LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 103

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THE QUEST FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE:
MARTIN LUTHER K I N G, J R ., N O B E L L E C T URE ,
D EC. 11 , 19 6 4 :

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is
both impractical and immoral. I am not
unmindful of the fact that violence often brings
about momentary results. Nations have
frequently won their independence in battle.
But in spite of temporary victories, violence
never brings permanent peace. It solves no
social problem: it merely creates new and more
complicated ones. Violence is impractical
because it is a descending spiral ending in
destruction for all. It is immoral because it
seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win
his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather
than convert. Violence is immoral because it
thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys
community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than
dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It
creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality
in the destroyers.
W E H EA R THE WORDS OF C HR I ST CON C ER N I NG
R EPE N TANCE:

There were some present at that very time
who told him about the Galileans whose blood
Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And
he answered them, “Do you think that these
Galileans were worse sinners than all the other
Galileans, because they suffered in this way?
No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will
all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom
the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do
you think that they were worse offenders than
all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I
tell you; but unless you repent, you will all
likewise perish.” (Luke 13:1–5)
JES US HEALS A MAN BOR N BL I N D :

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.
And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned,
this man or his parents, that he was born
blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this
man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of
God might be displayed in him. We must work
the works of him who sent me while it is day;
night is coming, when no one can work. As long
as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
“Upon This Rock: Repent”

(John 9:1–5)
I recall a time in my own personal pastoral ministry
when we wanted to reach single mothers in a government-subsidized apartment a few blocks from our congregation in Houston, Texas. We did, and one young
lady with two children were baptized and catechized,
then did what I perceived to be the unpardonable sin;
and in my pastoral youth, I wanted to lower the boom
and put her out of the church. But thank God for wise
lay servants who said to me, “Pastor, we may never
save the mother, but if we save the children, maybe the
children will save the mother.”
Ask Dr. Rosa J. Young, 100 years ago, about bringing
the Gospel to the Dark Belt of Wilcox County, Ala., to
a people groping in the darkness of sin. As she said,
her poor soul was groping in darkness of sin until the
light of the pure Gospel came to Rosebud, Ala., and
many people repented and believed by faith in the
saving grace of Christ.
In her book Light in the Dark Belt, she recalls how
a Lutheran Sunday school had been organized
in 1881 and closed that same year in Mobile, Ala.
For 34 years, 900,000 blacks in Alabama “did not
have the opportunity to hear the preaching of the
pure Gospel, which was brought to light again by
the sainted Martin Luther, the great Reformer. They
lived, and many of them died, with their eyes blinded
to the true way of salvation. Did the God of Love,
who gave His only-begotten Son to suffer and die for
the sins of all mankind, mean to suffer the 900,000
[black] people in Alabama to perish in gross darkness and be eternally lost when He permitted the
Mobile station to be closed in 1881? No, that cannot
be; for we know ‘God is not willing that any should
perish, but that all should come to repentance.’ ‘God so
loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish,
but have everlasting life.’ God says that whosoever
believeth should not perish. That blessed word ‘whosoever,’ means the [black] people, too. God loved the
world, He gave His Son to die for the world, and . . .
the 900,000 [black] people in Alabama, also belong
to the world. Therefore God, in His . . . infinite love for
souls of all mankind, remembered the [black] people
of Alabama and worked out a plan by which He would
give them the golden opportunity to hear the pure
Gospel, to believe it and to be saved, to be eternally
U P O N T H I S R O C K • Essay

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