Monday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time
Today we hear in Mark that some religious leaders in Jesus’ day refused to budge when it came to the law. Even when the law makes no sense or was oppressive, the law, for them, became even more supreme.
On this holiday we remember the voice of a prophet named Martin Luther King, Jr. Like Jesus, he refused to accept law without question, arguing that there are bad laws as there are bad men.
One of the most powerful and impactful pieces of writing in the American story was MLK’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail. King’s letter responds to the question regarding the “impatience” of the African American community and of the “extreme” level of the civil rights movements actions. He wrote, “For years now, I have heard the word ‘Wait! This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’”
King justified civil disobedience by stating that, just as the Bible’s Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to obey Nebuchadnezzar’s unjust laws and just as the colonists staged the Boston Tea Party, he refused to submit to laws to uphold segregation and deny citizens their rights to peacefully assemble and to vote.
King also decried the inaction of white moderates. He prided himself as being among the “extremists” such as Jesus of Nazareth, the prophet Amos, St. Augustine, Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi saying that the country stood in need of creative men and women of extreme action. Jesus, after all, broke certain religious laws even as rigid religious authorities looked on, shaking their heads and plotting to destroy him.
The letter was written in response to concerns raised by white clergymen. Of enduring interest is its discussion of why it is appropriate to knowingly break the law in protest when the law is a large part of the cause of oppression as well as what helps keep oppression in place. To not break the law would be to make the oppression more secure.
Quotes from A Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
“Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue.”
“…as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.”
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
“I agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’”
“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or squares with the law of God.”
—Timothy J. Cronin