An historic moment 
Fifty years ago, on August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood at the Lincoln Memorial and addressed a crowd of several hundred thousand who had come to the nation’s capitol for the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he shared his hopeful vision of justice and equality in our land, was a defining moment of the civil rights movement.
It was also an address steeped in Biblical language that directs us to consider the implications of the Kingdom of God for church and culture.
King set his plea in the context of American history by noting the backdrop of Lincoln’s statue: “Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation.”[i]
As bright as that historical moment had been, its promise had not yet been fully realized: “One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still badly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” This state of affairs signaled that America had failed to honor the “sacred obligation” of guaranteeing unalienable rights for all in accord with her founding documents.
The call for civil rights was a call for “citizenship rights.”
A Biblical vision
But Dr. King drew on more than our nation’s political heritage in his oratory. The third generation Baptist minister found words in Scripture, especially the prophetic tradition, to express both discontent with present injustice and hope for better things to come.
King echoed Amos, declaring, “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream” (cf. Amos 5:24).
He contextualized that vision with images of descendants of slaves and descendants of slave-holders sitting together “at the table of brotherhood” and of little black and white children playing hand-in-hand.
He called for the eradication of all vestiges of segregation and racial repression. And he drew from Isaiah 40:4-5 to express his dream in Biblical terms:
“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with…. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”
Martin Luther King’s dream was truly one of Biblical proportions.
Over 1900 years before that march on Washington, Luke the evangelist quoted the same verses from Isaiah 40 when introducing John the Baptist (Luke 3:4-6). He understood John as paving the way for Jesus to come and fulfill prophecy. Luke tells us that Jesus himself quoted Isaiah when reading aloud in the synagogue at Nazareth:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me … to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
Throughout his gospel, Luke shows Jesus’ special concern for the poor and the oppressed. In accord with the ancient prophetic vision, Jesus was ushering in a Kingdom that would be marked by justice and righteousness. And all in that Kingdom are called to love their neighbors and pursue such justice.
Our Kingdom calling
Dr. King’s dream is rooted in Scriptural promise that ultimately will only be fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.
But that doesn’t mean Christians are exempt from pursuing that dream now. In Jesus, the Kingdom of God broke into history and is now growing toward fulfillment. We are called to embrace a Kingdom vision now and to live by Kingdom values now – the kind of values that promote equality, racial harmony, and care for the downtrodden.
The world should be able to look at the church and see it leading the way in the areas of racial harmony and social justice. Within the church, King’s dream of racial reconciliation and equal treatment should be a present reality because that is what Jesus’ Kingdom demands. And as more and more hearts and minds are changed by the gospel, we should see Kingdom values increasingly infusing our culture and showing the power of Christ to accomplish what worldly politics has failed to achieve.
Thankfully, we have made positive strides as a nation in the direction of realizing Dr. King’s dream. The presence of an African-American man in the White House for his second term is proof of that.
But only someone whose eyes are blinded to reality would think that we’ve fully achieved a “beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” The vestiges of racism linger, even sometimes within the church. Perhaps the anniversary of Dr. King’s famous speech can be a time for Christians to reflect upon the call of the Kingdom of God on their lives and to commit themselves afresh to working to make the Biblical dream come true.
[i] All quotations are from the text of Dr. King’s speech at: http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf
Article courtesy of colsoncenter.org
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