I hear a King calling, still

This sermon was delivered by Rabbi Mosbacher at Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York City on January 17, 2025.

As we gathered this past Friday evening to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy, I was reminded as I often am when I go back to his writings of the high standards he held himself to in the work of making the world more just, and how unrelentingly demanding he was of other people who professed to believe in making the world more just.

In his letter from the Birmingham Jail in 1963, Dr. King writes scathingly about people of faith. His words are, of course, the words of a minister, of a man deeply rooted in the church, the son of a pastor, ultimately the father of a pastor.

It’s not faith communities in general, or people of faith in general, that he is critical of in the letter. No, it’s only certain well-meaning people of faith that he is deeply frustrated with.

Dr. King wrote that moderates, including clergymen, posed a challenge comparable to that of white supremacists.

In the letter, he writes:

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance,” King writes, “is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

King asserts that houses of faith needed to take principled stands or risk being “dismissed as irrelevant social clubs.”

While some religious leaders were protesting with African Americans, and some were arrested with Dr. King (and he goes out of his way to praise them), many more religious leaders were saying to Dr. King that, while they supported the cause, Dr. King needed to be more patient, that the time wasn’t right, that he and other leaders of the movement should wait until the time was ripe, until American society was ready for change.

To this call, Dr. King writes, “For years now I have heard the word “wait.” It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration.

“We must come to see…” he writes, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

When I reflect on these words here in 2025, more than 60 years after they were written, I think about the heroism of Moses’s mother Yocheved in this week’s Torah portion, and of his sister Miriam, as together, they save baby Moses from the Egyptian tyrant Pharoah’s decree to kill all male firstborn among the Israelites.

I think of the bravery of Pharaoh’s unnamed daughter, who raises an Israelite-born child in the palace, right under the nose of the Pharaoh himself.

I think of Moses, who stops long enough in the heat of the wilderness to notice that a bush was not only aflame, but that it wasn’t being consumed. And then he stayed there long enough to hear the voice of God, and then found within himself the strength to confront and make demands of the most powerful man in the world.

When I reflect on these words from Torah, and these words from 1963, I wonder how I would have responded to Dr. King’s critique from the Birmingham jail; I wonder how any of us in this room would have responded. And, as I reflect on these words, I realize that this does not need to remain a thought experiment here in 2025.

At this moment each year, we bask in the legacy of Dr. King; and we Jews bask in the legacy of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, of Rabbi Yoachim Prinz, of Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner and many other Jews who marched with Dr. King. May their memories be a blessing.

We take pride, as we should, in remembering that the Voting Rights Act of 1964 was written in the offices of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism in Washington, D.C. How proud we should be of that 60 year old legacy.

And, as we bask, my friends, our hearts know that, now, and in the coming days, weeks, months and years, we, people of faith, people of privilege,
are and will be faced with choices. And I wonder which path we will choose.

I wonder if we can still hear Dr. King’s words agitating us still.

Our immigrant neighbors are already living with the threat of deportation. You know, the people who, among other things, take care of our children
and our elderly, and harvest our food in the fields, and make the delicious foods we enjoy in our favorite restaurants, and who deliver our Doordash when we don’t want to go out.

If Immigration and Customs Enforcement comes for them, what will we do?
Will we say to those who would stand in the breach, “wait for the time to be right?” or will we stand in the breach with them?

If access to reproductive rights Is restricted even further, if the right to equal marriage is threatened nationally will we say, “wait– I’m sure it will get better?” Or will we stand in the breach?

We know the nature of the justice challenges that we already face. Perhaps they won’t get worse.

But is the hope that it won’t get worse our best plan?

We know the ways in which power can be used and abused. Perhaps it won’t get worse.

Is hope the extent of our plan?

We know the size of the sea we have to cross, and how long the desert journey will be to the promised land.

This moment is calling for us to act; this moment presents us a choice.

Wait? Or Let My People Go?

I hear a King calling us still, to live out our values, to walk the walk of freedom, to do more than care and shrei gevalt, to offer more than thoughts and prayers.

I hope that in this moment, as we hear powerful music and powerful words from Dr. King, that we will all be able not only to hear King’s call, but to act as if he’s calling to us individually, impatiently, unstintingly, unapologetically.

And I hope that, having heard the call once again, we will join together in bending the arc of the moral universe towards justice.

Because it won’t bend itself.

Then, Dr. King’s memory will be both a blessing and a revolution.