GOOD Morning Wilton invited the Reverend Dr. Arnold Isidore Thomas, Senior Minister of Wilton Congregational Church, to contribute his thoughts and commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was born during the Season of Epiphany. Epiphany means “manifestation,” and it is a time when Christians throughout the world celebrate the manifestation of God in the person of Jesus, whom we call the Christ. Epiphany begins on Jan. 6, the twelfth and final day of Christmas, and is commemorated in the story of the magi who followed the star to the manger in Bethlehem.
In many ways, Dr. King was a modern-day magus guided by a divine light to a vision of God’s manifestation among us in the form of interracial reconciliation, decent employment with livable wages, equity and quality education, the eradication of poverty and the absence of violence and war. We saw and felt the soothing radiance of this light as he articulated it from his early days in Montgomery, AL to his final hours in Memphis, TN.
Today, nearly fifty years after the passing of this light-seeker from the South, we find ourselves once again scurrying about in darkness amid the constant bombardment of broadcasts about police brutality against African Americans, of battle lines being built between Democrats and Republicans over immigration, of terrorism in Europe and the Middle East, of mounting violence in our cities, along with mounting suspicion as to whether multicultural sensitivities have truly progressed since the days of King, as we evolve into a nation where whites are no longer the majority.
Unfortunately, it is too often the bad news that makes the news; it is too often the few rotten apples that spoil it for the rest in the barrel. Still, I tend to believe there is more good than bad in human nature, and that we will learn to heal the festering wounds that presently threaten our desire for mutual security and impede our path toward reconciliation. Yet we can only learn by first acknowledging that we are a household of kindred spirits with common goals, capable of confessing our faults and confronting our divisions, and realizing that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” (Mark 3:25)
There is no peace without justice. America remains that fertile experimental soil in which every nation, race and religion has planted its seed to see if something resembling true and compassionate justice may grow from its ground and enable all its members to finally witness the dawn of a new Epiphany guided by God’s light within and about us.