Strength to love

Ebony, Jan, 2005 by Joy Bennett Kinnon

In many parts of the world, the January holiday honoring the three Kings, the gift of the magi, is a national holiday. Every January America commemorates the gift of the life and spirit of our own "king," Martin Luther King Jr.

King's road from his grandparents' house on Auburn Avenue where he was born to the Memphis balcony on Mulberry Street where he was assassinated was short, winding and treacherous. Who could have known then that between those two seemingly innocuous dates--1929-1968--lay the hopes and dreams of the Black community in America.

Perhaps the infant King sensed this and, prescient even in the womb, delayed his entrance into a cold, cruel world until the last possible moment. The historian wrote in What Manner of Man that the birth of the infant King was as eventful and as full of life-threatening moments as his life would be. His mother had a difficult time with her second son. The labor was unusually difficult and when Mama King finally delivered a male child on January 15,1929, those attending his birth first feared he was stillborn. "He lay so still, so quiet that the doctor had to slap his bottom vigorously to bring forth the customary cry of life," the author wrote.

And so first presumed dead, King arose and began his singular trek toward the mountaintop of Memphis, preaching on the way a gospel of love that helped destroy Jim Crow, an entrenched system of discrimination born in the post-slavery era.

One of my favorite books by Dr. King is Strength to Love, his classic collection of sermons. In it he explains the central elements of his life of service, his philosophy of nonviolence and his belief in the Beloved community. He talks about the strength to love, and when he writes about love, it is not the sentimental sap of the current culture, but the hard work of love, the Greek form, agape, what King defines as "understanding and creative, redemptive goodwill for all men" that compels us to love our enemies and to forgive those who despise us. It is this King who wrote, "Returning hate for hate multiples hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars." It is the "difficult" King, not the one easily reduced to fuzzy antidotes and sound bites who wrote, "I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

Following his life of service to others is ultimately far more difficult and compelling but far more satisfying than simply sleeping in on this holiday or shopping the King day sales. I would submit that practicing the tenets of King in our everyday life is a far more worthy tribute to his great sacrifice. And it doesn't take much. In his seminal "Drum Major Instinct" sermon, King called us to a new level of greatness. He called us to be first in love, first in moral excellence and first in generosity. He called us to serve.

"If you want to be important-wonderful. If you want to be recognized--wonderful. If you want to be great--wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness. And this morning, the thing that I like about it: By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve ... You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant."

As we mark the miracle of King's life and ponder ways to honor it, those who presume to follow him perhaps should simply ask for strength to love as he loved and to practice what he preached.