By Paul Baxley

The life and leadership of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a compelling demonstration of the power of preaching. While he was invited to speak in settings other than congregations, many of his most influential speeches were sermons. Even his speeches given in other settings included deep explorations of words from the prophets, parables from Jesus, scenes from Jesus’ life and truths articulated in Paul’s letters.

His sermons and speeches are run through not with flimsy optimism but daring resurrection hope. His identity was formed through the weekly rhythm of standing in a pulpit on Sunday morning and speaking at the intersection of Holy Scripture, a gathered congregation, and the needs of the community and the broken world surrounding.

He demonstrates what happens when one stands at that intersection with an openness to what God is saying and without the fear that sometimes keeps us preachers from hearing or speaking that word. God used Dr. King’s preaching to stir congregations and countless individuals to seek transformation in their communities, in our nation and even in the world.

The centrality of preaching in Dr. King’s life and work is a challenge to all who declare today that preaching is of less and less importance. I know many preachers sometimes wonder what difference this weekly practice makes. There are certainly people beyond congregations who wonder if preaching is outdated or less relevant than it once was. But King’s life offers undeniable evidence that God uses preaching not only to remake congregations, but also to change communities and the world.

What does Dr. King teach us about a preaching that compels change? As I read his sermons and letters, King’s preaching is undeniably rooted in encounters with Biblical texts. King’s preaching does not shrink back between making the connections between the ideas in those texts and the most urgent needs of his time. Encounters with Scripture and core Christian conviction not only led King to call for racial justice, they also led him to challenge poverty, spiritual and moral deterioration and war. While his opponents often accused him of being political, King firmly believed that his preaching flowed faithfully from the substance of the Scriptures and the core of his faith.

Dr. King also knew instinctively that the failure to preach in these ways would lead the church to risk irrelevance. In an eerily prophetic passage in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King forecast that if preachers refused to preach in this way and congregations were unwilling to hear, the church would lose the participation of younger generations. He wrote:

“The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. I am meeting young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust.”

The movement Dr. King led offers another truth about preaching. He was not the only preacher involved. He was part of a company of preachers who each Sunday were opening texts, speaking in gathered congregations, daring to meet the Holy Spirit at the intersection of text, life and community.

If Dr. King been a lonely or isolated voice, I don’t believe he would have come to places of leadership or be remembered in the ways he is. He was nurtured and mentored by other preachers. He had the support and friendship of other preachers. And most importantly, the same God who was calling and guiding his preaching was at work in the lives of many others. God was at work not in the preaching of one, but in the preaching of many.

Dr. King’s life and leadership call us to a recommitment to a deep, substantial, Biblical, courageous kind of preaching that can be used by God to change congregations, communities and the world. It is a calling for preachers and a calling for congregations.

By almost any measure the world is even more troubled now than it was in the days Dr. King stood to preach. Racial injustice not only remains, but is more intense. Far more people live in poverty now than 50 years ago. King feared the dangers of technological advance alongside moral deterioration and that is also even more a danger now than then.

Our national political systems are so torn apart by partisan division that they struggle to get anything done, at least anything good. We are entering an election season that promises to be much more marked by hatred, demonization and personal attack than by substantial debate about ideas or ways forward. Taken together, these realities could leave us dangerously despairing.

At least my reflections on this holiday honoring Dr. King hold another possibility. We can recommit to the core rhythms of the life of the church. Those of us who preach each week can dare to stand without fear at the intersection of text, conviction, community and the needs of this moment. Those of us who hear can come with a willingness to be met by the Gospel in its fullness and power. We can be challenged. We can be changed. We can be used by the Holy Spirit for courageous witness and through words and actions we can participate in God’s transformation of the world until the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus.

And lest anyone believes that is a call to politics of the worst kind, it is not. It is instead a call for the church to embody a faithful response to the mission Jesus set before us in one of his earliest sermons, in a text Dr. King used decades ago for a sermon “Guidelines for a Constructive Church:

“The Spirt of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Rev. Dr. Paul Baxley is Executive Coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Learn more about CBF at www.cbf.net.