So what would King do? According to Tavis Smiley who has just published Death of a King: the Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year , King would urge a sharp turn in U.S. policy. Such repentance would entail:
Confessing our nation's responsibility for the crises in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Libya, Assyria, Yemen, Somalia, Bahrain, Egypt, Ukraine. . . .
Paying reparations to all those countries.
Redirecting the billions (and trillions) wasted in war to health care, education, and infrastructure reconstruction in our own United States.
Using presidential speeches not to announce further wars, but to lay out emergency plans for addressing the genuine crises that face us, viz. climate chaos world-wide and the Ebola outbreak in Africa.
Announcing expedited plans to wean the U.S. from the oil consumption that drives our country's perpetual war policy.
In today's second reading St. Paul quotes an ancient Christian hymn which scholars universally recognize as encapsulating the belief of the earliest Christians. It's a song about the Divine One choosing to appear in history not as an exalted king, but as a human being, a slave, and an executed criminal.
If we wish to find God, the hymn suggests, we should look and listen not to our presidents, but to "the other" -- those the Empire hates -- and make their cause our own. It's in the ranks of the oppressed that God's Son is found -- among empire's designated enemies, among the enslaved, the tortured and those our "leaders" identify as terrorists.
Does this mean we are being called to somehow recognize Jesus in ISIS?
Yes it does. ISIS has legitimate demands. We need to talk with them, not bomb them. Followers of Jesus should be demanding that -- even if it means being branded "terrorists" ourselves.
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