Dear Friends:
Last Monday, our nation observed Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
As a parish and as a Diocese, many of us participated in a Day of Service at Holy Comforter Church, in which Dr. King’s legacy was celebrated.
In these days of division and fracture and bitter tribalism, it was an opportunity for us to reflect on the "better angels of our nature," first identified by President Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address and which Dr. King always called us to live into.
Now, if you’re of a certain age, you will likely remember where you were when you heard the shocking news of Dr. King’s assassination.
I was in high school—in fact, at an Episcopal school—and feelings of anger, fear, anxiety about the future, and wonder about what would happen next reverberated through the community.
A few days later, in morning chapel, the Rector suggested to us that our community was experiencing deep grief and loss, and sadly, maybe even a loss of hope.
This grief was also being played out across the nation as marginalized communities engaged in protests and demonstrations which, too often, tragically descended into violence and destruction.
The Rector then shared with us the testimony offered by Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on the night of Dr. King’s assassination.
Are you familiar with it? I believe it ranks alongside Lincoln’s "Gettysburg Address," his Second Inaugural, FDR’s "Four Freedoms" speech, and King’s "I Have a Dream” speech in the annals of great American political rhetoric (you may have some others to add to this list).
Moreover, like Lincoln’s two speeches and King’s, it ultimately transcends the political and is, in many ways, a profound theological and spiritual reflection.
And making this speech doubly remarkable is that Kennedy delivered it extemporaneously to an audience in Indianapolis the very evening of the assassination.
I have used this speech in classes and school chapels scores of times over the years, and I am always profoundly moved by its rhetorical grace and simplicity and, yes, its hopefulness.
It is, I believe, about grief and about how grief, properly understood, can be the pathway to love and healing.
Kennedy said:
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be Black.
The Gospel of John tells the beautiful story of the raising of Lazarus. It’s a story about grief and loss and love and hope.
Jesus weeps at the death of his friend, Lazarus. And he holds the grief of Lazarus’s sister, Martha, who was upset with Jesus because he had not made it in time to heal Lazarus before he died.
Jesus bears her grief with her, just as he bears our grief in times of tragedy and loss. Take a moment to read the whole story: John 11:1–44.
As you reflect on the story, I hope you will allow Kennedy’s wisdom to speak to you as well.
So much of our terrible national division and the tragic violence which too often accompanies that division are symptoms of grief and loss.
If we allow it, through the awful grace of God, our grief and pain and loss can be transformed into hope.
That’s the Lazarus story, and that was Robert Kennedy’s vision on that grief-filled night.
May it become our vision as well.
Faithfully,
Lex
The Rev. Lex Breckinridge
