INTRODUCTION: PASTOR BARBARA : We gather as a community of love in remembrance of a dreamer, a person of great faith and determination, a courageous witness for justice. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, jr, born on Jan. 15th, 1929, was a Baptist minister who preached, taught and embodied the philosophy of non-violent direct action to resist segregation, racism and poverty of his day. His leadership started with a bus boycott and the Civil Rights movement and went on to protest war and poverty and injustice in many forms. His leadership was rewarded with a Nobel Peace Prize. He was assassinated in April 1968 as he stood on a balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tenn where he was called to help with a garbage collectors protest. I hope all of you will be inspired by this worship to be renewed and transformed to carry out God’s Call today in a broken world that is still so much in need of healing, peace, and justice. Priscilla and Glen will join with me as Readers. The first readings focus on the reluctance of Moses to be the leader God sends to bring the Israelites out of Egypt and Martin’s hesitancy to lead the struggle for Civil Rights of African Americans.

READER ONE: Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt: I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.( Ex. 3: 7-8a). God asks Moses to lead his people and Moses makes excuses and says, ‘O my Lord, please send someone else.” (Ex. 4:13)

READER TWO: “What should I do? I have a wife and a young family. The dangers of speaking out against racism are real and often end tragically. This is my first pastorate in a silk-stocking Baptist church that caters to the black middle-class values. What will they think if I come in and develop a reputation as a rabble-rouser? The members of Dexter Avenue are the black bourgeois who believe that black people can make it if they ‘study hard, work hard, save their money and stay out of trouble.’ ” ( Martin Luther King )

PASTOR: Inspired by the nonviolent teachings of Jesus, Thoreau, and Gandhi, King taught that nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon because it “cuts without wounding and ennobles the one who wields it. Nonviolence is a sword that heals.”

READER ONE: “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” Matt 5: 43-44

READER TWO: “Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method that rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” Martin Luther King Jr. on December 11, 1964.

PASTOR: Dr. King has said “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” And on another occasion, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter/” Let us hear more on this subject.

READER ONE: “Cain said to this brother Abel, ‘Let us go out to the field.’ And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. Then God said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’ And God said, ‘What have you done? Listen your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!’” Genesis 4:8-10

READER TWO: “The person who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as the one who helps perpetrate it. The person who accepts evil without protesting against it, is really cooperating with it.” (Martin Luther King Jr., “Stride toward Freedom, adapted)

PASTOR: Let us give thanks for the continuing witness of the life and ministry of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose blood cries from the ground to you and to us.

As we close this time of readings let us now go to two selections from King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

READER ONE: “Even though we must face difficulties today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed—we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (and women) are created equal.”…”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.”

READER TWO: “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places shall be made straight and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. …When we allow freedom to ring from every town and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black and white, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants—will be able to join hands and to sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,

ALL READERS TOGETHER: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”