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| Martin Luther King, Jr. and Emanuel Swedenborg
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Friends in Heaven: Martin Luther King, Jr.; Gandhi, and
Swedenborg
Sermon
Jan. 15, 2006
Rev. Wilma Wake
Emanual Swedenborg wrote frequently about his experiences in the heavenly
realms, and the many souls he chatted with there. I’m certain that Swedenborg himself
has had some fascinating conversations since he arrived in the Spirit world in 1772.
Among them I like to think are Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
On this birthday of MLK, I’d like to consider three topics that these men had in
common and perhaps continue to discuss as angels.
I’m going to look at these areas they had in common:
Social Evil
Nonviolence
Nature of God
SOCIAL EVILS
King encountered social evils through all his years growing up.
He wrote this in his autobiography:
I remember a trip to a downtown shoe store with Father when I was still small. We had sat down
in the first empty seats at the front of the store. A young white clerk came up and murmured
politely:
"I'll be happy to wait on you if you'll just move to those seats in the rear."
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Dad immediately retorted, "There's nothing wrong with these seats. We're quite comfortable
here."
"Sorry," said the clerk, "but you'll have to move."
"We'll either buy shoes sitting here," my father retorted, "or we won't buy shoes at all."
Whereupon he took me by the hand and walked out of the store. This was the first time I had
seen Dad so furious. That experience revealed to me at a very early age that my father had not
adjusted to the system, and he played a great part in shaping my conscience. I still remember
walking down the street beside him as he muttered, "I don't care how long I have to live with this
system, I will never accept it."
He began to find ways of articulating social evils when he entered Morehouse College in
1944 at the age of 15.
He read Henry David Thoreau's essay "On Civil Disobedience" for the first time.
He wrote:
Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather
than support a war that would spread slavery's …I made my first contact with the theory of
nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was
so deeply moved that I reread the work several times.
He later wrote:
The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever
before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest
…, these are outgrowths of Thoreau's insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can
patiently adjust to injustice.
In Thoreau's words, "We can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system." And, "He who accepts evil
without protesting against it is really cooperating with evil."
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So King came to see racism as a Social Evil, and the civil rights movement grew up out of
Thoreau’s view of social injustice.
King may have already come into contact with Swedenborgian influences about this time.
Swedenborg had had a big impact on Emerson and the other Transcendentalists. Thoreau
seems to have read Swedenborg, and may have absorbed some of his concept of “evil” and of
“neighbor.” Swedenborg said:
As much as we avoid evils as sins, so much do we love truth, because that is just how much we are we
involved in what is good. On the other hand, as much as we do not avoid evils as sins, so much do we not
love truth, because that is just how much we are not involved in good things. (The Doctrine of Life #21, 34)
Swedenborg said everyone is our neighbor – who strives for love.
The Doctrine of Charity (1766) Passage 210
Translated By John Whitehead in 1914
210. (I.) To will not to do evil to the neighbor is to love him. For he who loves another
does not do evil to him. …This is evident, that he who loves the neighbor does not
commit these evils.
He was soon to find out that Gandhi, too, has a philosophy of social evil.
But first, King graduated from Morehouse College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology in 1948
And entered seminary.
He came to believe that religion had as its purpose addressing social evils: He wrote in
seminary:
any religion that professes concern for the souls of men and is not equally concerned about the
slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that
cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried. It well has
been said: "A religion that ends with the individual, ends."
In seminary, he found an approach to eradicate social evils.
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In the SPRING of 1950 he heard a lecture by Howard University president Mordecai Johnson
lecture on Gandhi [who had been killed in 1948; two years previous]. King wrote in his
autobiography:
. His message was so profound and electrifying that I left the meeting and bought a half-dozen
books on Gandhi's life and works.
Like most people, I had heard of Gandhi, but I had never studied him seriously. As I read I
became deeply fascinated by his campaigns of nonviolent resistance. I was particularly moved by
his Salt March to the Sea and his numerous fasts.
As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi, my skepticism concerning the power of love
gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first time its potency in the area of social reform..
He had thought that love only worked between individuals in conflict. …when racial groups and
nations were in conflict a more realistic approach seemed necessary. But after reading Gandhi, I
saw how utterly mistaken I was.
So King now came to see a method for eradicating social evil:
NON-VIOLENCE
Ghandi could be seen to be part of the path of “karma yoga” or “yoga of action.”
There one seeks unity with God through good actions or Satygraha -- the way out
of pain of hurting others.
This was particularly important to MLK. For him, the essence of truth was nonviolence.
King said that one can bring about change through the force of one’s moral character; not
by violence. He wrote:
While the Montgomery boycott was going on, India's Gandhi was the guiding light of our
technique of nonviolent social change.
Swedenborg said that violence and wars cold never come from God.
Divine Providence (1763) Passage 251
Translated By William C. Dick and E.J. Pulsford in 1949
251. 3. It is not from the Divine Providence that wars occur, because they involve
murders, plunderings, violence, cruelties and other terrible evils which are diametrically
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opposed to Christian charity.
King came to understand that non-violence was deeply rooted in the understanding of the nature
of God.
King became much more deeply immersed in the nature of God when he entered Boston
University School of Theology for a Ph.D. in systematic theology in 1951.
NATURE OF GOD
His academic advisor there was Edgar S. Brightman
Brightman is a shining star of twentienth-century theology. He advocated an approach to God
that emphasized each person and their relationships with each other. He seems to have been an
advocate of mysticism and is quoted by New Thought theologians.
Here is a statement of Brightman’s:
No totalitarians, no wars, no fears, famines or perils of any kind can really break a man's spirit
until he breaks it himself by surrendering. Tyranny has many dread powers, but not the power
to rule the spirit.
Edgar Sheffield Brightman
In 1959, The Kings, embarked for India. King wrote in his autobiography:
I was delighted that the Gandhians accepted us with open arms.
I left India more convinced than ever before that nonviolent resistance was the most potent
weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. … . The way of violence
leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But the way of nonviolence
leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.
He was saying that God’s redemption comes to us through non-violent living in community.
Non violence only makes sense in the context of a God of Love.
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King knew God’s love in nature. He wrote about his time in seminary:
On the side of the campus ran a little tributary from the Delaware river. Every day I would sit on
the edge of the campus by the side of the river and watch the beauties of nature. My friend, in this
experience, I saw God. I saw him in birds of the air, the leaves of the tree, the movement of the
rippling waves.... Sometimes I go out at night and look up at the stars … There is God.
Sometimes I watch the sun as it gets up in the morning and paints its technicolor across the
eastern horizon. There is God. Sometimes I watch the moon as it walks across the sky as a
queen walks across her masterly mansion. There is God. Henry Ward Beecher was right: "Nature
is God's tongue."
King also embraced Gandhi’s God of Truth.
Ghandi was a deeply spiritual Hindu. who said “Truth is God, God is Truth. “
when asked if he believed in God, he said, “God is even in these stones.” Swedenborg
would agree that God is Divine Truth and Love and lives in all things.
For Ghandi, like Swedenborg, any one person could only hold part of the truth.
Everyone was needed for the complete truth.
King’s belief in God as Peace and Love and Truth led him to become associated with the
antiwar movement by 1967.
Dr. King worked for world peace. He traveled across America to support and speak out
about civil rights and the rights of the underprivileged.
In April 1968 King went to Memphis, Tennessee to help the sanitation workers who
were on strike. On April 3rd Dr. King would give what would be his last speech:
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"We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I
have been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind.
Swedenborg said that he had been to heaven; and there it was all was peace and love.
And we are here to bring heaven into our every day lives on earth.
Swedenborg wrote:
“Genuine peace has within it a quiet confidence in the Lord, that He rules all things and
provides all things, and that He leads us to a good end. When we really believe this, then
we are in peace; for then we fear nothing and have no undue anxiety about future events.
to the extent that we truly love the Lord, to that extent we enjoy this kind of inner peace.
When we live according to our conscience, then we are gifted with inner tranquility and
peace.”
King, Gandhi, and Swedenborg were all rooted in a God who is Justice, Truth,
Love, and Peace. A God who lives in all people and in all of nature.
None of these great leaders is still with us. But there teachings live on in our
souls.
OUR LIVES TODAY
We can live with these main principals in our own lives:
Social Evils:
God does not live in the social evils. God lives in the love that allows us to stand up to
them and work for a better world. This is important because it assures us that Love will
be stronger in the end than evil. Some days, we feel overwhelmed with the social evils
all around us and our individual capacity to significantly change that. But we can take
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heart in knowing that by living each day doing what we can do is a contribution to world
peace.
On the days that we feel overburdened by the weight of the evils in the world on our
shoulders, we can remind ourselves, as King did, that evil is not God’s will.
Non-violence
Non-violence begins within. With how we treat ourselves. Then our family. Then
everyone we encounter every day. We can start here. And know that we making a
contribution to changing the world.
Nature of God
If, in fact, God is Love and Wisdom, then we know that Truth will prevail over prejudice
and Love will triumph over hatred . So if we continue to be on the side of Love and
Wisdom, we know that, in the end, we shall overcome. |
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Posted by Wilma on 2008-01-21 04:50:30 | Rating: | Views: 143
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