I Sought My Brother and I Found All Three

I took a seminary class last year about personal and social transformation and I was assigned with a small group to research Martin Luther King, Jr. I can’t say I was thrilled. I grew up attending various MLK Day celebrations, usually at Howard University in Washington, D.C., hearing mostly about his I Have a Dream speech. We would sing Lift Every Voice, I would get chills and then we’d hear about how far we had come and how far we still had to go. We'd watch some children sing and the event would be over. So when I found out that I was going to have to dig into who this person was I sighed heavily to myself wondering what his life and writings could possibly have to offer me and my classmates. Hadn’t we heard it all before? The answer was a resounding “No!”

There is probably no greater shame as an African American (or as an American for that matter), and even more so as a Christian, than having complete and utter unawareness of Reverend Dr. King’s messages of truth, sacrifice and the essentiality of overflowing love for fellow humans. I am ashamed to say I knew nothing about his deep sense of love of God, the world, and his respect for the multitude of expressions of faith. Needless to say, I can’t stop thinking about his writings and his words and hopefully never will. Why we don’t teach our youth (save for the month of February – Black History month) about his democratic and liberating philosophies, his instruction in non-violence, civil disobedience, the requirements of good citizenship and reconciliation is a mystery to me and for another post. I am writing today about how his vision of a complete life clarifies for me what personal and social holiness are.

Imagine a triangle where one side is the Love of God, the second side Love of Neighbor and the third Love of Self. We must have all three sides, in synchronicity, in constant motion in order to create the Kingdom of God today.
Personal holiness is, from what I am slowly grasping, acknowledgement of my sacredness and utter dependence on God and my community. Personal holiness is, as Marilynne Robinson writes in her essay Hallowed Be Your Name, "in fact openness to the perception of the holy, in existence iteself and above all in one another." For it to exist it must dwell and subsist collectively amongst other souls.

Personal holiness is the love of God working in my life, through me, which inevitably and ultimately is expressed as positive action in God’s world to bring about justice, more love and the Kingdom of God. It is in my attempt to mimic Jesus's life and practice obedience to God where one finds social holiness. Sin is the separation of self from the collective and God, thus the collapse of the triagle King described.

The sacred occurs within us as well as between us. We risk losing touch with our sacredness if we only focus on the holiness of the community and conversely we abandon the truth of our interdependence if we only seek our salvation and right relationship with God. Barbara Brown Taylor writes about God’s “upsetting sense of community” in her essay The Company of Strangers. She states that “in order for our public life to work, we do have to respect each other’s dignity as human beings, which is what we have in common, and to act with honor among strangers as well as friends.”

We pray and meditate to find God within us while engaging with our world to fulfill Christ’s ministry. I cannot understand my personal holiness until I first look to God and to my neighbor.
I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see,
I sought my God, but he eluded me,
I sought my brother, and I found all three

Amen