Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered as a Civil Rights leader, but we should also remember that first and foremost, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Preacher.
On the evening of April 3, 1968, a day before his assassination, King gave his infamous “Mountaintop speech.” In it, he spoke about the role of the Preacher and why it is so important. King said, “Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somehow the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones. And whenever injustice is around, he should tell it. Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, and saith, “When God speaks who can but prophesy?” Again, with Amos, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Somehow the preacher must say with Jesus, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me,” and he’s anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor.”
King gave that speech in Memphis. He was addressing striking sanitation workers who would be marching the next day for better opportunity and pay. The strike was in part a reaction to the deaths of Echol Cole and Robert Walker, who on Feb. 1, 1968, were crushed in the back of a garbage truck on a rainy Memphis day when the truck’s compactor was suddenly activated. Black garbage men were not allowed to sit in the cab of the vehicle or drive it. It was an injustice King and others could not ignore. An injustice he had to prophesy about.
In that same speech, King used Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan to explain why we should all care about two unknown garbage workers. King recounted, three men passed an injured man on the Jericho Road, but only one stopped to help him. King tried to explain why the other two did not stop to help the injured man, “And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by and he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
King was compelled to stop and help in Memphis because he understood that all people have equal value and deserve to be treated equally. “We are determined to be people. We are saying -- We are saying that we are God’s children. And that we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live,” declared King.
Striking workers wore signs that declared “I am a man” asking the citizens of Memphis if they recognized that truth as well. MLK marched with those workers at great peril to his own self because he wondered what would happen to them if he did not stop to help. He could have worried about what would happen to him. He was already receiving death threats and previous marches in other parts of the country had been met with violent reproaches from local law enforcement. King expected the same to happen in Memphis, but he went to Memphis anyway and he gave the ultimate sacrifice. In John 15:13 Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Too often in our own lives we do not help because we cannot get past what it will cost us, but the life of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. demands that we help anyway, no matter the cost to ourselves. That is why on Mon., Jan. 20, 2025, we should honor MLK the preacher, as well as MLK the civil rights leader.
