"I Have A Dream"—Martin Luther King Jr

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n the United States, this day is Martin Luther King Day—a federal holiday. Our featured gospel reading comes from Mark’s collection of several confrontations between Jesus and the Pharisees in Galilee. It is about fasting as being originally a sign of sorrow and repentance in Jewish law.

The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were accustomed to fast. People came to Jesus and objected, “Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak. If he does, its fullness pulls away, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined. Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins” (Mark 2: 18-22).

Today’s reading is one of those speeches of Jesus that changed the world two millennia ago. Let us not think that Jesus was just pertaining to food. No, Jesus was calling the people's attention to the early seeds of dissension or division amongst themselves. He saw how it was driving a wedge between his own followers and that of John and the Pharisees. But Jesus simply appealed to the higher value of camaraderie or "social friendship" which was being sidelined by their nit-picking. If we continue on with the gospel, we will find Jesus questioning certain Jewish laws that often exacerbate division and oppression. Jesus appealed not to the "letter" of the Jewish laws but to the "spirit" of the law. Jesus alluded to the image of the bridegroom to refer to himself whose desire was to sit at the table of fellowship, of fraternity and sorority, where all are brothers and sisters in God's family.

In Pope Francis' latest encyclical Fratelli Tutti, he envisions and dreams of a model of global governance where every country is respected in its core sovereignty and no powers can be concentrated into the hand of a few member-states. The Holy Father calls for radical transformation. His core message is a call to reaffirm attitudes of interpersonal empathy, the value of social care and the absolute dignity of human life. The notion of “social friendship” in this encyclical is a dream that is yet to materialize. Pope Francis dreams of "a new anthropological world order based on a cosmopolitan morality and the holistic existence of a human family which transcends all kinds of social, ethnological and national differences."

And today, we remember another man who too had a dream like that of the Holy Father. In his famous "I Have A Dream" speech, Martin Luther King Jr (Born Michael King on January 15, 1929), followed the lead of Jesus Christ in fighting for freedom until his assassination (shot) on April 4, 1968. The following is excerpted from his Civil Rights speech at the Lincoln Memorial on 28 August 1963.

I

have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day out in the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together...

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

Fr JM Manzano SJ