MLK Day + Inauguration: “The time is always ripe,” even when days like these coincide.
By Stephen Reeves
It’s an odd coincidence but not unprecedented. The inauguration of a new president and the MLK holiday have been the same day before. The last time was 1997 for President Clinton’s second inauguration.
The 20th Amendment of the Constitution sets January 20th as the presidential transition date. The national holiday honoring MLK, as signed into law by President Reagan in 1983, is always the third Monday of January.
Perhaps the confluence seems particularly jarring this year. Many of us see the new administration as hostile to racial justice and the incoming president as particularly racist. In 2024, 83% of Black voters cast their ballot for his opponent. The new President’s vision for America bears little resemblance to the beloved community.
We can be grateful for the peaceful transfer of power and prepare ourselves for what is to come.
Today, rather than focusing on the character of the new president and worrying about which of his alarming campaign promises he intends to keep, take a moment to consider what Dr. King might be asking us.
Take a moment for self-purification. For Dr. King and those practicing nonviolent civil disobedience self-purification was a necessary step. Were they ready for the taunts, threats, violence and arrest? Could they remain peaceful?
Few of us face the same threat today, but take this moment to assess your spiritual, emotional, and physical health. Now is the perfect time to practice spiritual disciplines of prayer, meditation, scripture reading, and fasting. Ask God for wisdom and discernment about how you should act. Fill up your spiritual reserves lest you feel called to draw from an empty well.
I’m also reminded of what Dr. King called the “fierce urgency of now” which creates within me an acute sense of tension.
At the beginning of a four year administration that will undoubtedly threaten those we serve, I am steeling my nerves for the long haul. I am remembering that the struggle is long and the road will require patience and endurance. I will try not to be distracted by the day to day nonsense and manufactured outrage that fill the news cycle and social media feeds. To allow every word of a president to dictate my mood or actions gives him too much power and control.
However, I don’t want to be so unflappable that I’m not affected by the real suffering this administration is likely to inflict on those Jesus called us to love. I want to be reasonable and level headed without being detached. Strategic and calculated without being cold and uncaring. Patience cannot lead to passivity.
We have to be prepared to stand up and defend the vulnerable but we must also protect our emotional health and find moments of joy.
There is tension in the assurance that the arc of the moral universe is long and will require patience, but that the bending towards justice requires action from us.
Like he did at the March on Washington, I believe King would again remind America of the “fierce urgency of now.” He would again insist that it is well past time to make real the promises of democracy.
If you have a tendency, like I do, to urge patience and value civility, perhaps a question we should ask ourselves is what injustice will cause you to grab a whip and flip over tables? What causes righteous indignation to so rise in your soul that it can no longer be contained?
At the beginning of this weekend, as I try to do every MLK weekend, I reread the Letter from a Birmingham Jail. It is just as powerful and convicting as the day it was written. I was moved once again by King’s fierce rebuke of the white moderate faith leaders who urged patience. May his words convict us all towards the type of bold action these years will likely require.
“I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. …I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.”
“I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’…” This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’”
“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
“It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”
“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
So today, take a breath. Give thanks for the courageous leaders who have gone before, and commit to following the drum major for justice.
