January 14, 2024 - Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, Guest Speaker on The Prophetic Work of Martin Luther King, Jr.

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January 14, 2024 - Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, Guest Speaker on The Prophetic Work of Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Abyssinian Baptist Church of New York

"...Dr. King resisted the 'Great Man' theory... oh, how some people love the prophets in the grave...

If Dr. King had just preached about justice nobody would have bothered him...
you really don't celebrate prophets, you commemorate them and reconsecrate yourself ...
all prophets die many times before their time is up, or they die violently, or they die because we just get sick of them... we want to cool out and they keep saying no, there's work to be done... and the question is when they die will we pick up the baton and go the next mile of the way..
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... when you understand the context of this text, you understand the early work of the church as a movement, then you'll understand the prophetic work of Dr. King... the early church as a movement was for wholeness in a broken world ... until we messed it up ... until Constantine came along and turned the church into a chaplaincy for the state rather than accept a critic for the state. .. Jesus and his followers were considered radicals... a threat to domination...
...the gospel wasn't just about your personal growth...then, when you preached the gospel you were a marked man... when Caesar stood up ... and said "I and I alone can take care of you"... god complex language...folk with a god complex are dangerous...

...good news to the poor was countercultural language... and that made his gospel dangerous... they tried to kill Jesus after his first sermon...for teaching that another world is possible...

if you are not open as a church, as a people, to interrupting calls for help that make you change your agenda, then you are a club, not a church... "