Martin Luther King, Jr., Library of Congress, Creative Commons
On December 24, 1967—the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a prophetic Christmas sermon from the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Delivered more than a half-century ago, Dr. King’s words speak with uncanny power and prescience. As we approach a new year, I hope that Dr. King’s words can help situate us to respond effectively to the grave realities we face today.
“We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night.
Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities.
And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and goodwill toward all men can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian. If we don’t have goodwill toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own power.
… And so, if we assume that life is worth living, if we assume that mankind has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war—and so let us this morning explore the conditions for peace.
We have experimented with the meaning of nonviolence in our struggle for racial justice in the United States, but now the time has come for man to experiment with nonviolence in all areas of human conflict, and that means nonviolence on an international scale.
Now let me suggest first that if we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.
No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world. Now the judgment of God is upon us, and we must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.
Now let me say, secondly, that if we are to have peace in the world, men and nations must embrace the nonviolent affirmation that ends and means must cohere.
… [W]e will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.
Now let me say that the next thing we must be concerned about if we are to have peace on earth and goodwill toward men is the nonviolent affirmation of the sacredness of all human life. Every man is somebody because he is a child of God. And so when we say “Thou shalt not kill,” we’re really saying that human life is too sacred to be taken on the battlefields of the world.
Man is more than a tiny vagary of whirling electrons or a wisp of smoke from a limitless smoldering. Man is a child of God, made in His image, and therefore must be respected as such. Until men see this everywhere, until nations see this everywhere, we will be fighting wars.
One day somebody should remind us that, even though there may be political and ideological differences between us, the Vietnamese are our brothers, the Russians are our brothers, the Chinese are our brothers; and one day we’ve got to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
And when we truly believe in the sacredness of human personality, we won’t exploit people, we won’t trample over people with the iron feet of oppression, we won’t kill anybody.
In 1963, on a sweltering August afternoon, we stood in Washington, D.C., and talked to the nation about many things. Toward the end of that afternoon, I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess to you today that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare.
I remember the first time I saw that dream turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about it. It was when four beautiful, unoffending, innocent Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw my black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negroes’ problem of poverty.
I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched my black brothers and sisters in the midst of anger and understandable outrage, in the midst of their hurt, in the midst of their disappointment, turn to misguided riots to try to solve that problem. I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched the war in Vietnam escalating, and as I saw so-called military advisers, 16,000 strong, turn into fighting soldiers until today over 500,000 American boys are fighting on Asian soil.
…Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a dream, because, you know, you can’t give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you to go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream.
I have a dream that one day men will rise up and come to see that they are made to live together as brothers.
I still have a dream today that one day war will come to an end, that men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, that nations will no longer rise up against nations, neither will they study war any more…
As all human beings are made in the image of God, we must affirm the dignity of each person, and regard all people as our sisters and brothers.
As we approach 2024, our hearts are especially close to our sisters and brothers who are facing unbearable suffering, including: Ukrainians subject to Russian missiles, Russian soldiers conscripted to kill in Ukraine; Palestinians in Gaza bombed and expelled and deprived of food, water, medicine, heating, shelter and life; Israelis subjected to mass murder, rape and torture, and forced to flee from their communities; Jewish and Muslim hostages held by Hamas; Palestinians facing violence in the West Bank from settlers seeking to push them from their homes; Sudanese civilians being massacred every day in their villages throughout Darfur and other regioins; Ethiopians slaughtered by Saudi border guards; Afghans refugees expelled from Pakistan; people throughout the Sahel subject to terrorism and repression; Burmese and Rohingya crushed by the Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s armed forces); Iranian and Afghan women deprived of fundamental rights; the Uyghurs subjected to genocide in Xinjiang. China; Congolese civilians massacred by Rwanda-supported terrorists; gay people in Uganda subject to the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality,” and on and on.
These are our brothers and sisters — each of them, all of them — and we must fight to defend their lives.
The perpetrators of these crimes are our brothers too. We must reach out them, show them another way.
Dr. King told us how to do this. The place to start is within ourselves, our identities and loyalties:
Our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional.
Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.
Let us find the strength to eradicate our world from the disease of war and relentless, extreme violence. Dr. King showed us that the only power strong enough to beat our swords into plowshares is the power of collective, organized nonviolence — in our communities, our nation, and on an international scale.
In this new year, let us mobilize the power of nonviolence in the fight for peace and justice — all of us together.
Jonathan D. Greenberg
