Epiphany 2A
January 18, 2026
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
It is a scene that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King would find all too familiar – protests across the country against the brutality of law enforcement agents – the killing of Renee Good, and the targeting of people with brown and Black skin by ICE agents.
In a week when many people are mourning what is happening in cities across America it is a good time to hear part of one of King’s greatest speeches, given in 1963 in Washington.
Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with a crowd of 250,000 people in front of him, King spoke of his dream for America.
“We all have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now,” King said. “Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlight path of racial justice.
“Now is the time to change racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice ring out for all of God’s children.”
And then comes the heart of King’s speech, what makes it one of the most well-known speeches in our country’s history.
“Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow I still have a dream,” he said. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all … are created equal.’
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
“I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
“I have a dream today.
“I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
“I have a dream today.
“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and before the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”
King’s dream for America was grounded in God’s dream for all humanity, a dream of justice and righteousness, of peace and love.
I have to admit that events in recent weeks have made me feel cynical about that dream. What is playing out on our screens and news feeds feels more like an American nightmare.
Masked, uniformed ICE agents, whose thuggery is comparable to Hitler’s Gestapo, are invading homes in the middle of the night, breaking car windows to pull out mothers in carpool lines, using pepper spray on school grounds, snatching people off the streets. News reports say such actions are happening without search warrants, without consideration of who is a citizen or has legal status to be here, without due process for anyone.
Many residents of Minneapolis feel like they are under siege, at war with their own government, living in fear of what will happen next.
Some of you may remember Luis Ottley, who was our seminarian a few years ago. He is now a priest in St. Paul. I asked him what life was like there now.
“It is terrifying,” he said. “You don’t want to be on this side of the president’s ire. I travel with my passport everywhere. The fear is real.”
Of course, fear is what tyrants want to instill. A fearful people are easier to control. Fear makes even those who are not targeted reluctant to speak up or resist evil.
That is what King was saying in the portion of his Letter from a Birmingham Jail we heard today. His letter was addressed to Christian and Jewish leaders, including the Episcopal bishop of Alabama, but its words are meant for all who are tempted to sit on the sidelines in the fight against evil.
“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate,” he wrote. “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s greatest stumbling block is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than justice.
“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.”
The fulfillment of God’s dream cannot happen without all of us working together to bring it to reality. Merely dreaming it does not make it so, as King knew all too well.
But he also knew it is not possible to kill a dream that has been inspired by God. It is in such difficult times, times that seem to dash all hope and dreams, that we are called to keep God’s dreams alive, no matter how outlandish they may seem.
God’s dreams, God’s hopes, are kept alive by faith, by a willingness to believe that today’s reality does not have to be tomorrow’s.
That does not mean we should be naïve about the difficulty and intensity of the fight before us.
The Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, Rob Hirschfield, made that clear in remarks he made last week at a vigil for Renee Good.
“I’ve asked the clergy of the diocese to get their affairs in order, to make sure they have written their wills,” he said.
“We are now engaged in a horrible battle that is eternal. As soon as the Christian Church became linked to the Roman empire by Constantine in the year 312, the church immediately became corrupt.
“And the message of Jesus’ love, compassion, and commitment to the poor, the outcast, was immediately compromised.”
Citing the “cruelty, the injustice, the horror that we saw unleashed in Minneapolis,” Hirschfield said that the time may have come “for us, with our bodies, to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.
“It may mean that we are going to have to, in a new way that we have not seen before, to put our faith in the God of life, of resurrection, of a love that is stronger than death itself.”
That love is what will sustain us in the fight against evil in our day.
Minnesota Bishop Craig Loya reminded people of that during a vigil in Minneapolis last week. He recalled a story in the Book of Acts, when Christians were brought before the Roman authorities because, he said, they had turned the world upside down.
“They didn’t turn the world upside down by being bigger, or stronger, or meaner than the empire,” he said. “They turned the world upside down by mobilizing for love. They embraced those who were pushed aside. They cared for those the empire disregarded with its callous scorn.
“They put their bodies on the line to stand with those who were targeted. They were immovable in their commitment that not even death can stop the power of God’s love.
“That’s how they turned the world upside down, by facing the empire’s murderous cruelty with the irresistible force of love.”
Loya said it is hard for those outside of Minnesota to understand the magnitude of the cruelty they are seeing unleashed by the American empire, and the depth of the fear that people are living with.
“We are weary, weighed down, angry, and heartbroken,” he said. “And what the forces of evil and meanness in the world want is for us to stay there. They want us to meet anger with anger, they want us to meet hatred with hatred, they want us to meet scorn with scorn.
“And, beloved, we aren’t going to do that,” he said. “We are going to make like our ancient ancestors, and turn the world upside down by mobilizing for love.
“In this moment love calls us to give ourselves away. Love may very well call us to put our very lives on the line. We will continue to stand up. We will continue to stand with. We will march in the streets, and deliver food to those locked in their homes, and flood our legislators with calls for the madness to stop.
“Our work is to show up, every day, in every place, using all we are to show the world love’s victory, until God’s love is fully and gloriously done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Amen.
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