A lesser known sermon of Dr. Martin Luther King
Whoever would be great among you must be your servant (Mark 10:43).
Most of you are familiar with Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington during the summer of 1963. Its most unforgettable lines are:
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood….I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
You may also have read Dr. King’s powerful “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” written while he was imprisoned for peaceful civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham AL. Here are two quotations:
· Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
· Justice too long delayed is justice denied.
But I wonder if you are familiar with a sermon that Dr. King preached just two months before he was assassinated. He was working with the story in Mark 10 where James and John asked Jesus to elevate them to the first position in his future kingdom. Jesus replied by discussing how great leadership is all about taking the servant place. This truth redefines what he calls “the drum major instinct”:
There is, deep down within all of us, an instinct. It’s a kind of drum major instinct—a desire to be out front, a desire to lead the parade, a desire to be first.
King exposes this instinct and its evils during the central part of the sermon. Toward the end, he does something surprising. He redirects the drum major instinct by paraphrasing Jesus on servant greatness with these provocative words:
Don’t give up this instinct. It’s a good instinct IF you use it right. It’s a good instinct IF you don’t distort it. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do.
Amen. Help us, Lord Jesus.
