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MLK National Day of Service | Reflections on the church service on MLK I attended | Empathy Circles [1]
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Date: 2025-01-20
Observed each year on the third Monday in January as “a day on, not a day off,” MLK Day is the only federal holiday designated as a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer to improve their communities. AmeriCorps has been charged with leading this effort for the past quarter century. We encourage you to engage in volunteer service in honor of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. Corporation for National and Community Service
The Sunday Service
The of the Sunday Service I attended yesterday was about Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. The sermon was named Honoring the Beloved Community. The service was structured into the following number of sections: Prelude, Congregational Announcements, Pastoral Welcome, Opening Hymn, Call to Worship, Song of Affirmation, Lord’s prayer, Song of hope, Announcements, Prayer list, Choir singing, Readings, Sermon and and closing hymns.
Over half of the approximately 1hour service was dedicated to songs and presentations by the members of the church. And the sermon on Honoring the Beloved Community was about 20 minutes. A video of the service can be found at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQtn4n3jvZE.
I’m charmed and comforted by the effort and skill Rev. Christy Ramage puts into respecting all faith’s and philosophies in her sermons. Clearly printed on the top the service program is: “Wherever the divine is mentioned by name or title throughout the service, please feel free to use whatever wording best suits your beliefs.”
Below are some thoughts on the sermon, quotes from the readings section of the service, and a few of the lyrics of the songs. And beyond that are some news and thoughts about Empathy Circles tie into this.
Below is some of the transcript from the sermon. I wanted to include it because illustrates the tone and flavor of the diversity, equality, and inclusion found in the presentation. The quotes from Ron are in the readings below the Sermon section.
SERMON Please join me in prayer. Spirit of life may we open our hearts and Minds to the gift and responsibility of the Beloved Community. Amen. - Last week we spoke about being beloved that as Jesus emerged from the water of baptism there was a voice that came so says scripture and said you are my beloved and this week we expand that concept of beloved to the Beloved Community the sense that we are not just individually beloved but that we are called as a community of beloved individuals to be something beyond our individual ego personality - We are called into the Beloved Community and Martin Luther King Jr used this way of understanding how we are together over and over and over and overagain and it it really was as the the final quote that Ron just read it truly was what he understood to be the foundation of all of the work that he did all of the nonviolent work all of the marches all of the speeches all of the ways that he put his life and his faith on the line was finally on behalf of the Beloved Community. - Quoting from him but the end is reconciliation the end is redemption the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is the love of God working in the lives of human beings this is the love that may well be the salvation of our civilization so this profound commitment to the way that love builds builds community and the way that love sustains community and calls us to responsibility within that Community. - It's an extraordinary concept coming from an extraordinary man and so for us to be able to understand the gift of community I think is really really important Martin Luther King Jr came to an understanding of community from the black church that was where he grew up that was his molding his shaping his family his friends the extended people that he was aware of it was in that space that he came to appreciate the power of community and as a part of that the commitment to justice that was woven into that commit community so there was support for people within the community. - But there was also awareness that that Community was suffering oppression suffering racism suffering systemic oppression and that that feeling of needing to respond to Injustice was also very much a part of that community and that as that became alive within him he was able to understand and that in order for the community that he loved for his Beloved Community for the black church to be able to thrive they would need to address the oppression and so you have this incredible blending of a very deep commitment to love and a very strong need to respond to Injustice. - Many people see those as being in conflict with each other and yet the reality is that what Martin Luther King Jr did is that he Blended them in a way that allowed him to affirm the Beloved Community to affirm above everything else The Power of Love at the same time that he was committed to fighting Injustice and so as he wove those two things together he looked to Hind Hinduism he looked to Gandhi he looked to a way that violence could become incorporated into the capacity to love and when he did that violence becomes nonviolence that the need to respond to Injustice which can provoke violence and often does within his heart mind and soul in conversation with the writings of Gandhi became this extraordinary understanding of Love becoming the source of nonviolence response to Injustice. - An extraordinary blending together in ways that the Christian tradition has supported through time not only love one another but lovey our enemy and and what Martin Luther King Jr discovered was that there was a way to take that profound Christian message and blend it with a methodology that allowed a response to Injustice and this is the Brilliance I believe of Martin Luther King Jr that he was able to do this and that he was able to inspire so many people to be able to risk their safety and well-being in the Name of Love as a movement against Injustice. - Partial transcribe from a video of the sermon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQtn4n3jvZE
We are so fortunate that one can review a video of a sermon given only one day ago of a sermon I attended in person. The in person experience is mostly felt. Ones emotions are touched in a way that only materialized in a group setting. But, in reviewing the video and studying the handouts I took home I’m marveling over how the whole sermon fits together.
READINGS
“Hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love.” “Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. He who loves is a participant in the being of God.” “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality … I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long., but it bends toward justice. “Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.” “But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community … It is the love of God working in the lives of men. This is the love that may well be the salvation of our civilization.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
SONGS
The opening hymn was Lift Every Voice And Sing. And I’m sorry just not enough time and space to include all the songs sung. Especially the ones sung by the choir.
Often referred to as "The Black National Anthem," Lift Every Voice and Sing was a hymn written as a poem by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson in 1900. His brother, John Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954), composed the music for the lyrics. A choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School, where James Weldon Johnson was principal, first performed the song in public in Jacksonville, Florida to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln's birthday.
At the turn of the 20th century, Johnson's lyrics eloquently captured the solemn yet hopeful appeal for the liberty of Black Americans. Set against the religious invocation of God and the promise of freedom, the song was later adopted by NAACP and prominently used as a rallying cry during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. - NAACP Website:
https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/lift-every-voice-and-sing
This song was a very appropriate selection for the service. I struggled a bit. I’m still trying to remember how to sing. It has been many years since I have done that. But, there is a wonderful feeling when one sings with a large group of people. It is a momentary sense of community and belonging. (Sorry, I just can’t get the block quotes to work below. So I put in an horizontal line.)
Lift Every Voice and Sing Lyrics
Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list'ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.
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[END]
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