Martin Luther King Jr. , the Christian beyond the pulpit.

Hi Folks,

It is my pleasure to introduce guest writer Hilary, a giant with the pen and a strong believer who will also play a huge part in some major changes that are about to come to Holyebony. Stay tuned as exciting things are planned for this year. In the meantime, enjoy his reflections on Martin Luther King day. 

Martin Luther King Jr. , the Christian beyond the pulpit.

by Hilary Afeseh Ngwa,  http://afeseh.blogspot.com/

 As we pause at this time of the year to commemorate the life of Martin Luther King Jr, a man who might have been small in physical stature but in many ways towered intellectually and morally high above the average person, I am touched by how he brought his pulpit Christianity to his life without the boundaries of Church buildings. 
A man who like all of us, without God’s grace is as imperfect as any man can be, yet even in his times of trepidation and wavering and imperfection, he sought as far as the human eye can see, with almost everything in him, to reach out even through many fiery furnaces to that almost elusive ideal, which mirrors the Christ in the lowly places, with prostitutes, tax collectors, fishermen and you name it. In a time when there is an ever increasing tendency to shrink the Church to the pews in steepled buildings in stead of expanding the shores and boundaries of Christendom to carve out with the ink of love, the Christian life on the pavement of our neighborhoods and stamp Christianity on our society and politics, there is a dire need to recalibrate the steps of the Church. There is a clarion call for a Church which loyally follows the compass of Christ Jesus. The shift of one degree by a mighty ship may seem imperceptible at first but over time and miles of covered seas, it ends up in the wrong place.

This excerpt from the Letter from Birmingham Jail captures the spirit of the man when he wrote:

“There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”‘ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.”

The Church ails from a paralyzing and shameful apathy, largely allergic to the Gospel of the cross, the lowly place, allergic to the Gospel whose heart throbs with the refining fire of suffering and pain that is ever conforming imperfect human vessels to Christ, the first born, co-heir with the Christian, the one who was the lamb, the alter and the priest of that ultimate redemptive sacrifice, the one for whom even the agony of the cross could not quench the habit of a lifetime, prayer!

By and large, for too long now the Church has been nothing but a thermometer taking the temperature of the times, validating and sanctioning the mores of the modern days either by its voice or its silence, in stead of being the thermostat that it ought to be, calibrating and regulating the temperature of every fabric of society from home to government.

The late Prof. Bernard Nso’kika Fonlon of Cameroon perhaps captured it in a more trenchangtly truthful manner, stating the problem and proffering a solution when he wrote in 1973 :

“In a world that is rank and rotten with materialism, where hedonism is the principal philosophy, where luxury is the Summum Bonum; there is the crying need for dedicated souls who would go to the other extreme and espouse the spirit of genuine religion, the spirit of  poverty, the spirit of  austere abstemiousness in order to wage war against the onslaught of materialist godlessness.”

It is time to go back constantly and live from the cross, from the throne of extravagant amazing terrific grace.