Modern Day Rip Van Winkles

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr delivered his last Sunday morning sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. on March 31, 1968.   King was assassinated a few days later on April 4th.  In his sermon Dr. King spoke of Washington Irving’s story of “Rip Van Winkle.” When Rip Van Winkle first went up to the mountain he passed a sign that had a picture of King George III of England.  When he awoke from his long sleep of some twenty years, Van Winkle came down from the mountain and saw the same sign with the picture of George Washington and was completely befuddled.  He had no idea who George Washington was or that while he was snoring away on the mountain-top the whole course of history had changed.

One of the great liabilities of life, King suggested, was that all too many people sleep through the revolutions.  People “find themselves living amid a great period of social change and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses—that the new situation demands.  They end up sleeping through a revolution.”

Many of these revolutions have occurred during our lifetime.  Just think of all that has happened over the course of the last 75 to 100 years!  A social revolution occurred in the United States during and after the Great Depression.  The world changed drastically after World War II and the dropping of the atomic bomb and the Cold War that followed.  A revolution took place in the “race to the moon.”  A revolution of great magnitude occurred during the Civil Rights Movement of the 50’s and 60’s.  Science, medicine, and technology have revolutionized every aspect of our lives. The sign with the picture of King George III is no longer—the sign with the picture of George Washington is long gone. Tomorrow there will be a new sign, and there will be a new sign the day after tomorrow, too.  The only way to avoid the change, the challenges, and the “new” revolutions now occurring is to sleep through them!

What was is no more.  The old age is passing away and a new age has come.  Only those who have slept or are asleep now can ignore the reality.  There is no going back.  The idea of making “America Great Again” is “an illusion wrapped in superficiality.”  We must work toward the goal of what God is calling America to be, rather than trying to make America what it use to be before we fell asleep.  Wake up.