Introduction & ice breaker
In 1968 - Dr King said he is happy he didn’t sneeze when he was stabbed and almost died in 1958 during a book signing, because he would not have witnessed all that would happen in the years following in the civil rights movement.
Can you recall a near death experience? How did it impact how you thought about or lived the rest of your life?
He also in 1968 was able to say he is satisfied with his life’s contribution towards Gods purposes. Can you say that about your life yet?
Themes to Consider
Epiphany is a season where the church considers how do we live in response to the revelation of God in our world, in our lives
Encountering God and hearing his heart : “I HAVE SEEN, I HAVE HEARD, I AM CONCERNED “
Our calling to act on his behalf
I WILL BE WITH YOU - his promise
Way of shalom vs the way of empire
Discussion Questions
Describe a moment in your life you encountered God or understood his heart and wanted to do something about it.
How can God use your life to bring freedom?
How can God use your life to show someone He has heard their cry?
How can God use you to show the way of Shalom over the Way of Empire?
Guided Prayer
Lord, may we be people known for radical acts of love who are devoted to justice over order and comfort. May we no longer passively accept the way things are at the expense of our neighbor’s wellbeing. Where we have been people of shallow understanding, make us know the suffering of our brothers and sisters as if it is our own. We commit to love justice now and to do mercy now. May we be people who pray with our words and our feet.
Supplemental Content
The season of Epiphany, also called epiphanytide is a time after advent which celebrates the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ. In Western Christianity, the feast commemorates principally the visit of the Magi to Jesus in Matthew 2, and thus Jesus' physical manifestation to the Gentiles.
We celebrate this season by considering how he has, and still is, revealing himself to us. During this series we will take a look at characters throughout the Bible who had encounters with Jesus, old and New Testament.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail
In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama was one of the most segregated cities in the country, and on Good Friday of that year Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders joined demonstrations in Birmingham to protest the unjust and racist treatment of Black Americans. He and about 50 others were arrested for violating a law prohibiting public demonstrations without a permit. In response to King’s actions, 8 local white clergy members wrote an open letter condemning the demonstrations and criticizing King for being an “outside agitator.” In the days that followed, King wrote a piercing response explaining the necessity of the demonstrations. His words written almost 60 years ago ring painfully true for our present moment.
“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, 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.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”
“...the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.”
“Three-day journey” was an idiom in the ancient world for “a major trip with formal consequences.” Pharaoh would have heard it that way and would also have heard it as meaning “We want to leave Egypt for however long we choose.” Moreover, the demand for the people to “offer sacrifices to the Lord our God” was yet another way of implying—without quite saying so in so many words—that the people would leave Egypt since, as develops later in the actual event (10:25–26) the Israelites expected to worship Yahweh far from Egypt at Mount Sinai, completely out of and free from any Egyptian oversight, having taken all their possessions with them. —DOUG STUART
