personal fears, the ones that they were holding inside of them, before then giving them hope and a method to make that peace come to fruition.   It seems to me that those fears are not all that different, than they were exactly forty years ago.  Rev. King begins:

“This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities. And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and good will toward all men can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian.”  And “Let us this morning think anew on the meaning of that Christmas hope: "Peace on Earth, Good Will toward Men." And as we explore these conditions, I would like to suggest that modern man really go all out to study the meaning of nonviolence, its philosophy and its strategy.”  ^[1]

Martin Luther King makes a number of important points in this sermon.  First, he suggests that we must widen our narrow thinking and become more ecumenically minded, rather than individually minded.  Second, he talks about whether the ends justify the means, arguing that we will only achieve peaceful ends by peaceful means.  Third, he states that if we want to help bring about peace on earth – the only method that will get us there is the “nonviolent affirmation of the sacredness of all human life”.  Fourth, he talks about the power and transforming force of agape love, while reminding listeners of the redemptive work on the cross on Easter.   Lastly, he closes by recalling the 1963 march on Washington DC, where he delivered his now well known I Have A Dream Speech.  In this sermon, four years later, he shares how discouraged he had become, but concludes filled with hope, that those dreams would still become reality. 

I would like to look deeper into two of those points this morning: our commonality and the transformative power of agape love.

Kings begins by reminding us that all of life is interrelated.  He says: 

“It all boils down to this: That all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can't leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that's handed to you by a Pacific Islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that's given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that's poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that's poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you're desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that's poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that's given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren't going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.”^[2] 

We still live in a network of mutuality.  That has not changed since King gave this example of how we unknowingly live and rely on one another.  If it has changed in any way, the doors to the world have only opened up even wider, and our reliance on one another has extended even farther. 

I’d like you to think for a minute about the clothes that you wear.  Let’s say you have some Patriot’s regalia that you might be wearing today.  If you have on a Patriots sweatshirt or any National Football League team apparel, or National Hockey League or Major League Baseball apparel, you might notice that they have all been made by Reebok which has the exclusive rights to make and sell those clothes.   Reebok’s headquarters is right here in Canton, Massachusetts.  But before you have even opened the plastic package with your hands and placed that Number 12 Jersey on your shoulders, that sweatshirt was crafted by international hands doing hard work all around the globe.  Your sports sweatshirt represents a network of mutuality.   Reebok is owned by the Addis Group which employs 27,000 people in 150 locations in 50 countries.   They provide a 30 page list of 800 manufacturing plants in countries such as Sri Lanka and Vietnam, as well as China and Pakistan.  ^[3]

The fabric for your Patriot’s shirt may have been cut and sewn together in a factory in Bangladesh, by a mother of two children just like me, and stitched together with thread made in Greece owned by a family company just like your family.  However before that material gets to that manufacturing plant, there is a supply chain that makes sure there is material to work with.   Different sets of hands that are upstream in the supply chain, make sure the material takes shape.   The raw materials may have been natural, such as cotton, which may have been grown by a farmer in Louisiana or in Uzbekistan; or, made from wool, from sheep owned by a rancher in Texas or in New Zealand whose son just got an A on his math exam.  A textile factory such as those in Lowell, may have received those raw materials from the farms, and would process and weave them into materials that may or may not be dyed.   The dye, such as the blue in the Patriots shirt, may have come naturally from plants and then processed in India, or it could have been made synthetically in Italy, by a woman whose best friend just died of breast cancer.    Now if your shirt is made of a cotton/polyester/nylon blend then those materials could have also been synthetically made in a manufacturing plant in Taiwan or China, and then cut and stitched in Perry, New York or Fall River, Massachusetts by a father of three who immigrated here because one of his children was severely autistic and they wanted better medical care.  On the downstream side of the supply chain would be the labels, the plastic wrapping and the cardboard boxes that also require multiple layers of hands who work, create, assemble and package, to put meals on the table just as we do every day.  Those hands all around the globe had a part in the sports shirts that we wear today celebrating our favorite team – and there are similar hands whose work extends all around the globe, to fill the chain of supply for our food, our computers, our homes and our cars. 

We live because of network of mutuality.

Paul said that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  (Galatians 3:28)

And in Romans he said “in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”  (Romans 12:5)

And again in Colossians, Paul said “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.” (Colossians 3:15) 

God created the earth, but we put the geographical boundaries around it, however today we do live because of that network of mutuality.

Another foundational concept, a practice of his faith that guided his life and how he organized the Civil Rights movement, was King’s belief in the power of agape love, a love demonstrated by Jesus Christ.   He would often make a distinction between the three types of love described by the Greeks.  First was “eros”, a romantic love and the second was “philia”, a love between friends.  King talks about the strongest form of love again when he says:  

“Then the Greek language has another word for love, and that is the word "agape." Agape is more than romantic love, it is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive good will toward all men. Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart. When you rise to love on this level, you love all men not because you like them, not because their ways appeal to you, but you love them because God loves them.  This is what Jesus meant when he said, "Love your enemies." And I'm happy that he didn't say, "Like your enemies," because there are some people that I find it pretty difficult to like. Liking is an affectionate emotion, and I can't like anybody who would bomb my home. I can't like anybody who would exploit me. I can't like anybody who would trample over me with injustices. I can't like them. I can't like anybody who threatens to kill me day in and day out. But Jesus reminds us that love is greater than liking. Love is understanding, creative, redemptive good will toward all men. And I think this is where we are, as a people, in our struggle for racial justice. We can't ever give up. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship. We must never let up in our determination to remove every vestige of segregation and discrimination from our nation, but we shall not in the process relinquish our privilege to love.”^[4]

This agape love is not a mamby-pamby, cheap, shallow love that we just talk about and then forget to practice.   For King this was a transformative love.  When one practiced this type of love, one had the power to transform and change the injustice.   It is a biblical love.

John 3: 16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  The Greek word for love, used in the text, describes the kind of love that God practiced when he gave his only Son - as agape. 

Today’s text from Matthew 5, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  Agape.  We are to love our enemies, with the same love that God loved when he gave us his Son Jesus!  That is a very powerful comparison.

And when Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment He said, “You shall love (agape) the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and you shall love (agape) your neighbor as yourself.”  (Matthew 22:37-39)

This is no thin, tiny, trivial, trifling love.  This is a tansformative love – one that is hard to do. It isn’t a passive and submissive love, but an active, confident love that has the power to transform ourselves, our neighbor and the world.   This is the love of God and of Jesus Christ whose redemptive work of love on the cross changed everything.   Rev. King believed in this agape love so much so - that it became the means to the end.  This agape love took its form in non-violent resistance.

We can practice this love in our relationships by praying and asking God to infuse us with an agape love and then not letting that internal violence of spirit, as King describes it, take over our emotions and our actions. When we get angry, when we feel that anger arising within us, it is so easy to react and say and do things we regret.  If we can stop our internal anger with an agape love, we will find ways to act in love rather than react in that anger.  This is a practice of our faith, demonstrated by the love of God through the Son who gave his life in love so that we might live.  On this holiday may we honor Rev. King’s life and work, and also his faith, by living the love of God and letting that love permeate ourselves, our relationships and the way we live our life - so that it may be said of us - that we too are one of God’s greatest lovers - loving God with all of our being and loving our neighbor, both near and far, with a transforming agape love.   

Amen 

Rev. Deborah J. Blanchard