Your Lying Eyes Series

Your Lying Eyes

Rev. Delwyn Campbell / General / Advent / Kingdom of God; Trial; Criticism; John the Baptist; The coming of the kingdom and the Son of Man / Matthew 11:2–15

16 April 1963

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely."

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Lord God, bless Your Word wherever it is proclaimed. Make it a Word of power and peace to convert those not yet Your own and to confirm those who have come to saving faith. May Your Word pass from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the lip, and from the lip to the life that, as You have promised, Your Word may achieve the purpose for which You send it, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Luke 3:15–18 ESV

As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people.

John had faithfully fulfilled his vocation of preparing the way for Christ. John pointed others to Christ; he did not claim for himself any position or following other than what God had given to him. When Jesus Christ came to him, he humbled himself before him, even to the point of hesitating to baptize Him, then submitting when Jesus declared that it was fitting to do so.

John believed that the coming of the Messiah would lead to the establishment of His Kingdom, that the righteous judgment of the LORD would fall upon the unrighteous. For this reason, he called the people of Jerusalem, Judea, and the region around the Jordan to repentance. He even exhorted the religious leaders to repent rather than trust in their religious status to shield them from God’s righteous judgment. Not even the earthly authority of Herod, the pretender to David’s throne, was exempt from John’s call to repentance. John’s preaching reaches a point where Herod fears his impact .

Luke 3:19–20 ESV

But Herod the tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother’s wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, added this to them all, that he locked up John in prison.

It looks like God abandoned John, but why? John was doing his job!