About three years ago, I read an article by Kerry Hasler-Brooks, assistant professor of English at Messiah University, in which she expounded on what she called “the radical message” of John 3:16. You may know it by heart: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
She acknowledges how this verse gets uncomfortably packaged in all kinds of ways, “flung about too easily on yard signs and Christian T-shirts,” not to mention written on cardboard signs held up at football games. To get at the radical nature of this verse — and to highlight the vastness and inclusivity of God’s love, she tells a story from the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Here’s a little of what she writes:
In September 1954, a young Martin Luther King Jr. moved from Boston to Montgomery, the city that would call him from the pulpit to the street, that would cement his call to follow Jesus into the work of justice. His first week in the pulpit at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, King preached on John 3:16. That first sermon in his new home bears signs of the voice that one year later would be heard all over the globe—of the man who would stand on the shoulders of Claudette Colvin, Rosa Parks, Jo Ann Robinson, and thousands of other Black women to lead the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956 that would help change the world.
“God’s love has breadth,” said King. “It is a big love; it’s a broad love. . . God’s love is too big to be limited to a particular race. It is too big to be wrapped in a particularistic garment. It is too great to be encompassed by any single nation. God is a universal God.”
In that Montgomery church, King told a different story of the God of this verse. He leaned into it as a source of politically activated theology: “This [unlimited love] has been a ray of hope and has given a sense of belonging to the hundreds of disinherited people” who proclaim, like the enslaved preacher who risked everything to teach his enslaved congregants in the shadows of the plantation, “You ain’t no slave. But you’re God’s child.”
This Sunday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday. I hope you’ll join us at 10 a.m. as we welcome special guest T. Mychael Rambo. He is a Regional Emmy Award-winning actor, vocalist, arts educator, and public speaker who has made an indelible mark on the Twin Cities arts community. He has shared his talents nationally and internationally as well as on television commercials, feature films, and other television programming. T. Mychael is also an accomplished art educator, affiliate professor at the University of Minnesota, highly sought-after public speaker, and committed community organizer. Let’s give him a warm Park Avenue welcome as he presents “The King’s Poem.”
Much love — God’s big, broad love — to all of us.
Pastor Gregg
