“Zealous Jesus”

Описание: Scripture: John 2:13-25 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/...)






The letter began, “Hello Darling, today I find myself a long way from you and the children. I am at the State Prison in Reidsville which is about 230 miles from Atlanta.”1 (#05a3aed1-8b5b-42e5-a5b7-c9dd30ebb4bb)






It was October 1960 and Coretta Scott King was at home with two young children, reading this letter. She’s six months pregnant with a third child, and her husband is writing to let her know that he was moved from a local jail in Atlanta to a distant State Prison. Neither of them know when he’s going to be released. The last time they saw each other was in court a few days earlier when he had been sentenced on charges of trespassing for engaging in political advocacy.






As Coretta knew, as recorded in her biography called Desert Rose, everyone knew the stories of Black prisoners in Georgia like her husband being moved between jail cells at night and never seen or heard from again.2 (#befee40f-9e39-4d40-b285-0fc14f3c6cc1)






The letter from Martin goes on: “I’m asking God hourly to give me the power of endurance. I have the faith to believe that the excessive suffering that is now coming to our family will serve to make Atlanta a better city, Georgia a better state, and America a better country. Just how I do not yet know, but I have to believe it will. If I am correct, then our suffering is not in vain.”






Will you pray with me … God of the new creation. God of mercy. God of the peacemakers. Use this your congregation as instruments of your kingdom vision as we seek to hear and live your Word. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your site, our rock, our tower, and our redeemer. Amen.






On this Martin Luther King Junior Day Weekend 2026, we live in a different world that is also all too similar to the one where Coretta and Martin considered the meaning of their suffering as a family — and whether it would be part of a positive change for their city, state, and world.






Martin King believed and said again and again that “unearned suffering is redemptive” — meaning that when oppressed people choose to accept the forces that conspire against them in a nonviolent way, it becomes a transformative force for good, inspiring others to do likewise.3 (#b3070a2f-90ca-4019-b38e-d213fad373dc)






In our own time, a 19-year-old college student flying home to Texas for Thanksgiving is detained in Boston and deported to Honduras before anyone knows where she is.






People are shuttled around the country from detention center to detention center.






Agents of the federal government act with limited accountability to intimidate and expel people, and in some cases shoot and kill the people who try to stand in their way.






In our own time, the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, Rob Hirschfeld, tells the clergy of his region to get their affairs in order, and to make their wills, and to prepare for a “new era of martyrdom” where faith leaders are asked to nonviolently put their bodies between vulnerable people and the “powers of this world.”4 (#7131b26d-710b-43bd-9ce5-b117bb8a3748) This is our world, and perhaps not so different from the world of 1960, or of Jesus’s world.






The author Jack Hitt tells a story that can help us to connect Dr. King and Jesus to this question of the struggle and suffering that returns through the generations.5 (#f1ed095c-ad58-49d2-a677-f03276899545)






He begins his story by remembering when his four year old daughter once asked him about the meaning of Christmas and the birth of Jesus. She was infatuated by the story and wanted to know everything about Jesus.






Hitt writes, “So we read a lot about [Jesus’s] birth and about his teaching, like “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And we would talk about those old words and what it all meant.






And then one day we were driving past a big church, and out front was an enormous crucifix. She said, who is that? And I guess I’d never really told her that part of the story. So I said, “yeah, well, that’s Jesus, and I forgot to tell you the ending. Well, he ran afoul of the Roman government. This message that he had was so radical and unnerving to the powerful people at the time that they had to kill him. They came to the conclusion that he would have to die. His message was too troublesome.”






And so it was about a month later after that Christmas, and her preschool had Martin Luther King Day off. So I also knocked off work that day, and I decided I’d take her out to lunch.






And we were sitting in there, and right on the table where we happened to plop down was the art section of the local newspaper, and there, big-as-life, was a huge drawing by a 10-year-old kid in the local schools of Martin Luther King. And she said, “who’s that?” And I said, “Well, as it happens, that’s Martin Luther King, and he’s why you’re not in s...