January 20th is a big day. It’s MLK Day. In this time of New Year as we approach the holiday celebrating Dr. King’s birthday, I want to share an insight from early in his ministry.
In October of 1957, on his third anniversary as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, King noted in his annual report that he had been in the pulpit only 30 Sundays in the past 52 weeks. According to Jonathan Eig’s account in his 2023 book King: A Life, “he confessed his frustration, telling the congregation he worried that he had so many things to do that he had failed to do anything well.” He even apologized for preaching the same sermon, “Loving Your Enemies,” for a third time in three years. Reflecting on the scattered busyness of his life at that time, King submitted that “each of us is…split up and divided against ourselves. There is something of a civil war going on within all our lives…With the best of us there is some evil, and within the worst of us there is some good.”
In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul resonates with King’s “civil war” reflection, saying, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15).
Perhaps it’s disconcerting to find two of the most revered disciples of Jesus confessing such inner turmoil. But especially at the start of a new year, I find their struggles with focus and authenticity refreshing. Being pulled in different directions, yearning for clarity, feeling “like butter scraped over too much bread,” as Bilbo Baggins puts it, is something we all deal with.
So, what do we do with this common struggle? How do we handle our insular civil war? I suggest that we recognize our finitude and honor our limitations, that we proclaim that we are human; which means that like King, like Paul, and even like the Human One they followed—Jesus of Nazareth—we cannot do everything. There is liberation in that.
Someone reminded me recently that ‘no’ is a complete sentence and a justified answer. When Jesus left the crowds to pray alone (Luke 9:18), that was a definitive ‘no’ to the scattered busyness threatening to consume him. It was necessary and good for him to take time for himself, not only to recharge his batteries, but to avoid being elevated into a position that was not true to who he was. The people wanted him to be their do-it-all champion when his mission was to bring good news to the poor, bring sight to the spiritually blind, and set all people free from worldly captivity that says, “You must always be doing something to prove that you are everything, or you are worth nothing.”
I hope that the young MLK, in his mid-20s when he submitted that third annual report, was shown the kind of grace by the congregation in his care at that time that he was unable to show himself throughout his life. One should never feel they have to apologize for being human. If Jesus showed us anything, it is that there is liberation in our limitations.
So, in these days remaining until January 20th, MLK Day 2025, the big day that will pivot us into a new season, may we embrace the authenticity of Paul and Dr. King, and refine our finite focus to the task that Jesus calls us to do above all else: loving one another, including our enemies, as the title of King’s thrice-preached sermon says. You don’t need to scrape yourself over too much bread to simply focus on your unique ability to love. Let that focus bring peace to the civil wars we are carrying into this new year.