Sunday Sermon with Dr. King #6
A Knock at Midnight
“Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’?”
~Luke 11: 5-6
This sermon, A Knock at Midnight*, blew me away the most, so far. The reason is because just by reading it, I was brought to tears by the end. I can’t imagine how emotional it must have been to listen to this one live, in person. It is believed to have been preached in the early 1960s** in Chicago. Dr. King opens by saying “It is midnight in the parable; it is also midnight in our world, and the darkness is so deep that we can hardly see which way to turn” (p. 53). This sermon, indeed is mostly bleak, which is why by the end, the elevation of hope that Dr. King brings with his gifted writing, brought me to tears.
Dr. King cites wars and nuclear weapons to set the stage for what was threatening life at the time. He then breaks it down to being confronted by midnight in the social order, psychological order, and moral order. Social order is being threatened because the very science that brought hope, is now bringing violence and death. Psychologically, there is much fear, anxiety, and depression. Morally, right and wrong is now based on majority opinion. I don’t know about you, but in reading this part of the sermon, I thought that not much has changed, or it’s gotten worse by 2022.
The second part of this sermon does not bring hope just yet. He compares the knock at the friend’s door at midnight, asking for bread, to the millions of people knocking at the church’s doors. He cites statistics of the growing number of people joining churches all over the world. But, “an increase in quantity does not automatically bring an increase in quality” (p. 56), meaning that the people joining may be lacking in their commitment to the teachings of Christ. There is, however, a consistency in the church to which people are still drawn. Dr. King says that they are still looking for the bread of faith, the bread of hope, and the bread of love.
The third part of the sermon touches on how people have sought the bread of social justice, freedom, peace, and economic justice. He also shares how the White church and the Black church has disappointed people regarding these, and that the Black church only exists because “white Christians developed a system of racial segregation within the church, and inflicted so many indignities upon its Negro worshipers that they had to organize their own churches” (p. 60).
He ends with two messages of hope. One is that our slave foreparents realized that joy comes in the morning. “Their positive belief in the dawn was the growing edge of hope that kept the slaves faithful amid the most barren and tragic circumstances” (p. 62). Then, he emotionally shared how joy came in the morning after the midnight that was the lengthy Montgomery bus boycott (This is not in the audio included in this blog from the youtube link). At the beginning of the boycott, they had organized car pools which had been going on for eleven months but a hearing was set for November 13, 1956 to disband and remove this successful carpool system. The night before the hearing, Dr. King had to break the news to the people that they might have to walk in order to continue the boycott. Early that next morning, attorneys on both sides made their arguments but it seemed like it would go in favor of the city. At noon, a press release was brought to everyone’s attention before the judge made the decision on disbanding the carpool. “In anxiety and hope, I read these words: “The United States Supreme Court today unanimously ruled bus segregation unconstitutional in Montgomery, Alabama.’ My heart throbbed with an inexpressible joy. The darkest hour of our struggle had become the first hour of victory” (p. 64).
Supreme Court Outlaws Bus Segregation
*King, M. L. (1963). Strength to love. New York: Harper & Row.