Sunday, January 18, 2009

MLK Sunday @ All Saints Church

We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.



We celebrated Martin Luther King Sunday at All Saints Church with great music, powerful preaching and words from King's last Sunday sermon ... preached March 31, 1968 at the National Cathedral.


SALUTATION
Minister: We hold these truths to be self evident.
People: .....that all people are created equal.

Minister: Let justice roll down like waters,
People: .....and righteousness like an every-flowing stream.

COLLECT OF THE DAY
Almighty God, by the hand of Moses your servant you led your people out of slavery, and made them free at last. Grant that your Church, following the example of your prophet Martin Luther King, may resist oppression in the name of your love, and may secure for all your children the blessed liberty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

A READING FROM "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," A SERMON PREACHED BY DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. 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 what I ought 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 terms: "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 the 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.

And then the sermon:

Living Together as Siblings
or Perishing Together as Fools


You can see it here.
.
(And now, back to CNN! :)

No comments: