On God’s Holy Mountain – Week 3
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We recently celebrated the life of Martin Luther King, a prophetic figure very much like Isaiah. In his famous “I have a Dream” speech, delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial before 250,000 people on August 28, 1963, Dr. King listed a number of dreams he had not just for African Americans, but for all Americans. Note how one of his dreams parallels the hopes of Isaiah…”I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the Table of Brotherhood.”
This commemoration provides a particularly good opportunity for us to pause and reflect on whether we are ready to take a seat at King’s Table of Brotherhood. Whether we are sons (and daughters too) of slaves or slave-owners, we carry in our hearts the seeds of brotherhood, but we also carry the seeds of animosity. How do we overcome the negative forces that feed so much of the racial divide we have experienced recently? We can start with prayer, praying for all the descendants of slaves and slave-owners. We can pray that God will show us ways to act. We must also water the seeds of brotherhood by reaching out in some concrete way across the racial divide.
Isaiah chose a young child to guide the calf and the young lion. A young child is innocent, humble and also fearless, for she has yet to learn to be afraid. Dr. King operated very much in that mode and his words and actions pointed us to the same place as Isaiah’s. But while Isaiah and Dr. King gave us a vision of what our goal is, it is up to each of us to take that next step that will take us closer to achieving a seat at the Table of Brotherhood on God’s Holy Mountain.
-Prepared by parishioner Roger Sullivan