Only Light ~ #ReclaimMLK

Epiphany - Liberation Lectionary 2022

Reflection: The Power of the People is the Light of the World.

Dr. King’s nonviolent, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, pro-people movement has been plundered by the white political establishment – and the white supremacist systems that sustain it. Lately it’s been polished, coronated, and paraded around in a way deemed digestible and acceptable to the status quo. Meanwhile Dr. King’s messages about class solidarity, vehemently opposing the War in Vietnam, and his most radical racial dreams are conveniently missing from the full picture presented of this man of fierce faith, through failure and triumph - both personal and legendary.

During Epiphany season, the birthday of Dr. King (January 15th) presents an opportunity to reclaim and re-envision the message that Dr. King’s life and work deposited onto the global movement for equality, Black power, and political protection from white supremacy.

King was constantly challenging so-called liberals whose racism was more covert but just as deadly, he wrote “We do not need allies who are more devoted to order than to justice,”

He also called out the liberals who claimed to be friends of the movement, but accused him and his colleagues of “creating hatred and hostility”. 

Dr. King’s nonviolent, anticapitalist legacy was conceived by community. This is why we carry the theme of “Power to the People” for MLK Day this year. His dream was made manifest by Black women like Ella Baker and queer folks like Bayard Rustin. Though both of these key movement figures were people whose proximity to King’s perceived power was eventually lost or stolen, the respect and commemoration that is due to them is yet remembered by many when we celebrate and honor Dr. King today. 
There’s no diminishing the timeless/powerful contributions of Andrew Young, Ralph David Abernathy, John Lewis, Mother Coretta herself and King’s closest associates. But we must not miss the opportunity to produce a more fully inclusive, radical and people-powered picture of the message and journey of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Bayard Rustin was an activist and organizer before meeting King, and he brought many ideas to Dr. King which were new to him and broadened his mind. Bayard was instrumental to the Formation of the SCLC. One of his major contributions is the fact that he planned the 1963 March on Washington, for Jobs and Freedom. This event is famously associated with Dr. King’s historic “I have a dream” speech.This march, the planning that went into it and the results of it certainly influenced the overall mid-century civil rights movement, and King’s international legacy itself. 

Ella Baker is one of most brilliant organizers who ever lived. Many of us honor her as a mother of the movement for Black power. She was a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Her departure and expressed frustration stands as a testament to the fact that Dr. King’s dream is best achieved by many strategies with a shared goal. Black power, equal rights, and an end to disenfranchisement, were all spotlights of SNCC. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was the organization that was born in part from Ella’s learning and challenging the SCLC on the role and purpose - and precariousness - of centering charismatic leaders. Ella Baker made her life’s purpose the work of instilling people with the knowledge that community control and shared leadership is where the true power lies.

Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech is certainly his most abused and misused work. Lauded as the pinnacle of the Civil Rights Movement, as if the dream Dr. King spoke of, was achieved in the very oration of his words. But to quote the good doctor himself, “life is a continual story of shattered dreams.” We find hope because we must. We fight on, because we must. We dream, in the face of shattered dreams, even still, because we must.

We dream, like our ancestors did, like Mahalia Jackson did when she told the good Rev. “tell them about the dream, Martin!” inspiring him to resolutely say, with generations of dreamers across Black liberation history, “I have a dream.” The dream of freedom for Black folks, for Palestine, for Puerto Rico, and all the world. Freedom dreams. Dreams of health and wholeness in the face of a pandemic that has brutalized the Black community more than any other. Dreams where access to healthcare is not a luxury but a right. Dreams of a world where queerness and poverty is not criminalized or persecuted. Dreams of more than just the common good, but of collective power and liberation. 

Dreams like those of the magi, the astronomers and philosophers who saw God’s star and followed it to the place where they found God’s growing revolution.

And just like the Magi, we bring our gifts to this dream. Gifts like nourishment, brought by chef and restaurateur Leah Chase in New Orleans, who opened her home and businesses to the Freedom Riders, Thurgood Marshall, and Dr. King. Gifts like literacy advocacy and curriculum development, brought to fruition from the dreams of Septima Poinsette Clark. When white supremacists pretend like their way is the light of the world, we dreamers and sunkissed kind know that white means neither light nor bright. For the wisdom and intelligence of the Magi came from the dark skinned east, and the most historically sustained and impactful liberation movements comes from people whose ancestors lived and labored in the light. Only racism equates dark skin with dull dreams. 

The fullness of Blackness is part of the light being revealed to the world. 
God’s love for liberation is the light of the world. Jesus showed up in the body of a brown skinned baby, born to oppressed people in occupied lands, surrounded by spaces that were divested from, judged for their worth according to their wealth, deemed disposable by the very systems that disenfranchised them. They needed a dream. They needed a plan for building power. The light being revealed to them would be the way to bring that dream out of the mind and into the community. Down from heaven into the most obscured corners of the weary earth. The Light of the World was bringing power to the people by becoming one of us, and living with us. Jesus came to us in order to reveal to us that there is no danger nor threat that can control the vision of God.

Song: This Little Light of Mine - Sam Cooke

Meditation: Prayer at Sunrise, James Weldon Johnson

Now thou art risen, and thy day begun. How shrink the shrouding mists before thy face, as up thou spring’st to thy diurnal race! How darkness chases darkness to the west, as shades of light on light rise radiant from thy crest! For thee, great source of strength, emblem of might, in hours of darkest gloom there is no night. Thou shinest on though clouds hide thee from sight, and through each break thou sendest down thy light.

O greater Maker of this Thy great sun, give me the strength this one day’s race to run, fill me with light, fill me with sun-like strength, fill me with joy to rob the day its length. light from within, light that will outward shine, strength to make strong some weaker heart than mine, joy to make glad each soul that feels its touch;

Great Father of the sun, I ask this much.

Daily Scripture Readings

Sunday: John 1.1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Through The Word all things were made; without The Word nothing was made that has been made.

Monday: John 1.4-5 In The Word was life, and that life was the light of all humanity. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not control it.

Tuesday: John 1.6-8 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. John came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that all might believe. John himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

Wednesday: John 1.9-13 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. The Light was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive, to those who believed, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a parent’s will, but born of God.

Thursday: John 1.14 The Word became flesh and lives among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Creator God, full of grace and truth.

Friday: John 1.15-16 John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’” And out of God’s fullness we have all received grace upon grace. 

Saturday: John 1.17-18For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God andis in closest relationship with the Creator, has made Them known.