Questions that Easter Answers: Martin Luther King
Everyone is familiar with Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream speech.” But less familiar are some of his other brilliant sermons. One of which includes his sermon, “Questions that Easter Answers.” Whether you celebrate Easter or Ostara, the theme of the holiday is rebirth. Spring emerging from winter. Life restored after death. Or the transition from life into death, which is not an end, but the gateway to a new and more powerful reality.
The mythos of Jesus dying and returning from the dead is an archetype found in many ancient religions that preceded Christianity. Most similar is the Egyptian God Osiris who did the very same thing.
So in his speech, Martin Luther King addresses some of the questions raised by this holiday. Is there anything after death? Do we just die and cease to exist, or is there a greater reality? And then that brings up another question, is there an invisible spiritual reality that is even greater than this one. So great in fact that our current reality is but the shadow of an unseen, powerful, spiritual world.
Quote From MLK’s Easter Sermon:
You walk out at night, and you look up at the beautiful stars as they bedeck the heavens like swinging lanterns of eternity, and somehow you think you see all. But oh no, you can never see the law of gravitation that holds them there. You look at this building, and you look at its beautiful architecture, and you think you see all. You look out and you walk out this morning, and you look over at the beautiful capitol building and all of the surrounding buildings, and you think you see all.
The materialist would say that’s about all. But oh no, you don’t see. all You can never see the mind of the architect who drew the blueprint You can never see the faith and the hope and the love of the individuals who made this church possible. You can see the external bricks, you can see the building, but you cannot see the internal forces that brought it into being.
You look up here this morning and hear somebody talking and you cry out, “Yes,
I see you, M L King.” But I’m here to tell you this morning that you don’t see me.
(No) You look here, and you see my body. You see my external being. You see something
that’s merely a manifestation of something else. But the real me, you can
never see (Amen). You can never see that something that the psychologists call my
personality. ( Yeah) You can never see my mind. You can never see my ideas. You can
only see my body, and my body can’t think. My body can’t reason. My body only
moves at the dictates of my mind. And so this morning, Easter tells us that everything
that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see. The visible IS a
shadow cast by the invisible. Easter cries out to us that the idealists are right, that it
is ultimately mind, personality, spiritual forces that are eternal and not merely these
material things that we look about and see.
For, one day, the gigantic mountains will pass away. One day, even the stars that bedeck the heavens will move out of their course. One day, the beautiful building of Dexter will not stand here. But there is something that will stand. There is faith, there is love, there is hope, there is something beyond the external that will stand through the ages.
Metal Gaia 