Following a Greater Love

There is a verse in Micah chapter 6, verse 8 that, if people would take it to heart, would provide strong, correction action to the way that we respond to one another.
8He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?

So we know what is good and right, because God has shown it to us - His Word provides the principles. We are called to "do justly" - I think that means to not only know what the right thing is, but to do the right thing.   And we're called to "love mercy" - to be merciful, just as our Father is merciful, according to Luke chapter 6. God gives us the ability to look at others and show mercy, which triumphs over judgment, according to James chapter 2. We place ourselves in a humble position before God, and He will give us the capacity to walk as He walks and to see others as He does.

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In John 15, Jesus talked about the power of sacrificial love, and one of the actors in the movie, Selma, used one of these verses as he discussed the love in action displayed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I'll discuss that later.  We read in verses 12-15:

12This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.13Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.14You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.15No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.

Today, America has the opportunity to pause, to reflect, and even to serve, in commemoration of the birthday of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  In our area, there has been a heightened emphasis on the contributions of Dr. King, with the film, Selma, having been released nationally just over a week ago.

And, you had members of the team responsible for the film in Selma yesterday for a series of events, including an event at the legendary Edmund Pettus Bridge. where John Legend and Common performed the Golden Globe-winning song, Glory, according to a report on the AL.com website, which states that following the performance, actor David Oyelowo, who plays Martin Luther King Jr. in the film, appeared on stage to end the night with a prayer that praised the acts of those involved in the Civil Rights movement and encouraged the youth in the audience to continue the fight for equality.

It's not the first time that Mr. Oyelowo and prayer have been linked regarding the Selma film.  In an interview with him on the Christianity Today website, he mentioned praying before 2 critical scenes:

The day that we were going to be doing those scenes, there were 500 extras there in the church. And I decided—or I asked—if it was okay for me to pray with everyone just before we go into it. It was going to be the first time I was giving speeches as Dr. King. And so I prayed.

Just after I prayed, everyone was really fired up, and we were about to go into the scene. Ava, our director, was just about to call action—and all the lights suddenly went out.

An electric storm started, which meant that they had to shut the generator off in case it electrocuted anyone. We had to break for lunch early. We all went outside, and the sky turned pink and purple with a double rainbow. There are people who had lived in Atlanta for years who said they'd never seen the sky do that.

So we came back—it was in the evening. We'd seen this sky, we'd lived through what felt like a spiritual event, and then we shot those speeches, which as you can imagine, was far more charged than it would have been otherwise.

In a Crosswalk.com piece, writer Jeffrey Huston wrote that, "It seems you can’t have a conversation with anyone involved in the making of Selma– the dramatization of the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – without them attributing its existence to the result of a Higher Power at work."

One example was the provision of a pulpit for the scene depicting Dr. King's speech at the State Capitol in Montgomery. Huston writes that Production Designer Mark Friedberg was reflecting on how he wasn't happy with the podium being used as King's lectern. "So we put the lectern up there," Friedberg said, pointing to the capitol steps, "and… I didn't like it. I wrinkled my nose, and I couldn't figure out why. It occurred to me it shouldn't be a lectern. It should be a pulpit." So Friedberg and his crew walked one-hundred feet to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and talked with Reverend Cromwell Handy to see what they may have. Handy smiled, telling Friedberg that just two days prior not only had they discovered the church's old pulpit deep in the corners of the storage basement but that "it should be up there because that is the pulpit Dr. King delivered his speech from 50 years ago." Stunned by how his "random" artistic inspiration led to the actual pulpit Dr. King stood behind for this very speech, Friedberg said they all just looked at each other, smiling with the realization that there was a force at work "clearly bigger than any of us."

For Oyelowo, he relates that he has seen God's hand at work since he first read the script nearly eight years ago in July of 2007.  He told Huston, "I felt God tell me that I was going to play Dr. King – and in Selma. Unfortunately," he adds, chuckling, "the director at the time didn't agree with me." Raised a Baptist who, as he specifies, "became a born-again Christian when I was sixteen," Oyelowo is no stranger to listening for God's voice. “There was something that I just couldn’t shake once I had read that script,” he recalls, “and then I just had that knowing. I know that Voice. I know God's voice in my life, and I just couldn’t shake it from that point on."

There has been plenty of discussion of the film and its content, and it is drawing attention not only to this area, but in a greater sense to the history of the civil rights movement, and that's a good thing. And, as Dr. Marc Newman of Movie Bible Study and I discussed the other day, the spiritual element of the activity of the civil rights movement is incorporated in the film.   I contend you cannot separate the spiritual from the events of that time.   Even today, you will find that a number of commemorative events are being held in churches.

Dr. John Piper, in an insightful commentary on the film, also contends that the movie lets the religious roots shine through.  And, he leaves the reader with the inspiration that the story "stirs up dreams of a life that counts."  He writes:

This was the main impact on me. When I think about the needs and sorrows and injustices of the world (thousands of peoples perishing unreached by the gospel, millions of babies killed in their mothers’ wombs, global slavery and human trafficking, ethnic and racial hatreds around the world), the thought of an easy, comfortable, secure life of coasting to the end, feels overwhelmingly unattractive to me.

So I pray that this story of courage and sacrifice and conflicted righteousness will stir you and me to an unwavering commitment not to waste our lives.

So, some brief thoughts on this Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.  For one thing, we can each examine our own lives to make sure that we are in alignment with God's plan for us.  David Oyelowo believes that he was being led by the Lord to pursue a cause, a calling, to play Dr. King on film.  Dr. Piper encourages us to not waste our lives.   There are causes greater than ourselves, and perhaps the Lord is calling you to be involved in a special, intentional way.  There may be a call for perseverance in the pursuit of a call, but we can be diligent and assured that God will give us strength.

Also, I think we can be challenged to think more spiritually, or Biblically, concerning the events of our lives.  Prayer is a chief component, and I believe that we can gain a greater measure of God's power as we take a moment, or more, to surrender our pursuits to the Lord.  We may be following God's call for us, but if we're not coating our activity with prayer, then we may be missing out on the maximum effectiveness that God would intend.  So, the challenge is to walk Biblically in all that we undertake.  As Oyelowo says in the Christianity Today piece, American Christians should watch Selma..."Because you see someone who doesn't just talk about their faith; you see someone who walks it out, with sacrifical love. The Bible says, Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friends.

He says:

That is not only what Dr. King did ultimately (in being assassinated); it's what he did for those 13 years that he led the civil rights movement. Every day he sacrificed seeing his kids. He had to endure death threats. He had to endure ill health. He often went into the hospital for exhaustion, because he was constantly putting himself on the line for others. That's what the Bible tells us to do.