Time for Steps

"One must not only preach a sermon with his voice. He must preach it with his life." Youth ministries are really familiar with these famous words of Martin Luther King, Jr. We like to use them to motivate our kids to live a big life of faith, one that includes risk, sacrifice and, ultimately, growth. I think as youth pastors, the daily tasks and expectations of professional youth ministry often leave us with very little time to preach sermons with something other than words. It makes us feel a little guilty. So, naturally, we hope our students will live louder than we do. Thus the King quotation.

Until recently, however, I have been ignorant of the context King's admonition. Taylor Branch points out in "Pillar of Fire" that King delivered this message to a collection of ministers, rabbis and priests at a conference on Race and Religion. Immediately after this conference, King would launch the Birmingham campaign, a campaign that would lead to days of solitary confinement for King, and the stunning visual of children being hauled to jail and swept down the street by water hoses. This was a dangerous moment.

King had spent a great deal of time calling on clergy to summon their moral courage to face down segregation. He had become world famous for his oratory, for his words. And less than 8 years after the successes of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the movement was stymied, lunch counters were still segregated and the religious institutions of the nation were, by and large, still very fond of talking, but only talking.

King's famous words were less a directive to the assembled listeners, as it was an attempt to convict himself of the need to take the next, painful, uncertain steps. He was reminding himself, the great preacher of words, that the time had come to become a preacher of steps. He was reminding himself that if he was going to survive the inner turmoil that racked his inner life, he would have to go to Birmingham, whether anyone followed or not.

I like using the quote the other way. I like using the quote to remind kids they need to sacrifice and live more deeply than the expectations of my job seem to allow.

But I know I need to absorb the quote as King did: As a calling to transform the great words and ideas that inform my faith and my understanding of what it means to truly live into steps - halting, uncertain, doubt-filled steps.

Will I? That is the question that drives this blog and informs my anxiety and my dreams.

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