Thomas Merton, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Exercise of the Prophetic
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The Watchmen and the Witnesses: Thomas Merton, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Exercise of the Prophetic M. Shawn Copeland Where there is no prophecy, the people perish. Proverbs 29:18 Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. Ezekiel 33:6 The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls. Simon and Garfunkel “The Sounds of Silence” Neither Thomas Merton nor Martin Luther King, Jr. would have con- sidered himself a prophet; surely, each man would have rejected this designation. Yet, each man so attuned himself to the Word of God as to recover and to exercise the biblical vocation of prophecy – to serve as a “watchman,” to scrutinize the “signs of the times,” to witness to God’s care for the anguish of the world, to contribute to healing our “body of broken bones”1 in light of a vision of “beloved community.”2 Scholar of the Hebrew Bible Walter Brueggemann writes that biblical prophecy “always confronts us with a basic question: ‘Is history really 1. Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1949) 53; cf. Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1961) 70. 2. Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Current Crisis in Race Relations,” in Joseph Melvin Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Harper & Row, 1986) 87 (subsequent references will be cited as “King, Testament” parenthetically in the text). The phrase “beloved community” also appears in a leaflet explaining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, This Is SCLC. Here we read: “The ultimate aim of SCLC is to foster and create the ‘beloved community’ in America where brotherhood is a reality. It rejects any doctrine of black supremacy for this merely substitutes one kind of tyranny for another. Our ultimate goal is genuine intergroup and interpersonal living – integration. Only through nonviolence can reconciliation and the creation of the beloved community be effected” in This Is SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference, rev. ed. [1964?]; rept. in Francis L. Broderick and August Meier, eds., Negro Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century [Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965] 272-73). 156 Copeland The Watchmen and the Witnesses 157 the moment when we must face up to God’? And the answer we give and live is our choosing of life or death.”3 Quite likely, neither Merton nor King put this question to himself literally. But given the way in which each man lived out and lived out of the baptismal vocation of a Christian, each man answered the question through decisions, choices and actions that affirmed life in the here-and-now. Further, each man put this question to the church and to the nation and each challenged both church and na- tion to respond in authentically just and life-affirming ways. Merton and King raised their voices in response to the divine demand of conscience to speak a new vision to church and nation – a vision grounded in faith in God and faith in America’s spiritual and political potential. Like the prophets of old, Merton and King lived at a certain remove or distance from the very world they observed – Merton within the cho- sen boundaries of a cloister, King within the legally imposed boundaries of segregation. Yet each man embraced the critical marginality of these positions in order to transgress those very boundaries in exercise of the prophetic. King and Merton spoke out for life and for humanity’s humanness; Merton and King spoke against militarism and war, racism and poverty. They announced a vision of the healing of the broken bones of our body politic unto beloved community. This essay begins with a sketch of biblical prophecy, next presents a rough outline of the lives of King and Merton, and finally explores their exercise of the prophetic, a pronouncement of a social vision for the nation and an announcement of the church’s responsibility to the nation in fulfillment of that vision. Prophecy The etymology of the Hebrew word “navi’ implies “to bubble forth,” “to utter” or to proclaim, “to call” upon the LORD GOD and “to be called by” the LORD GOD. “Navi’ is translated in the Greek as prophetes, that is, “fore-speaker, interpreter.”4 Seers, prophets and ecstatics were part of the fabric of the religio-cultural-social world of the Ancient Near East. The peoples of that thought-world believed it possible to discern the will of the deity not only through interpretation of omens or dreams or signs, but also through prophecy. “For where there is no prophecy, the people perish.”5 The earliest nevi’im of ancient Israel may have been visionaries or 3. Walter Brueggemann, Tradition for Crisis: A Study of Hosea (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1968) 144. 4. George Shulman, American Prophecy: Race and Redemption in American Political Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008) 3; subsequent references will be cited as “Shulman” parenthetically in the text. 5. Proverbs 29:18 (NRSV translation). 158 The Merton Annual 30 (2017) “itinerant holy men and women who were revered for their special pow- ers and who could be consulted for a variety of private inquiries, from locating lost property (1 Samuel 9:1-10) to learning whether a sick child would live or die (1 Kings 14:1-18).”6 Authentic or true prophets took the measure of the public and social, private and personal conduct of kings, rulers and the privileged and powerful, particularly in their relations with the poor and powerless. Prophecy made its deepest impress on the life of ancient Israel in the period preceding and during the Babylonian exile.7 During the time of the monarchy, the priests, the people and the prophets were divided in their discernment of the proper and right response to the geo-political, religious, cultural and social situation. Some prophets – we might call them “court prophets” – vigorously insisted that the LORD GOD supported the monarchy unconditionally. On the other hand, other prophets, those now considered canonical, insisted just as vigorously that the LORD GOD was displeased with the behavior of the kings, the priests and the people as they clung to power, prestige and expectation of victory in face of the rising power of the Babylonians.8 Each type of prophet claimed to speak GOD’s word, each cursed the others, and each accused the others of speak- ing falsely. Such a state of affairs left the people uncertain, and uncer- tainty, Schulman points out, “leads to the colloquial belief that prophecy means making predictions, whose truth retroactively verifies a speaker’s authority” (Shulman 4). Martin Buber argues that to be a prophet “means to set the audience, to whom the words are addressed, before the choice and decision.” Thus, an authentic or “true prophet does not announce an immutable decree [but] speaks into the power of the decision lying in the moment [in a way] dependent on question and alternative [and] call and 6. Marc Zvi Brettler, “Nevi’im: Introduction,” in The Jewish Study Bible, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) 459. 7. At least four developments in the historical formation of ancient Israel may account for the “bubbling up” of the nevi’im: (a) growing cultic and cultural syncretism; (b) Israel’s rise to political prominence, achieved not only through military prowess, but also through shrewd alliances; (c) monarchical centralization, increasing urbanization and burdensome taxation that weakened the peasant class; and finally (d) the rise of Assyria as a major threat to Israel’s security. 8. The death of King Solomon in 922 BCE provoked a crisis that split Israel into two kingdoms. Around 750, Amos and Hosea appeared and preached to the Northern Kingdom, while Micah and Isaiah preached to the Southern Kingdom or Kingdom of Judah. These prophets read “the signs of their times” – interpreted international matters and events, critiqued lax religious practices and railed against social injustice. The prophetic career of Jeremiah, son of the priest Hilkiah, spanned the decline of Assyria through the Babylonian occupation and domination of Judah to its destruction in 586 and the Exile. Copeland The Watchmen and the Witnesses 159 response.”9 “The future,” Buber concludes, “is not something already fixed in this present hour, it is dependent upon real decision, that is to say the decision in which [human persons] take part in this hour” (Buber 3). The prophets are messengers who announce truths their audiences fervently seek to avoid or to deny. Prophets do not so much address error in understanding, but a scotoma or blind spot on understanding – when kings or priests or the people persist in deliberate repression of questions or knowledge through willful ignorance or egoism or unexamined loyalty or corrupt alliances.10 The prophets, as James Muilenburg contends, “pro- claim the divine Lordship over time and event, to point to God’s future and the establishment of his righteous rule in the earth. [They bear] a message from the Invisible One Enthroned. They were sent to speak for the Speaking One, whose Word would accomplish its purpose.”11 The prophets are witnesses. They testify to what they see and read in the signs of the times in light of the Word that God gives them to speak. The prophets take their stand beside those most excluded and marginal- ized in society. And since “bearing witness makes present what has been absent – the poor and God – biblical prophets testify against injustice and idolatry” (Shulman 5). The prophets are watchmen who see, grasp, name and warn of im- pending danger in order to avert it.