This message is offered with no expectation that it is played in your church on Sunday, though you certainly have my blessing if it would be a gift to you and your congregation. Vimeo Link
Beloved in Christ,
Grace and peace to you!
As we approach Human Relations Day and the national observance of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, we do so in a time marked by escalating violence and unnecessary displays of brute force both here and around the world. We see people harassed, harmed- killed even, communities wounded by intimidation, families shaken by fear, and socities being eroded by the misuse of power. In moments like these, some voices insist that the real world is governed by strength, force, and domination… that these are the ironclad laws of history. But the Gospel—and our own Methodist tradition—remind us otherwise.
At his baptism, Jesus is welcomed to the waters as the Lamb of God, the One whose vulnerability becomes the very means of redemption. The Spirit descends not like a predator but like a dove—gentle and affirming. These images are not sentimental. They are God’s declaration that true power restores rather than destroys, reconciles rather than divides, liberates rather than subdues, loves rather than hates.
When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he confronted the very logic that fuels our present moment. The tempter offered him the tools of domination: the power to overwhelm, the authority to command, the right to seize control, the spectacle of a public show of might. Yet Jesus refused them all. His resistance was not passive; it was a revelation that violence is not inevitable and domination is not destiny.
Human Relations Day in the United Methodist Church calls us to this same truth. It reminds us that every person bears the image of God, that communities fractured by injustice, discrimination and violence are not abandoned, and that the church is called to stand with those who are pushed to the margins. This day is not merely symbolic; it is a summons to resist the world’s false belief that force is the only language people understand. It is a reminder that justice, compassion, and restorative love are the real forces that will hold a community and the world together.
Dr. King understood this with prophetic clarity. He lived in a world saturated with violence against those in the margins, yet he refused to mirror it. He taught that “unarmed truth and unconditional love” are the only powers capable of transforming communities in conflict. His witness echoes the Lamb’s way—courageous, costly, and rooted in the conviction that “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
So in these days when fear rises and force is glorified, we remember that Jesus has already unmasked the illusion that domination is the deepest law of the world. The Spirit still descends like a dove. The Lamb still stands at the center of God’s redeeming work. And the church is still called to embody a power that heals rather than harms. May we, as God’s people, refuse to be shaped by fear or the false security of violence. May we stand with those who suffer under the weight of unnecessary force. And may we bear witness—in the spirit of Human Relations Day and in the legacy of Dr. King—to the peace of the Dove and the way of the Lamb.
May it be so.
