Jesus came proclaiming the good news of God’s reign. He said to the crowds who came out to hear him, “Repent and have faith for the reign of God is near.” Many received this good news as good news. The reign of God was seen as a reign of love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, healing and new life.
But not all heard the good news as good news. King Herod felt threatened and sought to have Jesus killed. Governor Pilate oversaw his crucifixion.
Prophets proclaim God’s good news, for God is always about our good. But often, God’s good news is experienced as bad news to its recipients. The prophet, Jeremiah, had prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and captivity in Babylon. It was a word of judgment, but it was also the word God’s people needed. They did not hear it as good news, but it was. Israel needed to sit down awhile in a place distant from their homeland. They needed to do some self-examination. They needed to acknowledge their idolatry and injustice, so that they would come back to the God who created and called them and experience again God’s mercy and plans for them. (After 70 years in Babylon another prophet proclaimed the good news of freedom to go back home to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple.)
Martin Luther King Jr., as a pastor and a prophet, proclaimed the good news of liberation, but not all received his message as good news. The White establishment, the crafters of Jim Crow laws and terror lynchings, received King’s message as bad news. They heard it as the destruction of their system and way of life, and they fought against it with violence and brutality.
God is about our freedom, and King proclaimed liberation. What the White establishment did not realize was that with the freedom King proclaimed, they would also have opportunity to be free—free from hatred and the struggle to hold another people down. They could be freed from all the time and attention and struggle to maintain an evil system that robbed them of their true humanity.
Where we are in our relationship to the God of love determines how we hear the good news of liberation—whether we hear it as good news or bad news. Martin Luther King proclaimed the good news of liberation. Response to that good news revealed where people stood in relation to freedom and humanity and love.
Lately, I have been thinking of King and his coming out against the Vietnam War. I have wondered, if he lived today, what he would say about the war in Gaza and our nation’s actions in response to it. He would certainly speak against war and genocide and its support.
There were leaders in the Civil Rights Movement who pressed King not to come out against the Vietnam War, but rather to remain focused on the issues of the Civil Rights Movement. King had a strong relationship with President Johnson who was pushing through civil rights legislation. King had an open door to the White House. He could call President Johnson and the president would come to the phone.
But at the same time that Johnson was addressing civil rights, he was also ratcheting up the war in Vietnam. The concern of many Civil Rights leaders was that, if King came out against the Vietnam War, he would lose the open door he had with the president. There were also those who saw the peace oriented nature of the protests as a tactic, not realizing that for King the issue of peace and peacemaking went much deeper.
When King came out against the Vietnam War, he made clear how essential peacemaking was to our humanity :
One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. How much longer must we play at deadly war games before we heed the plaintive pleas of the unnumbered dead and maimed of past wars? Why can’t we at long last grow up, and take off our blindfolds, chart new courses, put our hands to the rudder and set sail for the distant destination, the port city of peace (The Atlantic)?
King spoke to people dedicated to war as a solution. He called them (and us) to repent and become peacemakers. It was not a word that President Johnson and many lawmakers and others (then and now) wanted to hear, but it was and is a word of truth we need to hear.
The words and actions of peacemakers are bad news to those committed to war as a solution and to those who profit from war. They are good news to our true humanity made in the image of God.