2025 King Day Celebration Sermon: "we Can Complete The Mission No Matter What!"

2025 King Day Celebration Sermon: "We Can Complete the Mission No Matter What!"

Theme:

Mission Possible: Protecting Freedom, Justice, and Democracy in the Spirit of Nonviolence 365

Greetings, brothers and sisters in the spirit of justice, peace, and freedom, Greetings to My NAACP Branch While I’m Still a member at Large Member of the Organization and have not transferred back to Marlboro County yet I will see to it in 2026.

It is a deep honor to stand before you tonite as we gather in the hallowed memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As we reflect on his vision for justice, freedom, and equality, we must ask ourselves: How do we continue his mission in 2025, in a time when our values of freedom, justice, and democracy seem to be under constant attack?

I ask you this afternoon How do we “Complete the Mission, No Matter What?”

The Best Answer I can come up with is found in James,

James 1:22-25: "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves"

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s call for justice remains an ever-present challenge, a call that speaks to the heart of our present struggles. In the spirit of the King Center theme This year “Mission Possible: Protecting Freedom, Justice, and Democracy in the Spirit of Nonviolence365”, we must remember that this mission is not just a once-a-year observance—it is a daily commitment.

It is a mission that requires us to be persistent, to be vigilant, and to act in the face of adversity. We live in a time of a moral crisis rooted in this nation’s original sins of the genocide of indigenous people and race-based slavery. Though this is not the first time we’ve faced the demons of systemic racism, their capacity to consume us has rarely been more palpable in our common life.

The fundamental values of our deepest moral and religious traditions are love, truth, grace, justice, care of family, community, and shared prosperity.

But these values are under assault.

As systemic racism deconstructs our national reality, more and more people are pushed into poverty while the rich get richer. Hard-won voting rights are under constant assault: lawmakers target African Americans “with almost surgical precision” to gain partisan advantage in elections, While the rich pay 250 million for and election two days later rewarded with 200 billion

As we gather today, we find ourselves at a crossroads, much like the one Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so often spoke of—a place where the soul of a people and the moral compass of a nation hang in the balance. Here in South Carolina, the echoes of Dr. King’s prophetic voice still call us to confront the realities of systemic injustice, economic inequity, and political disenfranchisement.

These challenges are not abstract; they are the lived experiences of Black families across our state and our nation.

• In South Carolina, over 38% of the population lives in poverty or hang on its edge, with Black families bearing the heaviest burden.

• The state’s minimum wage remains a meager $7.25 an hour, while the cost of living soars far beyond reach.

• Healthcare access—so vital to life and dignity—is slipping further away for over 214,000 of our neighbors projected to lose Medicaid coverage.

• Meanwhile, housing insecurity grows, with thousands of families at risk of eviction.

These are not mere statistics; they are the daily struggles of God’s children, crying out for justice.

• Our schools, often hailed as the key to opportunity, are shackled by chronic underfunding, particularly in predominantly Black districts Like Marlboro Florence 3.

• Teachers are vilified, and education is turned into a battleground for profit and ideology, leaving our children—our future—ill-equipped to succeed.

• At the same time, our communities endure environmental neglect, as corporations exploit and pollute with impunity, leaving Black neighborhoods to bear the brunt of climate change and health crises.

And yet, even as these injustices persist, the tools of democracy meant to empower us are being systematically stripped away.

You really can’t talk about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. without talking about his Poor People’s Campaign. Many people forget or don’t realize that one of the final pivots in Dr. King’s ministry was a call to confront the systemic poverty gripping our nation. This wasn’t just an abstract idea; it was grounded in his encounters with real people and the harsh realities they faced.

It was a conversation with Marian Wright—now Marian Wright Edelman—who, at the time, was the director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, that helped ignite this vision. She, along with other leaders from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had witnessed children without shoes and families living in homes with dirt floors. These vivid images of systemic neglect and economic disparity moved Dr. King to launch the Poor People’s Campaign in 1967.