Christ our Mighty Champion

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against Vietnam on the 4th of April, 1967 at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City in a speech titled “Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence.”  I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this quote:

“To me the relationship of this ministry (the ministry of Jesus Christ) to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I’m speaking against the war.  Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men — for Communist and Capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative?  Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them?  What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One?  Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God.  Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions.  We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls ‘enemy,’ for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.”

I too often trade broad and deep brotherhood for narrow and shallow nationalism.  The Church must speak for the weak.  Especially those that our country has victimized.  Oh that God would make us the voice of the voiceless.