March 2007

Mission On Your Doorstep
Reclaiming Our Mission,
Reclaiming Our Prophetic Voices

Throughout the biblical record, it appears that the number forty has a very special significance. The mythic flood that nearly destroyed the whole earth was the result of unrelenting rain that lasted forty days and forty nights. God led the ancient Israelites through the wilderness for forty years. Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights just before his time of testing with the adversary. There are just over forty occurrences of the phrase "forty years" between the book of Genesis and the sermonic letter to the Hebrews. The number forty seems to suggest periods of probation, preparation, and provision.

It was forty years ago this spring, on April 4, 1967, that the 20th century's most celebrated public theologian, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., challenged church leaders to reclaim their mission and their prophetic voices. One year to the day before he was assassinated, King addressed the organization Clergy and Laity Concerned at the Riverside Church in New York City. During his "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" address, King said:

            A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

            America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

            Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Today, there are over nine million children in the United States of America who do not have health care coverage. The established minimum wage is a far cry from a living wage, and our country is filled with millions of working poor people laboring from "can't see in the morning until can't see at night." It is estimated that a black male child born in 2007 has a one-in-three chance of ending up in prison. Simultaneously, our nation is on the verge of spending more money in Iraq than we spent on World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. 

During that same speech, King also said, "Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when ‘every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."

May God grant us, like Dr. King, the courage to break the silence and move beyond militarism, racism and materialism in our own day. We don't have forever to turn the tide. It is up to us. With God's help, we can make the difference.

With living hope,
Aidsand F. Wright-Riggins III
Executive Director, National Ministries