For Want of a Nail

When I read or hear or speak those words of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., about the inescapable network of mutuality, I often think about Jesus saying, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’ Or sometimes the less eloquent adage “what goes around comes around.” But lately I’ve been hearing this instead:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Or to put it another way, ‘truly, whatsoever we expect of the greatest of these our leaders, visionaries and prophets, that we must expect also of ourselves’. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” doesn’t mean only that the fate of any one of us is the fate of all of us. I believe it also means the responsibility of any one of us is the responsibility of all of us.

It is absolutely right and good that Martin Luther King Day is a federal holiday. That we honor this man’s life and legacy tomorrow with parades and speeches and worship and music and breakfasts. But I believe the honor we seek to bestow is both flawed and diminished, not simply because we soften and sanitize him, forgetting his radical power, dangerous to the status quo of his time (and ours) but also because we forget that he too was but one thread in an inescapable network of mutuality.

The Reverend Dr. King was the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but just a month earlier over 60 people from ten states were present at the conference that created the Southern Leadership Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration that evolved a month later into the SCLC.

We’ve seen picture after picture after picture of Dr. King at the front of the thousands of people crossing over the Edmund Pettus Bridge at the start of the third and finally successful march from Selma to Montgomery, but those thousands made the march history.

Martin Luther King, Jr’s speech is what most people remember of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom–but he was neither the only speaker nor the primary organizer of the event. The march was conceived of by A. Phillip Randolph, and the cooperation of Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Whitney Young, Jr., of the National Urban League; James Farmer of the Conference of Racial Equality; John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, along with Dr. King of the SCLA, was integral to its success. Each of these men also spoke at the event, along with the Very Reverend Patrick O’Boyle (Archbishop of Washington), Dr. Eugene Carson Blake (Stated Clerk, United Presbyterian Church of the U.S.A. and Vice Chairman, Commission on Race Relations of the National Council of Churches of Christ in America), Mrs. Medgar Evers (now knowns as Myrlie Evers-Williams ), Walter Reuther (President, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, AFL-CIO and Chairman, Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO,) Rabbi Uri Miller (President Synagogue Council of America), Matthew Ahmann (Executive Director, National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice), Rabbi Joachim Prinz (President American Jewish Congress), and Dr. Benjamin E. Mays (President, Morehouse College).

The event wouldn’t have happened at all if it weren’t for the planning of Bayard Rustin, who, along with a group of 200 volunteers, organized the match in under two months from when he was named deputy director.

That, incidentally, was far from Rustin’s only contribution to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He was a long time and trusted advisor to Dr. King, whose efforts and influence have at times been overlooked, ignored or deliberately minimized because he was queer. As a second example, though Martin Luther King introduced mainstream America to nonviolent action, it was Bayard Rustin, who had spent seven weeks in India a decade earlier, studying Gandhian nonviolence, who deepened King’s merely academic familiarity with the concept into an embodied belief that nonviolence was the means powerful enough to achieve ends that seemed out of reach..

Last month I said that we put too much burden on the infant whose birth we celebrate on Christmas. That we make that baby too special, when in fact “that baby, most properly understood, stands in for all babies–each born as the possibility of revolutionary love, peace making power.” If he was the guy then no one else has to be the guy–least of all us.

We do the same disservice to Dr. King when we forget that he was only one thread in the network. It is true, he was a nail for want of which the battle for civil rights of the 1950s and 60s would have been lost. It is also true that Bayard Rustin, Rosa Parks, John Lewis, Whitney Young, and Ralph Abernathey were each a nail for want of which the battles of those years would have been lost. And Marian Anderson, Mahalia Jackson, the members of the Eva Jessye Choir, who sang at the Lincoln Memorial were nails, too, because movements require music as much as speeches and actions. And for each of those leaders whose names we remember, there were thousands of nameless students and housewives and garbage collectors and folks who drove bus boycotters, and church choirs and song leaders, and sandwich makers. And each of them was a nail for want of which the battles would have been lost as well. We honor Dr. King’s life and legacy by remembering them, their dreams, their marches, their suffering at the spray of fire hoses, their songs.

But here’s the most important way we honor his life and legacy: we realize that for all those nails, that held the shoes, that protected the horses, that carried the riders, that contributed to the victory of the battles of lunch counters and desegregation of interstate transportation and desegregation of public schools and voting rights, for all the battles won, the kingdom still cannot be declared ours, safe and free of bigotry, hatred, and oppression.

That’s the bad news. The good news is this: the inescapable network of mutuality doesn’t spread merely across space, binding all the people of a nation or an era or a movement together in a single garment of destiny. It also spreads across time. Meaning we today are also nails, for the want of which the kingdom will never be secured. If each of our failures to right injustice directly affects the least among us and indirectly affects all of us, so too do each of our acts of allyship, truth-telling, and justice-making. The network King described was never comprised solely of the consequences of injustice, hatred and bitterness. It was always and continues to be comprised equally of the consequences of love and peace and hope. When we, called by love, buoyed by hope, pursue peace, even in ways that may seem insignificant in the face of the magnitude of injustice at work in our society, we change the very warp and weft of the single garment of destiny.

In small group meetings for a couple months past and for a several weeks still to come, members and friends of this congregation have been reflecting on the shape and character of ministry you want for the next phase of the history of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah, and specifically, how if and how I might fit as your called, settled minister. I’ve been reflecting, too, more privately, on what I saw when I agreed to come here as your contract minister in August of 2022, and what I’ve observed since I’ve been here, and how we might continue to be together as congregation and called, settled minister. One of the things I see when I look at you is a community of folks who understand instinctively and urgently the importance of horseshoe nails, and every other link the chain along the way to winning the kingdom for peace and love, liberty and justice.

You know that UUCS’s participation in Justice Unites Savannah Together multiplies our influence for good in our surrounding community. You understand that becoming involved in the new UU Georgia Legislative Action Network will bring our love to bear in tangible and systemic and lasting ways on the least among us across our state. You believe that the interdependent web of all existence and the inescapable network of mutuality are one and the same. You keep doing the challenging work of antiracism despite language barriers and differing ideas about the direction the work should take. You gather food so children can eat on weekends, and you serve meals to families with parents working to stay out of jail, because you know hunger weakens not just bodies but communities, and kids need parents who aren’t incarcerated. And you march in Pride and on MLK, Jr. Day because you know that celebration and solidarity and remembrance weave sturdy threads of joy and community and care into the single garment of destiny.

And you need, I believe, not so much a minister who will be the driving force behind your justice work or, in the language of this month’s theme, the catalyst for your liberating love, but rather a minister who recognizes and celebrates the projects you imagine and undertake, the invitations you accept, and the opportunities you bring to the wider congregation, who facilitates your work with staff support and resources, who participates alongside you as time and the other demands of ministry allow, and who holds up all your social action ministries and names them what they are: blessings and legacies of Dr. King in ways you may not even be conscious of. I can be that minister. I can be that nail, in the little portion of the inescapable network that is UUCS. It’s been a privilege to do so for these past seventeen months, and it would be an honor to continue to do so as your settled minister.

Hewing a stone of hope out of a mountain of despair is a monumental task. One that has already gone on too long. One for which the end is not yet in sight. How good it is to know that though our efforts are essential, the task is not ours alone and never will be. How good to remember we share the work with countless and nameless toilers, past, present and future, fulfilling the legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Amen.