the red pill

Our current Sunday morning teaching series is called "Red Letter Commandments", and takes a look at the places in Matthew's gospel where Jesus gives a commandment that we feel is still relevant to us today. Last week I preached on Matthew 5:38-42 and Jesus command to us not to take revenge, but to engage in creative nonviolent resistance. This week I was speaking from the following paragraph Matthew 5:43-47, Love your enemies. I remembered that I had once read a sermon from Dr King on that text, and so I read it again in preparation. It is an amazing sermon, far better than I could have aspired to, and I shared that fact this morning. I quoted from one section, and said that I would share the text from my blog for those who'd like to read the whole thing. This is a transcript from a recording made November 17, 1957 at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama. Right in the heat and turmoil of the civil rights movement. I pray his call to radical love will ...

Today is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Revd Dr Martin Luther King Jnr, and this is the last in a short series of posts that have sought to share something of his message, in places particularly timely for the situation we find ourselves in. In meditating on his words these past days I’ve been acutely aware that often the words we read about and the descriptions of Dr King come from others. So today I share with you a quotation from “The Drum Major’s Instinct”; a sermon King preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia on the 4th February 1968, just two months before he was killed. Here we see how King understood himself, his faith, and his position as one seeking to see the kingdom of God - a kingdom of justice and love - established, strengthened and extended. From “The Drum Major’s Instinct”, Every now and then I guess we all think realistically (Yes, sir) about that day when we will be victimized with what is life's final common denominator—that somethi...

This is number four in a series marking th e martyrdom of Revd Dr Martin Luther King Jnr, the 40th anniversary of which falls this coming Friday, April 4th. The struggle for equality in Alabama continued and on March 25th 1965 a great march from Selma to Montgomery was organised. Speaking to the crowd at the end of the march King addresses the question of “How long?” that hung in the air. Today’s quotation comes from that speech, and as I read it I have in mind the struggle to end extreme poverty, as well as injustices like Darfur, Palestine, Guantanamo Bay and some of our own detention policies. I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” I come to say to you this afternoon however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth pressed to earth will rise again. How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever. How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow. How long? Not long, because the arm of the moral universe is long, ...

This is part 3 of a special series this week, in memory of Revd Dr Martin Luther King Jnr, who was killed by men of hate forty years ago this Friday. I guess the most well known of Dr King’s teachings come from three places, the I have a dream speech, the Mountain Top message and the Letter from Birmingham Jail . It would be incomplete to have this series without some of those great inspiring words, so today’s quotation comes from part of the Letter from Birmingham Jail . On April 12th 1963 – Good Friday that year - King and some colleagues were arrested for staging protest marches in Birmingham, Alabama. That same morning, several white ministers had written an open letter to King that had been printed in the local newspaper, calling on him to end the protests, and labelling him an anarchist, an extremist and a lawbreaker. King's reply, a few days later on the 16th April 1963, from his cell in Birmingham Jail, was to pen the now-famous Letter from Birmingham Jail . It is a calm...

This is part two of a series this week, remembering Revd. Dr Martin Luther King. Part one is below. I invite your comments on the tone of King’s message, and whether it has resonance today. At the end of the Montgomery bus boycott, when the Supreme Court issued a bus desegregation order, King stood before a large gathering in order to give final instructions before people started using the buses once again. Aware they had won a great victory, King is keen that they win not only in the law courts, but in the individual court of each person’s heart, Our experience and growth during this past year of united non-violent protest has been of such that we must respond to the decision with an understanding of those who have oppressed us and with an appreciation of the new adjustments that the court order poses for them. We must be able to face up honestly to our own shortcomings. We must act in such a way as to make possible a coming together of white people and colored people on the basis of ...

This coming Friday (April 4th) sees the 40th anniversary of the martyrdom of Revd. Dr Martin Luther King Jnr. Today and each day this week I’ll be posting a quote from him, and I invite you to comment on the relevance of parts of his message to contemporary people. In 1964 Revd. Dr King was awarded the Nobel peace prize. In his acceptance speech he said, I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life which surrounds him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight or racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have ...