I've been thinking this week about Dr. King's commitment to peace and what he might have to say about our current world situation - about the war on terror, which is largely a war on people of Arab descent; about the wars we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq in search of phantom weapons and supposed connections to Al Qaeda. About the long battle between Israelis and Palestinians and the role of American money in that mess.

And as I've considered these questions, I've been thrown back on Dr. King's own grounding: on where he came from, what he relied on, what he believed in. That is, I've been thinking deeply about his Christian faith. Because faith is the strength which undergirded all he did and all he said. Before he was an international leader, he was a preacher. And he never stopped being a man of growing faith in God.

In fact, it is clear from his writings and speeches, that the more involved he became in movements for justice, the more rich and personal his own relationship to God grew. The courage it took to stand up to death threats and the FBI and bombs in his own home - that courage came from a deep, bedrock faith in the God of the Bible - the God who led the slaves out of Egypt; the Christ who was crucified.

So I thought about just reading one of his sermons this morning - but I couldn't decided which one because so many of them are worth hearing. And though my lips cannot begin to do justice to words which should be heard from his resonant throat, I decided that I would share some words of Dr. King's for us to meditate on this morning, as we think about not just his world 40 years ago, but our world today and where God is working now, calling us to be Christians of courage and faith, relying not on our own strength, but on the strength of the one who made us.

In his sermon, "The answer to a perplexing question," Dr. King preached about the text from Matthew's gospel which we heard today. The disciples had tried to cast out a demon from a young boy and were unable to do so. Jesus rebuked the devil, who left the child, and then told the disciples that they lacked enough faith. The following is excerpted from that sermon:

"How can evil be cast out? People have usually pursued two paths to eliminate evil and thereby save the world. The first calls upon people to remove evil through our own power and ingenuity in the strange conviction that by thinking, inventing and governing, we will at last conquer the nagging forces of evil. Give people a fair chance and a decent education and they will save themselves. ... Armed with ... growing faith in the capability of reason and science, modern humankind set out to change the world. We turned out attention from God and the human soul to the outer world and its possibilities. ... The laboratory became our sanctuary and scientists our priests and prophets. ... But in spite of astounding new scientific develop the old evils continue and the age of reason has been transformed into an age of terror. Selfishness and hatred have not vanished with an enlargement of our educational system and an extension of our legislative policies. A once optimistic generation now asks in utter bewilderment, 'Why could we not cast it out?'

"The answer is rather simple: People by our own power can never cast evil from the world. The humanists' hope is an illusion, based on too great an optimism concerning the inherent goodness of human nature. ...

"The second idea for removing evil from the world stipulates that if people wait submissively upon the Lord, in God's own good time God alone will redeem the world. ... The idea that we expect God to do everything leads inevitably to a callous misuse of prayer. For if God does everything, people then ask God for anything and God becomes little more than a "cosmic bellhop" who is summoned for every trivial need. Or God is considered so omnipotent and people so powerless that prayer is a substitute for work and intelligence. ... We must earnestly pray for peace but we must also work vigorously for disarmament and the suspension of weapon testing. We must use our minds as rigorously to plan for peace as we have used them to plan for war. ... The Bible portrays God not as an omnipotent czar who makes all decisions for his subject nor a cosmic tyrant who with gestapo-like methods invades the inner lives of people, but rather as a loving Parent who gives to us such abundant blessings as we may be willing to receive. ...

"We must surely affirm the majesty and sovereignty or God, but this should not lead us to believe that God is an Almighty Monarch who will impose God's will on us and deprive us of the freedom to choose what is good or what is not good. ... We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith, but superstition. ...

"What, then, is the answer to life's perplexing question, 'How can evil be cast out of our individual and collective lives?' ... neither God nor human beings will individually bring the world's salvation. Rather, both humanity and God, made one in a marvelous unity of purpose through an overflowing love as the free gift of ... God and by perfect obedience and receptivity on the part of humanity, can transform the old into the new and drive out the deadly cancer of sin. ... Faith is the opening of all sides and at every level of one's life to the divine inflow. ... Humans filled with God and God operating through humans brings unbelievable changes in our individual and social lives. ...

In Dr. King's life, we saw put into action the belief he expressed in this sermon. May it be true for us as well. Amen.