Today we celebrated Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Every 3rd Monday in January for the past 25 years the US celebrates a national holiday to commemorate the life of a social justice warrior. Rev. Dr. King stepped into history to affect change not just in the deep south but in northern US cities as well. Rev. Dr. King understood that people needed Jesus but they also needed living wages, social acceptance, and freedom to choose where to live, where to go to school, where to eat, and opportunities to thrive at any profession. The country was losing ground trying to hold back a group of people based on race.
Some people today use the term social justice warrior as a negative depiction of an individual who champions causes for the poor and disenfranchised. What is not said often enough is that Jesus was a social justice warrior. As Christians, our calling is not just telling the world about Jesus. Our calling is in promoting love of God and love of neighbor as Jesus stated in Matthew 22:37-40 and Mark 12:30-31. We are all neighbors, just as the Samaritan man was the neighbor of the Jewish man who fell prey to robbers. We are, however, not living up to this ideal.
Many cities and towns celebrate the day with community service projects. They viewed this as a day on and not a day off.
Those day on community projects are great and certainly meet a need. However, something needs to be done to establish neighborliness and not lines of fortified sanctuaries. There is too much fear of the other. Too much fear of those who we define as different. Too much labeling some people as undesirable. This is not of God and certainly not what Jesus commanded us to do. Let us find a way to love our neighbors more deeply. That is the work that needs to be done and not just on one day of the year. The challenge we face now is to find ways to spread love as widely as possible. That is what Rev. Dr. King would want. That is what Jesus wants.
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