FROM THE ARCHIVES: THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD EVER REACH US:

At Heart, a Baptist Preacher: The latest volume in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., draws on previously undiscovered materials to illuminate his powerful preaching ministry with new depth: a review of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Vol. 6: Advocate of the Social Gospel, September 1948-March 1963, Edited by Clayborne Carson et al. (Jenny McBride, 01/21/08, Books & Culture)

King teaches us at least four lessons about preaching through this volume. First, revise and reuse. King continually revised his most effective sermons. He prepared many of the documents selected for this volume in classes at Crozer Theological Seminary, and he repeatedly drew upon these sermon outlines and introductions while serving at Dexter Avenue in Montgomery and Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta, and while preaching in cities across the nation. The majority of this massive volume is devoted to the "Papers," the primary materials themselves, which begin with sermon sketches, introductions, and conclusions from Crozer Theological Seminary. With titles such as "Why Religion?", "The Misuse of Prayer," and "What is Man?", these sermon intros and conclusions read like Pascal's Pensées. In the sermon conclusion for "Facing Life's Inescapables," King writes, "This is the conclusion of the whole matter. We can't escape ourselves; we can't escape sacrifice; we can't escape Jesus. We had better accept these as the great inevitables of life." By providing a number of charts illustrating the development of King's most distinctive sermons over a period of five to ten years, the editors make it easy to trace additions and changes in these texts.

Second, King filled old wineskins with new wine. He weaved both fresh biblical insight and commentary on contemporary events into the already prepared outline or text. In doing so, King succeeded in carrying out what Dietrich Bonhoeffer described as the task of all faithful preaching: speaking the concrete Word of God in the concrete moment. The robust 45-page editors' introduction provides a detailed narrative of what King was preaching as history unfurled—as the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision on Brown v Board of Education, as an all-white southern jury acquitted the man on trial for the murder of Emmett Till, as the Montgomery Bus Boycott rolled on indefinitely. The same month the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its first decision on Brown, King preached a sermon entitled "Mental and Spiritual Slavery." While he first compares Pontius Pilate with many white Christians who are "enslaved to the crowd," he then says to his black congregation, "Now it is easy for us to look back and condemn Pilate for such an action, but we must also see that many of us are just as much victims of this sort of thing as Pilate." Aware of the sometimes unbearable pressure to conform to southern racial mores for the sake of personal safety or job retention, King encourages the parishioners to side not with Pilate the conformist but with Jesus who transformed history. Then, in his September 1955 sermon, "Pride vs. Humility," King speaks of the tendency to substitute sentimental worship for active discipleship. He says, "That jury in Mississippi, which a few days ago in the Emmett Till case, freed two white men from what might be considered one of the most brutal and inhuman crimes of the twentieth century, worships Christ." And in January 1956, one month into the Bus Boycott, King delivers the sermon, "Our God is Able," and says, "Much of my ministry has been given to fighting against social evil. There are times that I get despondent, and wonder if it is worth it. But then something says to me deep down within, 'God is able. You need not worry.' So this morning I say to you [that] we must continue to struggle against evil, but don't worry. God is able. Don't worry about segregation. It will die because God is against it." Such texts illustrate King's characteristic ability to speak biblical and theological truths boldly in and for his contemporary moment.

Third, King's file entitled "Sermons by Other Ministers" shows that he deliberately drew upon the work of renowned preachers such as Harry Emerson Fosdick. In this way, King quite intentionally thought with and through the communion of saints. Volume 6 includes facsimiles of pages from sermons and works of theology where King responds to the text with notes in the margins. For example, one facsimile shows a brief outline of King's sermon "What is Man?" on the opening page of his copy of Reinhold Niebuhr's 1932 Moral Man and Immoral Society, a text that presumably inspired these thoughts. The volume also includes seminary papers on various issues associated with preaching, one of which is a review of a homily by Karl Barth in which King harshly criticizes the Swiss theologian for failing to present his theology "in the light of the experiences of the people." The volume juxtaposes the seminary paper with a picture of King proudly walking arm-in-arm with Barth at Princeton Theological Seminary 12 years later.

King's interaction with Barth as a student and later as a nationally acclaimed public figure represents the fourth lesson about preaching that King teaches us through this volume. King held the conviction that good preaching must be theological preaching. In his edition of Halford Edward Luccock's 1944 book, In the Minister's Workshop, (shown in facsimile), King underlines Luccock's words and paraphrases them in the margins: "Every great movement in history has been prepared for and partly carried out through preaching … . If preaching is to have any depth, height and breadth, it must be theological preaching." King believed that a good preacher must have a strong intellect but also must make "the complex, the simple."

[originally posted: 1/27/08]