The Last Sunday Sermon of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here this morning to have the opportunity of standing and this very great and significant pulpit and I do want to express my deep personal appreciation to Dean saya and all of the Cathedral clergy for extending the invitation it is always a rich and rewarding experience to take a deep breathe break from our day-to-day demands in the struggle for freedom and human dignity and discuss the issues involved in that struggle with concerned friends of goodwill all over our nation and certain that is always a deep and meaningful experience to be in a worship service and so for many reasons I'm happy to be here today I would like to use as a subject from which to preach this morning remaining awake through a great revolution the text the morning is found and the book of Revelation there are two passages I have that I would like to quote in the 16th chapter of that book the whole I make all things new Farmar things are passed away I'm sure that most of you have read that arresting little story from the pan of Washington Irving entitled Rip Van Winkle the one thing that we usually remember about the story is that Rip Van Winkle slept 20 years but that is another for him that little story that is almost always completely overlooked it was a sign in the end from which rip went up in the mountain for his long sleep when Rip Van Winkle went up in the mountain the sign had a picture of King George the third of England when he came down 20 years later the sign had a picture of George Washington the first president of the United States and Rip Van Winkle looked up at the picture of George Washington and in looking at the picture he was amazed he was completely lost he knew not who he was and this reveals to us that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle is not merely that rip sweater slept for the years but that he slept through a revolution while he was peacefully snoring up in the mountain a revolution was taking place that it points were chains of course of history and rip knew nothing about it he was asleep yes he slept through a revolution one of the great liabilities of life is it all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes of the new mental responses that for no situation demands they end up sleeping through a revolution that can be no gainsaying of the fact that the great revolution is taking place in the world today in the sense it is a triple revolution that is a technological revolution with the impact of automation in cyber nation then that is a revolution in weaponry with the emergence of atomic and nuclear weapons of warfare then that is a human rights revolution with the freedom explosion that has taken place all over the world yes we do live in a period where changes are taking place and that is still the voice crying through the visted of time saying the whole I make all things new Farmar things are passed away now whatever anything new comes and the history brings with it new challenges and new opportunities and I would like to deal with the challenges that we face today as a result of this triple revolution that has taken place in the world today first we are challenged to develop a world perspective no individual can live alone no nation can live alone and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution the world in which we live is geographically one the challenge that we face today is to make it one in terms of Brotherhood now it's true that the geographical oneness of this age has coming to be in to a large extent through modern man scientific ingenuity modern man through his scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains and how jet planes have compressed in two minutes distance is at once took weeks and even months all of this tells us that our world is a neighborhood through our scientific and technological genius we are made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood somehow and in some way we've got to do this we must all learn to live together as brothers we will all perish together as fool's we are tied together in the single garment of destiny caught in an inescapable network of mutuality whatever affects one directly affects all in directly for some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be and you can never be what you ought to be until I am without to be this is the way God's universe is made this is the way it is structured John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic turns no man is an island entire of itself every man is a piece of the continent a part of the main and he goes on toward end to say any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind therefore never send to know For Whom the Bell Tolls it tolls for thee we must see this believe this and live by it if we are to remain awake through a great revolution secondly we have a challenge to eradicate the last vestiges of racial injustice from our nation I must say this morning that racial injustice is still the black man's burden and the white man shame it is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life the vast majority of white Americans spoken and unspoken acknowledged and denied subtle sometimes not so subtle the disease of racism permits and poisons a whole body poverty and I can see nothing more urgent for America to work passionately and unrelentingly to get rid of the disease of racism something positive must be done everyone must share in the guilt as individuals and as institutions the government must certainly share the Galle individuals and will share the guilt even the church must share the guilt we must face the sad fact 11 o'clock on Sunday morning when we stand to sing in Christ there is no East no West we stand in the most segregated hour of America hour has come for everybody for all institutions of the public sector in the private sector to work to get rid of racism now if we're to do it we must honestly admit certain things and get rid of certain myths that have constantly been disseminated all over our nation one is the myth of time here's a notion that only time can solve the problem of racial injustice and there are those who often sincerely say to the Negro and his allies in the white community why don't you slow up stop pushing things so fast all the time can solve the problem and if you will just be nice and patient and continue to pray in a hundred or two hundred years the problem will work itself out that is an answer to that myth it is a time is neutral it can be used either constructively or destructively and I'm sorry to say this morning that I'm absolutely convinced that the forces of ill-will in our nation the extreme writers of our nation the people on the wrong side have used time much more effectively and the forces of good will and it may well be that we will have to repeat in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say wait on time somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability it comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation so we must help time and realize that the time is always right to do right now that is another myth that still gets around it is a kind of over reliance on the bootstrap philosophy and there are those who still feel that if the Negro is to rise out of poverty if the Negro is to rise out of slum conditions if he is to rise out of discrimination and segregation he must do it all by himself and so they say the Negro must lift himself by his own bootstraps they never stop to realize that no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil the people who say this never stop to realize that the nation made the black man's colored a stigma but beyond this they never stop to realize a debt they are people who were kept in slavery two hundred and forty four years in 1863 the Negro was told that he was free as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation being signed by Abraham Lincoln he was not given any land to make that freedom meaningful it was something like keeping a person in prison for a number of years and suddenly suddenly discovering that that person is not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted and you just go up to him and say now you are free but you don't give him any bus fare to get to town you don't give him any money to get some clothes to put on his backer to get on his feet again in life every code of jurisprudence would rise up against this and yet this is a very thing that our nation did to the black man it simply said you are free and it left him that penniless illiterate not knowing what to do and irony of it all is that at the same time the nation failed to do anything for the black man through an act of Congress it was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest which meant that it was willing to under guard it's white peasants from Europe with an economic floor but not only to give the land it built land-grant colleges to teach them how to farm not only that if provided county agents to further their expertise in farming not only that the years unfolded it provided low interest rates so that they could mechanize our farms and to this day thousands of these very persons are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies every year not the farm and these are so often the where people who tell Negroes that they must lift themselves by their own bootstraps it's alright to tell a man to lift himself eyes on bootstraps but it is a cruel jest to say to a book this man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps we must come to see that the roots of racism of they're deep in our country and that must be something positive and massive in order to get rid of all of the effects of racism and the tragedies of racial injustice now that is another thing closely related to racism that I would like to mention as another challenge we are challenged to read our nation in the world of poverty like a monstrous octopus poverty spreads its nagging prehensile tentacles into Hamlet's and villages all over our world two-thirds of the peoples of the world go to bed hungry at night they are your house they are you'll never see a shepherd eclair I've seen it in Latin America I've seen it in Africa I've seen this poverty in Asia I remember some years ago mrs. King and I journeyed to that great country known as India and I never will forget the experience it was a marvelous experience to meet and talk with the great leaders of India and to meet and talk with and speak to thousands and thousands of people all over that vast country these experiences will remain dear to me as long as the courts of memory so lengthen but I say to you this morning my friends are those depressing moments one avoid being depressed when he sees with his own eyes evidences of millions of people gone to bed hungry tonight how can one avoid being depressed when he sees with his alone eyes God's children sleeping on the sidewalks at night in Bombay more than a million people sleep on the sidewalks every night in Calcutta more than 600,000 sleep on the sidewalks have a night they have no beds to sleep in they have no houses to go in how can one avoid being depressed and he discovers that out of India's population more than 500 million people some 480 million make an annual income of less than $90 a year most of have never seen a doctor or dentist I noticed he's saying something within me cried out can we at America stand on the vine not be concern and answer came Oh No because the destiny of the United States is tired of with the destiny of India and every other nation and I started thinking of the fact that we spend in America millions of dollars a day to store surplus food and I said to myself I know where we can store that food free of charge and the Rinku stomachs of the millions of God's children all over the world who go to bed hungry at night and maybe we've spent far too much of our national budget establishing military bases around the world rather than bases of genuine concern and understanding but not only do we see poverty abroad I would remind you in our nation there are about 40 million people who are poverty stricken I have seen them here and there I've seen them in the ghettos of the north I've seen them in the rural areas of the south I've seen them in Appalachia I've just been in the process of touring many areas of our country and I must confess that in some situations I have literally found myself crying I was in Mark's Mississippi the other day which is in Quitman County the chorus count in the United States I tell you I saw hundreds of little black boys and black girls walking the streets with no shoes to wear I saw their mothers and their fathers trying to carry on a little head start program but they had no money the federal government hadn't funded them they were trying to carry on and they raised a little money here and there trying to get a little food to feed the children trying to teach them a little something and I saw mothers and fathers who said to me not only were they unemployed they didn't get any kind of income no old-age pension though well that's it there anything I said how do you live they say well we go around go around to the neighbors and ask them for a little something when the berry season comes we pick berries when the rabbit season comes we hunt and catch a few rabbits and that's about it I was in Newark in Harlem just this week and I walked in to the homes of welfare mothers I saw them in conditions no not with wall-to-wall carpet with wall-to-wall rats and roaches I stood in an apartment this welfare mother said to me the landlord will not prepare this place I've been here two years yeah made a single repair she pointed out the little boy who was a victim of lead poisoning she pointed out the walls with all of the ceiling falling through she showed me the holes where the rats came in she said night after night we have to stay awake keep the rats and the roaches from getting to the children I said how much do you pay for this apartment she said a hundred and twenty-five dollars and I looked and I thought and said to myself it isn't worth $60 poor people are forced to pay more for less living in conditions day in and day out where the whole area is constantly drained without being replenished it becomes a kind of domestic colony the tragedy is so awful these 40 million people are invisible because America is so affluent so rich because our express waves carry us away from the ghetto we don't see the plur Jesus stole a parable one day and he reminded us that a man with the hail because he didn't see the poor his name was deities he was a rich man and that was a man by the name of Lazarus who was a poor man but not only was he poor he was sick sores were all over his body he was so weak that he could hardly move he managed to get to the gate of diabetes every day wanting just to have the crumbs that would fall from his table daddy's did nothing about it the powerful in saying die v's went to hell and there was a fixed gulf now between Lazarus and IVs that is nothing in that parable which says the Darby's went to hell because he was rich Jesus never made a universal indictment against all wealth it is true that one day a rich young ruler came to him and he advised him to sell all but in that instance Jesus was prescribing individual surgery and not setting forth a universal diagnosis and if you look did that powerful with all of its symbolism you will remember that a conversation took place between heaven and hell and on the other end of that long-distance call between heaven and hell was Abraham in heaven talking to deities in Hell now Abraham was a very rich man if you go back to the Old Testament you see that he was the richest man of his day so it was not a rich man inhale talking with a poor man in heaven it was a little minion and Hale talking with a multimillion and heaven navi's didn't go to hell because he was rich died v's didn't realize that his wealth was his opportunity it was his opportunity to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother Lazarus darby's went to hell because he passed by Lazarus everyday and he never really saw him he went to hell because he allowed his brother to become invisible bobby's went to hell because he maximized the minimum and minimize the maximum and the dive is with the hail because he sought to be a conscientious objector in the war against poverty this can happen to America the richest nation in the world nothing wrong with that this is America's opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots and the question is whether America will do it there's nothing new about poverty what is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty the real question is whether we have the wheel and a few weeks some of us are coming to Washington to see if the wheel is still alive or if it is alive in this nation we're coming to Washington in a poor people's campaign yes we're going to bring the tire masses we're going to bring those who come to feel that life is a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign we're gonna bring children and adults and old people people who've never seen a doctor or dentists in their lives we're not coming to engage in it in any history history on it gesture we're not coming to Tabb Washington we are coming to demand that the government will address itself to the problem of poverty we read one day we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness but if a man then have a job on income he has neither life now liberty and the possibility for the pursuit of happiness he merely exists we're coming to ask a merit of America to be true to the huge promissory note that it's sign years ago we're coming to engage in dramatic nonviolent action the call attention to the gulf between promise and fulfillment to make the invisible visible why do we do it this way we do it this way because it is our experience if the nation doesn't move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively dramatically in terms of direct action great documents are here to tell us something should be done we met here some years ago in the White House Conference on civil rights and we have with the same recommendations that we will be demanding in our campaign here but nothing has been done the President's Commission on technology automation and economic progress recommended these things some time ago nothing has been done even the urban coalition made up of mayors of most of the cities of our country the leading businessmen have said that these things should be done nothing has been done the Kerner commission came out with its report just a few days ago and then made specific recommendations nothing has been done and I submit that nothing will be done until people of goodwill put their bodies and their souls in motion and it will be the kind the sole force brought into being as a result of this confrontation and I believe will make the difference yes it will be a Poor People's Campaign this is a question facing America ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation America has not met its obligations and its responsibilities to the poor one day we will have to stand before the God of history and we will talk in terms of things we've done yes we will be able to say we build gargantuan bridges to span the seas we built a Ganic buildings to kiss the sky yes we made our submarines to penetrate oceanic depths we brought brought into being many other things with our scientific and technological power it seems that I can hear the god of history saying that was not enough but I was hungry and you fed me not I was naked and you clothed me not I was the board of a decent sanitary house to live in and he provided no shelter for me and consequently you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness if you do it unto the least of these my brethren you do it under me that's the question facing America today and I want to say one other challenge we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed anyone who feels and there's still a lot of people who feel that way that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a revolution President Kennedy said on one occasion mankind must put an end to war a war will put an end to mankind the world must hear this I pray God that America we'll hear this before it is too late the cross today we are fighting a war I'm convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva College it is strengthen the military-industrial complex it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation it has put us against the self-determination of the vast majority Vietnamese people and put us in a position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor it has played havoc with our domestic destinies this day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Viet Cong soldiers every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars why we spend only fifty three dollars a year for every person characterize this poverty-stricken and the so-called poverty program which is not even a good skirmish against poverty not only that it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation yeah we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of Vietnamese people we've not even for our own house in order we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity yet when they come back home they can't hardly live on the same block together judgement of God is upon us today we could go right down the line and see that something must be done and something must be done quickly we have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world they have not a single major ally of the United States of America that word a sin a trip to Vietnam and so the only friends that we have now but a few client names like Taiwan Thailand South Korea and a few others this is where we are mankind must put an end the wall a wall will put an end to mankind and the best way to start is to put an end to the war in Vietnam because if it continues we were then evitable to come to the point of confronting China which could lead the whole world to nuclear annihilation it is no longer two choice my friends between violence and non-violence it is either non-violence or non-existence and the alternative to disarmament the alternative too great a suspension of nuclear tests the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation and I earthly habitat will be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine this is why I felt the need raising my voice against that wall and working wherever I can rouse the conscience of our nation on it I remember so well when I first took the stand against the war in Vietnam the critics took me on and they had that same and the most negative in some times most vicious way one day a newsmen came to me and said dr. King don't you think you're gonna have to stop now opposing the war and move more online with the administration's policy because I understand it is that the budget of the organization and people who once respect you have lost respect people who once respected you have lost respect for you don't you feel that you've really got to change your position I looked at him and I had to say so I'm sorry you don't know me I'm not a consensus leader I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference how about taking a sort of Gallup poll of the majority opinion ultimately a genuine lead is not a such a [ __ ] census but a mould of consensus on some positions expedient of cowardice asks the question is it expedient and then expediency comes along and ask the question is it politic vanity asks the question is it popular and conscience asks the question is it right there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic not popular but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right and I believe today that that is a need for all people of goodwill to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual we ain't gon study War no more this is the challenge facing modern man let me close by saying and we have difficult days ahead in the struggle for justice and peace and I will not yield to a politic of despair I'm gonna maintain hope as we come to Washington in this campaign the cards are stacked against us this time we will really confront a Goliath god grant that we will be that David of truth set out against the Goliath injustice the Goliath neglect the goal ire of refusing to deal with the problems and go on with a determination to make America the truly great America that it is called to be I say to you that our goal is freedom and I believe we're gonna get there because however much she strains away from it the goal of America is freedom use them scon though we may be the people our destiny is tied up in the destiny of America before the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth we were here for a tether the nest across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence we were here before the beautiful words of the star-spangled banner were written we were here for more than two centuries our forebears labored here without wages they made cotton King they built the homes of their masters in the midst of the most humiliating and oppressive conditions and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to grow and develop if the inexpressible crow tis of slavery couldn't stop us the opposition that we now face will surely fail we're gone when our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the almighty god I am bought it in our occurring demands and so however dark it is however deep angry feelings on the violent explosions are I can still sing we shall overcome we shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice we shall overcome because Carlisle is right no lie can live forever we shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right truth crushed to earth will rise again we shall overcome because James Russell Lord is right as we were singing earlier today truth forever on the scaffold wrong forever on the throne yet that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown standeth God within the shadow keeping watch above his own with this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope with this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood thank God for John who censors to go out on the lonely obscure island called Cadmus called vision of the New Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God who heard a voice saying the whole I make all things new farm of things have passed away God granted we will be participants in this newness and this magnificent development if we will but do it we will bring about a new day of justice and brotherhood in peace that day the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy god bless you

Channel: Pax Aeterna

Views: 2,703,723

Rating: 4.7793102 out of 5

Keywords: #jesuschrist, #jesus, #faith, #love, #christ, #holyspirit, #prayer, #godisgood, #gospel, #pray, #jesuslovesyou, #blessed, #hope, #jesussaves, #worship, #amen, #truth, #jesusisking, #grace, #godislove, #deus, #jesuscristo, #praise, #jesuscalling, #dieu, #instagood, #jesusistheway

Id: uFmP3YA3i9g

Length: 47min 26sec (2846 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 18 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/vivaportugalhabs]

At the 1967 SCLC Convention in Atlanta, Dr. King stated: "Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis."

I think most here can't argue with that.

[u/MWBartko]

How would distributism address the issues he brings up as far as global community and economics?

[u/TheGandhiGuy]

Thanks for posting. He told the story about Rip Van Winkle sleeping through a revolution in his last book, too. I was just reading it last night.