People of the Second Mile

This week has been momentous.  The historical connection between Monday and Tuesday has been made over and over by the media. On Monday and Tuesday we celebrated back-to-back the events of great importance: Martin Luther King’s birthday and Barrack Obama’s inauguration as our 44^th president. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up to be the most recognizable voice in the civil rights movement.  He used his oratorical gift to preach that African-Americans had been cheated or their rights, most famously in his unforgettable “I Have a Dream” speech. 

Promises had been made, he said, that were still unfulfilled.  The promissory note to people of color had been returned marked “insufficient funds”.  Although he couldn’t give a history lesson in his short sixteen minute oration, anyone familiar with the US constitution knew he was referring to the words of the 14^th Amendment.

So, when President Obama was inaugurated the day after the birthday of the man who grew up to deliver that momentous speech, the coincidence was lost on no one.  No matter who we had voted for in November, there was a national sense that the time had come to make things right.  It was time for Ammendment 14 to be more than just words.

But there is another date, a much darker date, which is not being spoken of very much this week.  It is January 22 – today – a day that should “live in infamy”. But it is being conveniently forgotten. 

Strangely enough, the 14^th Amendment that was drafted to give slaves their rights and freedoms after the Civil War was also utilized to under gird the indefensible argument supporting Roe v Wade on January 22, 1973!   (If you go back and study the arguments that were handed down on that fateful Monday morning by the Supreme Court, you’ll see that the majorities’ opinion was based on Amendment 14.)

Since then, over 50 million children have been sacrificed on the altar of expediency.  We assuage our horror with the small comfort of knowing that all of these unborn children are with God. 

Who knows how many would have survived the rigors of being unwanted, and followed the right path had they lived?  I can never support Roe v Wade, but to be brutally honest, perhaps God through this very bad law has saved some very good little people.  They are now all with Him, and ever shall be.

But that truth should not become a cheap rationalization, lulling us into a somnolent state of apathy.  Until everyone has rights, none of the rights of the rest of us are safe.  We must speak for those who have no voice, or our national dream may well turn into a nightmare. 

So, let us remember the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. that have been fulfilled in part, but yet not in whole, this week.  

Let us remember what he said when he ended his masterful sermon and, when he refers to “God’s children” in his last line, let us take the words to literally mean children of all ages, both prenatal and natal. 

Let us agree that until January 22 becomes linked to January 19 and 20, the children are not safe and, hence, we are not safe.

“Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants, and Catholics —will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Amen, Martin. Amen.