MLK 2018
Below is a call and response prayer that could be used as a Call to Worship, Pastoral Prayer, Benediction, etc. The text is taken from various MLK quotes and the congregational response is from King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech, after the prophet Amos.
One: We now raise the voice of the prophet Martin Luther King whose voice we still need so much: “I have the audacity,” King said, “to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.” To which we respond:
RESPONSE: “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
One: “Make a career of humanity,” King exhorted us. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.”
RESPONSE: “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
One: “The ultimate measure of a [person] is not where he [or she] stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he [or she] stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
RESPONSE: “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
One: “If we are to have peace on earth,” King imagined, “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.”
RESPONSE: “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
One: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he said. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
RESPONSE: “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
One: “We shall overcome,” King said with a hope rooted in faith, “because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
RESPONSE: “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
One: The voice of the Gospel. The voice of the prophet Martin Luther King. Christ we pray, make it our voices too. AMEN.
© Rev. Kevin Goldenbogen, 2018
