God creates us as worthy: 3rd after pentecost

The holy gospel according to Matthew (10:24-39).

Jesus said:

“A disciple is not above the teacher,

      nor a slave above the master;

            ²⁵it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher,

            and the slave like the master.

      If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul,

            how much more will they malign those of the master’s household!

²⁶“So have no fear of them;

      for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered,

      and nothing secret that will not become known.

      ²⁷What I say to you in the dark,

            tell in the light;

      and what you hear whispered,

            proclaim from the housetops.

                  ²⁸Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul;

                        rather fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

      ²⁹Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?

            Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.

                  ³⁰And even the hairs of your head are all counted.

                        ³¹So do not be afraid;

                              you are of more value than many sparrows.

³²“Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others,

      I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven;

      ³³but whoever denies me before others,

            I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

³⁴“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth;

      I have not come to bring peace,

            but a sword.

      ³⁵For I have come to set a son against his father,

            and a daughter against her mother,

            and in-laws against one another;

            ³⁶and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.

            ³⁷Whoever loves a parent more than me is not worthy of me;

                  and whoever loves a child more than me is not worthy of me;

                        ³⁸and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me

                              is not worthy of me.

                              ³⁹Those who find their life will lose it,

                                    and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

The gospel of the lord.

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Jesus’ words in today’s gospel may seem harsh, but they are also familiar to many of us.  As a community of faith, you all decided to become a Reconciling in Christ congregation, which means that we specifically welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning people as full participants in ministry.  We make this clear in our statement of welcome on our website as well as on our Reconciling in Christ Sunday each year. 

Part of welcoming people, especially if they belong to groups that have been and continue to be marginalized by the church is to continually learn about their experiences of the world—to seek to more fully understand their perspectives.

Today’s scripture gives us some insight into what many LGBTQ+ people experience in their lifetimes.

It’s hard to hear of children being set against their parents or in-laws being set against each other and not call to mind the 40% of homeless youth who are LGBTQ+, many of whom identify as transgender and most of whom have been kicked out of their homes by biological, foster, or adoptive parents.  What is even more striking is that this passage has been used harmfully by families to justify their own hatred towards their LGBTQ+ children.

Jesus’ presence does tend to stir things up.  Jesus’ life and gospel disrupts the systems—even our own families—that cause harm and create hierarchies that separate us from each other.  Jesus and his followers are a great example of a family of choice, created in place of the hierarchical structures dictated for them by their culture. 

Instead of reinforcing the hierarchy of the times, where women were property and children were nothing more than extra hands to work, Jesus creates a community where people of all genders have access to economic means and financially support the work so that whoever Jesus calls to follow him can become his disciple without constantly worrying about how they will make ends meet. 

Jesus chose disciples to be his family.  When his biological mother and siblings come to speak to him in Matthew 12, Jesus even goes so far as to say, “‘Who is my mother, and who are my siblings? … Here are my mother and mysiblings! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my sibling andmother.”  Like many of us in the LGBTQ+ community, Jesus and the disciples chose their family and lived in community together as equals. 

For many LGBTQ+ folks, we choose people to be family with us.  Sometimes it is because our own families have disowned or distanced themselves from us.  Sometimes it is because our understandings of what it means to love one another as family are broader and deeper than simply those connected to us by blood.  Countless gay men in the 1980s embodied what it means to be family by choice as they sat with friends, partners, and loved ones the country seemed to have disowned, caring for them while they died of AIDS.  Still today, we in the LGBTQ+ community create new and more expansive families all the time.

And we as the church also follow Jesus’ lead in creating new and more expansive families today.  We welcome the newly baptized into the “family of God.”  We share with each other our moments of great joy and of great sorrow.  We choose each other to lead and serve as there is both need and ability.  We live out our faith as LGBTQ+ people have been living out our lives, creating community and family through both necessity and love, finding people who love us exactly for who we are not in spite of or apart from our identities.

And yet, the culture around us, which still dictates worth in terms of earning potential, declares those who don’t fall in line with hierarchical norms as worth         less, and maybe even altogether worthless.  Declarations of worthlessness from the culture and the church keep some LGBTQ+ people in the closet for their whole lives and others for far too long, causing mental, emotional, and spiritual harm. 

Even those of us who do come out to ourselves and others and have family and communities that support us usually wrestle with our identity and especially our faith, because we have heard so many times that we are not worthy of God’s love, of rights and acceptance in our country, even, as many transgender women of color know all too well, of life itself. 

Jesus’ words are harsh, but maybe that’s the point.  None of us are worthy of Jesus on our own.  But we’re not alone.  We’ve never been alone.  God has always been our Creator, knitting us together in utero, counting every hair on our head.  There is no being worthy on our own and there is no alone.  God is always with us, even deep back in the closet by the lost socks, in the midst of anxiety, and in the fear of what others might think.  Jesus is with us.

Each thing we do matters to God.  Not because God is going to deduct points or dole out punishment for every screw up, however big or small, but because we each matter to God.  Because God cares about us and loves us.  God loves our queerness.  God loves our languages.  God loves our courage, our hair, our compassion, our knees that get stiff when it rains—God loves every single bit of us.  Even when family or friends might distance themselves or put up a wall against us, Jesus assures us that we “are of more value than many sparrows.”

In a world that marks worth in dollar signs, the dominion of heaven marks your worth as inherent.  You exist because you are worthy.  God creates each unique person out of love, claiming us again in baptism, whispering “I love you” in the sighs of new parents or friends late at night, in the chirp of birds, rustle of leaves, and drops of rain; and proclaiming it from the housetops in the cry of a newborn, the roar of a lion, the clap of thunder.

God’s family is a family of choice—even under dire circumstances, against the world’s values, God chooses you.  God will always choose you.  Every you that there ever is. 

Thanks be to God.

God's love surrounds us in forgiveness: 23rd after pentecost

The holy gospel according to Luke (18:9-14)

⁹Jesus also told this parable

      to some who trusted in themselves

            that they were righteous

            and regarded others with contempt:

         ¹⁰“Two men went up to the temple to pray,

            one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

            ¹¹The Pharisee, standing by himself,

                  was praying thus,

                        ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people:

                              thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

                        ¹²I fast twice a week;

                        I give a tenth of all my income.’

            ¹³But the tax collector, standing far off,

                  would not even look up to heaven,

                        but was beating his breast and saying,

                              ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

            ¹⁴I tell you, this man went down to his home

                  justified alongside the other;

                        for all who exalt themselves will be humbled,

                              and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

The gospel of the Lord.

-----

Today’s gospel provides us with an interesting juxtaposition.  The tax collector, considered a traitor to his people as he profits off of them and supports the occupying Roman forces in his work, is set alongside the Pharisee, a leader of the people who does everything right—and then some.

Both the Pharisee and the tax collector are, as is often the case in Jesus’ parables, caricatures of their real-life counterparts.  The Pharisee is an over-the-top faithful one, adhering not only to the Torah, but adding a fuller tithe than was expected of him and fasting twice a week!  The tax collector himself would be a surprise to see in the Temple at all, considering the sentiment toward him as a sell-out to the Roman Empire.

Taken together, they give us insight into confession and forgiveness, an important part of our worship most Sundays.

After taking a moment to prepare our hearts and minds for worship and calling ourselves and each other into this particular worship, we together confess our sins.  We do this each week for a few reasons.

Confessing our sins—our shortfalls, the ways we fail to separate ourselves from oppressive systems in our culture, and the ways we succeed in separating ourselves from others in need—keeps us mindful that we live in an imperfect world.  As part of this, each week I do my best to make sure that we mess up at least once as a reminder that we are not perfect.  Usually I don’t have to work at all to achieve this—we’ll call it a natural talent ;-)

When we confess our sins during worship, it is a way of acknowledging that we are not perfect.  It also creates space for us, both individually in our moment for silent confession, and communally, to name the sins we carry with us.

We confess the prejudice we carry, that we can favor our own comfort or security more than the lives or well-being of others. 

We confess that we try to control others’ freedom.

      that we trust too much in violence to solve problems all over the world.

We confess that we give into the fear we have been taught to carry

      when we see others who are not like us.

We confess the ways we disparage others because of their race, religion, language, age, gender, or sexual orientation. 

We confess our resentments and regrets.

Confessing our sins as a group helps us know that we are not alone in falling short.  We all mess up.  Both our actions and our inactions work to separate us from others and from God.  Sin limits our experience of the Divine in our midst and in our relationships with others.  Like the tax collector, our sin impacts our whole community.  Jewish New Testament Scholar Amy-Jill Levine points out that the “concern for community responsibility [found in first century Palestinian culture] means that the sin of one person can negatively impact everyone else.”[1]  There are ripples from our sins just like there are from the tax collector’s support of an oppressive empire and the extra money he takes from his community, beyond what is required or sustainable.

And so confessing helps us recognize and turn from our sin to new and better ways of being in the world.  When we confess our sins, then we cry out with the tax collector. “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”  Confessing our sin even functions as a corrective so that we do not fall into the trap of the Pharisee and judge others as more sinful than us.  Because that’s not what it’s about.  It’s not a tit-for-tat game of who sinned more or worse.  We are all sinners, we are all caught up in systems of oppression, and we all act in ways that tear down ourselves and others.

And so we cry out for God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness, God’s love.  And God gladly and freely grants us forgiveness.  While confession and forgiveness do not erase what we’ve done or not done—we still have to face the natural consequences of our actions—through confession and forgiveness, God creates the space for us to try again, to do better.  That is part of the forgiveness in confession and forgiveness—the guarantee that God forgives you entirely and the call to do better in the future.

God’s love is so great that it covers us all, from the Pharisee, who, though he is righteous, falls into judging the other and trying to set himself too far apart, to the tax collector, whose job betrays his community and supports oppressive forces at work in the Roman empire. 

God’s love also calls to mind the ways we do God’s will—the ways God is at work through us, the ways we don’t totally mess up, the times when we are not “thieves, rogues, adulterers.”  Our sin ripples out, affecting many, but so does God’s love.  God’s love ripples out from each of us and its ripples are far greater than those of our sin.  As we receive God’s forgiveness, God’s love surrounds us and spreads outward like water breaking through a dam.

God’s love and forgiveness call to mind God’s covenantal relationship with us collectively as a community of faith—that we are in this together.  God’s love is for us altogether.  That is the joy and celebration in our response to forgiveness—that “this [one goes] down to [their] home justified alongside the other.”  We pray and confess together and we are justified together.

Our sins are forgiven, our good deeds lifted up, and in all of that, we rest in God’s love.  We take comfort in trusting that God’s love goes deeper than our worst shortfalls, our worst sins, our worst regrets, and God’s love lifts us up together higher than we could ever imagine or attempt to earn on our own. 

It is God’s love that binds us together in a covenant of forgiveness. 

It is God’s love that spreads from us throughout the world.

And it is God’s love that brings justice and peace into the world.

Thanks be to God.

---

[1] Short Stories by Jesus, p. 209

Jesus' love brings the Table to the margins: 4th after epiphany

The first reading is Jeremiah 1:4-10.

The second reading is 1 Corinthians 13:1-13.

The holy gospel according to Luke (4:21-30).

²¹Then Jesus began to say to all in the synagogue in Nazareth,

      “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

²²All spoke well of him

      and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.

They said,

      “Is not this Joseph’s son?”

²³Jesus said to them,

      “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb,

            ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’

      And you will say,

            ‘Do here also in your hometown

                  the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’”

²⁴And he said,

      “Truly I tell you,

            no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.

      ²⁵But the truth is,

            there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah,

                  when the heaven was shut up three years and six months,

                  and there was a severe famine over all the land;

                        ²⁶yet Elijah was sent to none of them

                              except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.

            ²⁷There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha,

                  and none of them was cleansed

                        except Naaman the Syrian.”

²⁸When they heard this,

      all in the synagogue were filled with rage.

      ²⁹They got up,

            drove Jesus out of the town,

                  and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built,

                        so that they might hurl him off the cliff.

                              ³⁰But Jesus passed through the midst of them

                                    and went on his way.

The gospel of the Lord.

-----

Today we celebrate God’s love.  Specifically we celebrate God’s love for people and communities that churches have not always loved.  We celebrate God’s claim on our lives as God tells Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”  God knows each of us intimately and has known us even before we’ve known ourselves.

While our culture is changing, it still has a ways to go.  It takes many of us in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community years and even decades to come out to ourselves and to others, to accept the love that God has for all of us.  It takes time because the assumption is that we are straight, not gay or bi, cisgender—that is, people whose deepest sense of self matches society’s expectations of them from birth, not transgender or queer.  It takes time because communities of faith and groups in our culture still say that we are not welcome, we are not loved.  But those messages are not the messages of God.  God’s message is love.

What a comfort that for all of us in our lives as sinners and saints, in our brokenness and the ways that we fall short, in the ways society declares us not good enough, God knows us all and loves us completely.  And precisely in the ways we are different—our diversity of sexual orientation, our diversity of gender identity and expression, our diversity in immigration status.  The ways that we are different from the norm, excluded, ignored, or pushed down       are ways that God is uniquely at work in and through us.

Jeremiah thinks he is unable to do what God is calling him to do because he is “only a child.”  What is God’s response? “Do not say, ‘I am only a child’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, ⁸Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.”  Because it’s about more than what the world and even some churches see and say. 

It’s about God’s love, which comes before and will last long after everything else.  It is God’s love that gathers us here for worship.  It is God’s love that nourishes us at the Table with bread, wine, and Word.  It is God’s love that sends us out, following Jesus into the needs and messy-ness in the world.

It is God’s love that comes to us in Jesus.  And no matter what else we might do, it is, as Paul points out, only with God’s love that any of it has meaning.  Knowledge, faith, generosity…none of it holds meaning without love, and, love transforms all of it. 

This transformative love can only be known in community.  The love Paul talks about is a love in community, love that is bigger and deeper than the many things that have been dividing the people in Corinth and the people in our own country.  In the community in Corinth, each person and group wants to be best and in striving for that, they lose the love that grounds them and guides them; they lose the love that brings them together to listen and learn from each other.

This love is what Jesus is talking about in the gospel as well.  It is this love that pushes Jesus into the world.  That guides his claim not to be sent to the people already within his community, but to those outside, to the widows in the Zeraphaths of the world and the Namaans in the Syrias of the world.  And it is that love that also pushes us out the doors into the world—into ESL classes and backpack programs, witnessing to God’s love through our actions and through our relationships.

It doesn’t come without risk; the crowd in the synagogue gets so consumed with rage that Jesus is not there to support and affirm their own personal faith, righteousness, or agenda, that it’s like a switch flicks and they lose all of the wonder and love they had just moments ago been expressing for Jesus.

When they realize that Jesus is there for the others that they aren’t concerned about, they don’t just leave him and look for another who might focus solely on them, the way they want; they are so offended that they are consumed with rage!  They drive Jesus to the edge of the cliff to hurl him off!

Too frequently that is what happens when people, especially those with power or privilege, are confronted with the reality that we are not actually at the center.  That God’s love might also center on others.  This is clear in reactions to the #BlackLivesMatter movement and in reactions to increasing rights and protections for LGBTQ folks.  Neither of these groups put themselves against white or straight and cisgender people. 

Like Jesus, they lift up those who have been left out; and in reaction, those “on the inside” are filled with rage—inspired by a fear of losing their power and privilege, losing their special place. 

The reaction is clear today in increased violence against LGBTQ people, especially those who are transgender and especially people of color, who are the most vulnerable in the community.  Just this week a transgender Latina named Monica was shot and killed in Austin, TX, the first reported death in this country of a transgender person this year; and it is clear in threats and violence against people and communities of color struggling for rights and for safety. 

These attacks and threats and continued degradation and dismissal happen, quite frequently, from people who profess themselves to be Christians, followers of Christ.

But in doing these things, they miss Jesus’ point.  He has not come to replace the folks in Nazareth, and he has not come to replace white people or folks who are straight.  Jesus comes in love for the love and dignity of all people and when some are denied that love, that dignity, that respect by society or by the church, then Jesus’ love is poured out all that much more on them.

That is what we celebrate today.  Jesus, out of God’s immense love, not only makes a space, an opening, at the Table for people of all sexual orientations and gender identities and expressions, for people of all immigration statuses and all cultures, but that Jesus also brings the Table to those who are oppressed and marginalized. 

That God’s love shows up especially at the margins and especially in the people it is so easy for us to disrespect, ignore, and exclude.  But that’s where Jesus goes, oftentimes unnoticed by the ones inside, the ones filled with rage, blood pumping in their ears, rushing to the cliff’s edge. 

…And Jesus goes on his way.  Jesus goes to those who are overlooked.  Jesus goes to the ones we tell him not to bother with.  Jesus goes to the margins.  And creates the space there so that we can follow him.  So that we can find his love outpoured, the community he creates, the relationships and love that transform us all.

Thanks be to God.

god's just beginning: 3rd after epiphany

today i had the honor of preaching at our sister congregation as they celebrated reconciling in christ sunday.

the first reading was jonah 3:1-5, 10
the second reading was 1 corinthians 7:29-31

the holy gospel according to mark (1:14-20)

¹⁴Now after John was arrested,

       Jesus came to Galilee,

              proclaiming the good news of God,

              ¹⁵and saying, “The time is fulfilled,

                     and the kingdom of God has come near;

                            repent,

                            and believe in the good news.”

       ¹⁶As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee,

              he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—

                     for they were fishermen.

              ¹⁷And Jesus said to them,

                     “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”

              ¹⁸And immediately they left their nets and followed him.

       ¹⁹As he went a little farther,

              he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John,

                     who were in their boat mending the nets.

              ²⁰Immediately he called them;

                     and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men,

                     and followed him.

the gospel of the lord.

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it is good to be with you all today as you celebrate being a reconciling in christ congregation and the ways that you publicly and clearly welcome people of all sexual orientations and gender identities and expressions.  as i am here and pastor steve is at christ the king, i also bring you greetings from your mission partner, christ the king lutheran church in south jordan.

now i have to admit, when i first looked at the texts for today, i thought to myself, “well this just doesn’t fit!”  everything about these texts seems to say “hurry up!”  god is on jonah’s case again about proclaiming god’s message to the ninevites, the ninevites hurry up and repent upon hearing jonah’s great and elaborate 8-word sermon, paul encourages the church in corinth to hurry up and act like god’s reign is here because “the present form of this world is passing away.”  and jesus calls his disciples and “immediately they left their nets and followed him” and he saw more and “immediately he called them.”

everything is so quick and so short!  sadly, i’m not quite as good as jonah, so my sermon will be a bit more than 8 words long.  what struck me most, though, is that nothing in the church ever seems to happen “immediately” or even very quickly, especially not when it comes to becoming a reconciling in christ congregation and making important decisions about the gospel and welcoming others.

but then i started to think about it some more and i realized that nobody’s asking or requiring that people complete a large or complicated task—like crafting and adopting a more expansive welcome statement—quickly or immediately.  

the ninevites are quick to repent, but then they still have work to do as they begin to live in a new way.  the disciples whom jesus calls immediately join him, but that is just the beginning of their journey.  the texts are all about starting!  starting to follow jesus, starting to live a new way, and starting to know god.

i have a friend who posted on facebook this past tuesday the following question: “now that mlk day is over, what are you going to do today, and tomorrow, and the next day, to end racism?”  mlk day is important.  it is indeed good and right to celebrate the work, the call, and the commitment of rev. dr. martin luther king, jr. and the leaders of the civil rights movement, but it’s also not enough.

racism still abounds in this country.  in 2010, people of color’s income was 65.5% of the average income of white people.[1]  african americans and hispanics made up about one quarter of the us population, but as of 2008 they made up 58% of all prisoners in the united states. 

and before you assume that they’re just more criminal, african americans are 12% of the total population of drug users, 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense.[2]  in 2010 ¾ of white people owned homes while only ½ of people of color did,[3] to name just a few examples. 

there is still work to be done and there will be work to be done even decades from now, but it is not fast work.  like water dripping on a rock or running down a mountainside, change comes, but slowly.  as the water trickles, it builds and builds until before we know it, it’s a rushing river, carving a valley in the side of the mountain, cutting through and crashing into boulders and rocks in its way.  yet even in the slowness of change, we still hear words to hurry.

the speed and hurry are not necessarily for the work of change, which takes planning and commitment.  the hurry is to begin, because it’s in beginning that the first trickle of water begins to drip, the rivers will come, as long as we can get the trickle of snowmelt each spring to begin, then we too will join the flow.

and you all have done this.  not only have you begun, but you’ve even got a nice creek going!  you’ve done the work to adopt a welcoming statement that includes gender identity and sexual orientation as well as socio-economic and marital status, age, race, and physical and mental capacities!  you even have gender-neutral bathrooms! 

you are a reconciling in christ congregation.  one of my favorite things about that label is that it’s not “reconciled,” which is in the past tense; it’s “reconciling.”  it’s an ongoing thing!  y’all have committed together to talk to each other, to be ok with disagreeing, so long as you keep coming back to the table, keep talking. 

that’s what becoming a reconciling in christ congregation is about.  it’s about the ongoing work of welcome, of inclusion and support, and of justice.  deciding to become a reconciling in christ congregations means hearing god’s summons to follow god and to keep walking in faith where god leads.

being a reconciling in christ congregation means that you get to care about the whole world.  you get to work to ratify the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, remembering those whose lives have been taken or forever altered by nuclear weapons.  you get to work on your welcome as a congregation and to support inclusive and affirming ministries, to work for racial justice and racial equity.  you get to do this because in order to welcome all people, they have to be able to get in the door.  they can’t be blocked from coming by health, by financial instability, by prison or unemployment.

y’all have begun this journey together, through prayer, conversation, and lots of discernment.  now is a time to celebrate the work you have done together and the commitment you have made.  and yet there is always still more work to be done.  there are still children of god who don’t know that god loves them just as god makes them or, if they know that much, don’t know that there are churches like zion and denominations like the elca that believe that as well.

there are still lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer pastors, pastors of color, and pastors with disabilities who wait far too long to receive a call to a congregation or ministry setting.  there is still more work to be done.  the river has not yet finished running its course.

but the joy of the work is that god is there.  god is in the midst of the work of reconciliation, the work of justice and peace.  if, as rev. dr. martin luther king, jr said, “power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love,”[4] then our work for justice is also our work for love.

at christ the king we’ve been doing a class called lutheranism 101 and this last week was all about grace.  we talked about the joy and freedom of trusting that we can’t earn (or lose) salvation, or god’s love, through our own actions or good works.  god already loves each of us unconditionally.  this means that the good work we do—spreading love and justice in the world—is done in response and in thanksgiving for the love made known to us through jesus the christ. 

our actions are the work of the holy spirit.  she empowers us to enact god’s love in the world.  the holy spirit is the force of love by which we live and the source of strength for our work of love, justice, and welcome.  the holy spirit keeps the river flowing, washing us in our own baptismal waters.  she keeps the work going, just as god’s love always flows to each of us, and out into the world.

thanks be to god.

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[1] http://inequality.org/racial-inequality/

[2] http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet

[3] http://inequality.org/racial-inequality/

[4] From MLK’s address to SCLC 16 August 1967, “Where Do We Go From Here?”