By Rev. Kamal Hassan

Rev. Hassan was our guest preacher on Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday 2021. Rev. Hassan is the pastor of Sojourner Truth Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Calif. He is a powerfully gifted preacher and Christian educator whose message is rooted in the African American prophetic tradition. He is a community organizer who has toiled for decades in low-wealth communities of color for social justice. Read more of his bio here. 

Luke 4:22-30

Claim: Jesus and Dr Martin Luther King Jr were inconvenient heroes

I. We Re-Call Dr Martin Luther King Jr with Dr Vincent Harding

A. A Chaplin of the Empire

B. A prophet of justice

II. The shape of prophetic ministry

Not the Dream in Washington, but the Sermon on the Mount

Greatly honored are the destitute

Greatly honored are the mourners

Greatly honored are the humbled

Greatly honored are the those who are famished and parched for justice

Greatly honored are those who show mercy

Greatly honored are the pure in heart

Greatly honored are the peace makers

Greatly honored are those who have been persecuted for the sake of justice

Greatly honored are you when you put your honor on the line for Christ’s sake

III. Jesus was an Inconvenient Hero

“No prophet is ever welcomed in his hometown” v. 24

A. Jesus came into Galilee after his baptism, testing, and consecration to live into a prophetic ministry

B. At first, he was treated as a hero, but this did not last because he not only read the scripture, but he also told them what it meant, and it wasn’t what they wanted to hear

Jesus challenged his community’s sense of entitlement and exclusivity in their relationship with God. He pointed out that there were none of the Gentiles and the people on the margins of society sitting in the temple among them. Those whom he had been called by the Spirit to minister to were not in the house. He was looking for the destitute, the formerly incarcerated, the people off the block and off the track. He was looking for people who had been called abominations and perversions and had been kicked out of temples like theirs, but he didn’t see any of them in the house, so he couldn’t do any miracles for his home folk. 

He was also telling them that they had to practice some radical inclusion, some extravagant grace, and some relentless hospitality if they wanted to be blessed by the prophet. That was not what they wanted to hear. They got fed up and chased him out of the place too. He had gone from being welcomed and celebrated to being cast out. Jesus had become an inconvenient hero.

He was an inconvenient hero because Jesus said that he was not there for people who were happy with things the way that they were in their spiritual lives and social behavior. He had not come to bless those who were looking to make their church a social club or an entertainment center. He was criticizing those who were trying to create safety zones for themselves that left out vulnerable people who were unsafe and unprotected. He declared that his people had missed the mark and that they needed to follow his example and center their mission and ministry – their very spiritual life in the collateral damage of the Roman Empire to seek and save the lost. For these church folk it seemed too much to ask. They already knew how they wanted to be blessed and this wasn’t it. Could this be why no prophet is ever welcomed in his home town?

IV. Dr Martin Luther King Jr as an Inconvenient Hero

“All the people in the synagogue we furious when they heard this” v. 28

A. Today we are gathered to re-call and honor the life and legacy of another inconvenient hero – Dr Martin Luther King Jr. To have a deeper appreciation of Dr King’s call to ministry it is necessary to study him and to reach beyond the “Dreamer” image of him that for so many has dominated public discourse about him and frozen his life 5 years before he died. This is the King that has been promoted and embraced by the corporate, political, and religious establishments of the American Empire. They hope to hide the fact that the bomb that killed four little girls at the 16^th Street Baptist church also shattered the primacy of the Dream in Martin’s mission and ministry. It led him to call his “I Have a Dream” speech, “superficial optimism.”

B. The Spirit then drove him into the wilderness of questioning whether it was sufficient to simply advocate that Black people be integrated into the burning house that was the American Empire.

Hear ye him after 1963:

“I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility… when a government commands more wealth and power than has ever been known in the history of the world, and offers no more than this, it is worse than blind. It is provocative.” 

We must “…cripple the operation of an oppressive society.”

“I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity. I choose to live for and with those who find themselves seeing life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign. This is the way I am going. If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way. If it means sacrificing, I’m going that way. If it means dying for them, I’m going that way because I heard a voice saying, ‘Do something for others.”

Like Jesus before him, Martin King became and remains an inconvenient hero, because he said that he was not there for to join people who were happy with things the way they were in society and in their own lives. He had come to challenge those who were looking to make the church a social club or an entertainment center. He was criticizing those who were trying to create middle class safety zones for themselves that left out so many vulnerable people who remained unsafe and unprotected. He declared that the American church and the American government had missed the mark and that they needed to follow him as he followed Jesus to center their mission and ministry – their very church and civic lives in the collateral damage of the American Empire to seek and to save the lost. 

Martin’s testing and temptation after the March on Washington resulted in his deciding to be right instead of popular on the Vietnam War and the needs of poor people. In his “Beyond Vietnam speech opposing the war he uttered these words:

“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government,” and “…the father is especially concerned with suffering, and helpless outcast Vietnamese children. I have come to speak for them, …for the weak, voiceless, victims of our nation which it calls enemy.”

 But this came at a cost. The more he cried out and organized against the triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism, the less popular he became. The acclaim and access that Martin enjoyed right after the March eventually evaporated, and he was never invited to the White House again. The press turned against him and the money and support of white liberals dried up. He began to be roundly criticized by other Civil rights leaders and people in the church who said he was out of his lane. He had become an inconvenient hero and for that he died and unjust death. Could this be why no prophet is ever welcomed in his home country? 

V. To truly honor him we must follow him because we have been called to help somebody in this time when the foundations of democracy in America are shaking, threatening to topple, and millions of people are trying to push it over

“But he walked through the crowd and went on his way” v. 30

A. We have been baptized and made new creatures to walk and talk and live a new way, working out our salvation with fear and trembling that we be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem

B. We have set apart for the purposes of God to be about that life of radical inclusion, extravagant grace, and relentless hospitality

C. We must come out of the safety of our upper rooms to be tested in the wilderness of life. What we have to say and do will rub the comfortable and the fearful the wrong way and they may well try to rise up and stop us

D. The times that we are living in need inconvenient Christians who boldly declare that the rise of white terrorism will not make us go back into the closet or the back of the bus

E. We are required to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God

VI. Celebration – If I can help somebody…

If I can help somebody, as I pass along,
If I can cheer somebody, with a word or song,
If I can show somebody, how they’re travelling wrong,
Then my living shall not be in vain.

If I can do my duty, as a Christian ought,
If I can bring back beauty, to a world up wrought,
If I can spread love’s message, as the Master taught,
Then my living shall not be in vain.

My living shall not be in vain,
Then my living shall not be in vain
If I can help somebody, as I pass along,
Then my living shall not be in vain.