My run wandered by monuments of the past
... each standing as present testimonies to national greatness and tragedy. I
made a lap around the obelisk to Washington; over and around the tidal basin
where Jefferson stood still beneath his immortal words that "all men are
created equal". The four rooms of
FDR’s memorial were empty except the sound of rushing water. FDR sat in his
chair and watched me go by, his carved countenance seeming to match the mood of
the time in which he served.
Empty too were the steps that lead
to Lincoln's great memorial. They were bathed in the gold of a rising sun. I
climbed them slowly, selfishly enjoying the solitude and the calm before a
mid-summer DC day. Interestingly, my thoughts didn't go to the days of Lincoln,
nor the year of 1863 when the Great Emancipator called for the freedom of
slaves and a renewed resolve to sustain the great American experiment.
No, instead, my thoughts were
triggered by the words etched into the granite steps midway to Lincoln's
shrine. On the spot where in 1963 Martin Luther King delivered his opus, the "I
Have a Dream" speech, it’s title is chiseled into the granite, a permanent
reminders of a grand moment in which the preacher called for a renewed resolve
to carry out liberty and justice for
all. For a moment, sweat dripping from my brow, I was transported back to
another time, a catalyst for the age in which I live
Martin Luther King's youth was spent
in the oppressive heat of Southern Jim Crow. Raised by his preacher father and
challenged by his mother to never think of himself as less than anyone else,
the theology of his later social activism, (not to mention his sermons) was
crystallized at the very steps of that Lincoln Memorial.
It was Easter Sunday of 1939. At the
Constitution Hall, Washington DC's largest concert venue at the time, the
Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) were holding a concert. Barred from
performing due to the color of her skin, Marion Anderson (widely renowned as
the nation's greatest contralto) was relegated to a "lesser" spot, in
the "auditorium under the sky" as Harold Ickes called it. She would
hold stage on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before an audience of both
blacks and whites that numbered in the thousands. Offering a mix of operatic classics, she
finished her set with a hint of protest by singing "My Country Tis' of Thee." Standing in front of a Steinway
grand, with the gaze of Lincoln off her shoulder, Anderson offered a subtle demurral.
Lifted on the notes of a gifted voice she
switched the words "of thee I sing", to "of thee we sing."
Had Lincoln been able to hear it, I
wonder if he would have smiled.
In the audience that day was a ten
year old boy, Martin Luther King Jr, who did hear it and may have grasped right
then the power of the words that end the first stanza,
"From ev'ry mountainside, Let freedom ring!"
Well, five years later, young Martin
King gave one of his first recorded speeches titled "The Negro and the
Constitution." He said, “She (Marion Anderson) sang as never before,
with tears in her eyes. When the words of ‘America’ and ‘Nobody Knows de
Trouble I Seen’ rang out over that great gathering, there was a hush on the sea
of uplifted faces, black and white, and a new baptism of liberty, equality, and
fraternity. That was a touching tribute, but Miss Anderson may not as yet spend
the night in any good hotel in America.”
24 years after that speech, in August of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. would stand in the same spot that Miss Anderson did, and belt out on soaring rhetoric a dream that one day America would "let freedom ring from every mountainside."
24 years after that speech, in August of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. would stand in the same spot that Miss Anderson did, and belt out on soaring rhetoric a dream that one day America would "let freedom ring from every mountainside."
But from where does this freedom
come? What would give such a young preacher-man from the South, immersed in a
cultural context of state-sanctioned racism, the audacity to proclaim such a
dream?
The answer is found in the concept
of the Imago Dei, or "the image of God." It was a concept
deeply rooted in not only King's thinking, but in the "American
Dream" as well, as King reminded his audience at the start of his oration
that August day. It emanates too from Jefferson's preamble to the Declaration
of Independence. It’s a understanding that states that every man, woman, child,
no matter the race, is "endowed by our Creator with certain,
unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness." Certain privileges -- rights -- come with being made in
the image of God. The Imago Dei.
In a sermon King once preached he
said: "You see, the founding fathers were really influenced by the
Bible. The whole concept of the imago dei, as it is expressed in Latin, the
"image of God" is the idea that all men have something within them
that God injected ... this gives him worth. There are no gradations in the
image of God, Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on
God's keyboard. ... One day we will learn that. We will know one day that God
made us to live together as brothers and to respect the dignity and worth of
every man."
While post-modern sensibilities and
some revisionists may recoil from the thought of King's Christianity or simply
dismiss it as a minor irritant to the civic leader's greater secular
impact, there is no escaping the bedrock of Christian theology from which King
preached and moved America to action. King’s faith was woven into the fabric of
the civil rights movement and is an integral part of what made the "I Have
a Dream" address hit home. It resonates, because it connects with the
deepest longing of every human being: Justice.
In his
dream address, King ascended from the foundation of justice to the pinnacle of
brotherhood. Equating the lack of justice to “quicksand” he warned America that
“the whirlwinds of revolt will continue
to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”
Then, in an echo of Christ’s Sermon on
the Mount, King quickly followed his admonition with the reminder that the
outcome of freedom demands a non-violent approach to justice. “In the process of gaining our rightful
place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.” The sunlight of justice
falls equally on white and black people. The Imago Dei is in all and justice must not be bought with the coin of
hatred and at the expense of brotherhood.
King’s
theology stems from the Old Testament prophets.
Timothy Keller has written a superb study on the practice of social
justice and notes that the Hebrew term for “justice” is “Mishpat”. Used over 200 times in the Old Testament, its basic
meaning is to treat people equitably, especially the widow, the orphan, the
immigrant and the poor. (Zechariah 7)
King, stating the obvious that blacks had received a raw deal from the
promises of the Declaration and the Constitution, warned America using the
words of one of those Old Testament prophets, that “we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and
righteousness like a mighty stream.” (Amos 5:24)
America
was a crooked place back then, thirsty for the waters of righteousness. Bent by racism, hatred and injustice, America
needed a modern day prophet to challenge Americans to “transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful
symphony of brotherhood”. The
prophet-preacher King quoted from Isaiah to proclaim his own vision for
America: “One day, every valley shall be
exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be
made plain, and the crooked places shall be made straight and the glory of the
Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” (Isaiah 40) Then
came the obvious: If we are not all
created in the Imago Dei, should we
not judge each other by the content of our character?
Near the
end, his voice rising on the winds of inspiration, King proclaimed that “From
the mountain of despair would come a stone of hope,” and that one day all of
those made in the Image of God, would be able to sing with new meaning “my country tis of thee, sweet land of
liberty of thee I sing; land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride;
from every mountain side, let freedom ring.”
In the
audience was Marion Anderson and I’m sure she must have smiled.
Last July
on those very steps, in silence and alone, I was connected by understanding and
place with both the present and the past.
I soaked it in, relishing my moment there on that historic spot. In
time, I descended and continued on my run, reflecting on the greats who had
passed this way so long ago, people who in words that soared and actions that
roared changed the way we live.
Their
echoes reverberated in the quiet of the morning, and I couldn’t help but smile.
