Jesus continued, “The truth is, prophets never gain acceptance in their hometowns.”
Luke 4:24
In 1986, President Reagan signed into law a bill designating the third Monday in January as a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr. whose birthday was January 15. The holiday, or MLK Day as it’s commonly called, was first observed three years later in 1989. But it would take another eleven years before it was officially observed in all fifty states for the first time in 2000.
Last January, a survey of over six thousand adults constituting a representative sample of the United States, found that 9 out of 10 people had a positive opinion of Martin Luther King Jr. You may not think this particularly surprising for a Nobel Peace Prize winning man known for his peaceful protests and stirring speeches. But what may surprise you is that someone who presently has a 90% approval rating, never received this level of acclaim during his lifetime—not even close.
According to a Gallup poll in 1966, just a few years after his famed “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr.’s approval rating was 37%. By his death just two years later, 75% of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of his work and activism. “He was not searching for popularity,” Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Institute at Stanford, told Newsweek. “What he was trying to put forward was what he thought was the right course of action.”
Something similar could be said about Jesus’ ministry. While he had compassion on the crowds, he wasn’t about seeking popularity or consolidating power. Jesus was ultimately concerned with reconciling and redeeming creation by unending oppressive regimes. This put him at odds and in the crosshairs of those regimes. But even when his life was on the line, Jesus was concerned with doing the right thing, not the popular or even the reasonable thing.
I’m not surprised that the “right course of action” is often not the most popular course of action. The right thing is often the hard thing or the inconvenient thing or the selfless thing.
The creative team at SALT who put this video together, call it visual prayer. It’s a beautiful tribute to all those who put their lives and reputations on the line to do the right thing. It’s a beautiful reminder of what people can accomplish when they work together for the right thing. The scene that gets me is the people washing and cooling their feet in the reflecting pond. It speaks to how long and dusty the road is that leads to the right thing.
So as we prepare to remember the life and celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. may we remember what the right thing is. May we work and write and march so that all people may be free to enjoy life, exercise their liberty, and pursue happiness.
In Love,
Pastor Annette