Five essential sermons delivered by Martin Luther King Jr.

“I Have a Dream” may be the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speech, but it wasn’t really a sermon as it was delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and was more about civil rights than about religious faith.

But the Rev. King, who will be honored in federal and local observances this week, was a minister before he was a civil rights leader, and any remembrance of him should also celebrate his deep Christian faith and the oratorical skills that made him among America’s best preachers. He himself said, “Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the gospel. This was my first calling and it still remains my greatest commitment.”

Ordained at age 19, the Rev. King was a pastor at two different churches: Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where he was co-pastor with his father for eight years preceding his death, and Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where he served from 1954 to 1960.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no transcript or audio of the “trial sermon” that the Rev. King gave prior to his ordination at Ebenezer, now designated a national historic park. But there are many other transcripts and videos available that convey at least a little of what it was like to listen to the Rev. King preach in person.

Here are five of his most memorable sermons worth reading (or listening to) as America celebrates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’

One of the Rev. King’s most famous speeches, given the night before he died, almost never took place. He had considered backing out of the scheduled appearance April 3, 1968, at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. He had a sore throat and a slight fever, and it was stormy that night, but he decided to go anyway.

An excerpt:

“All we say to America is, ‘Be true to what you said on paper.’ If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on. ...

“It’s all right to talk about ‘long white robes over yonder,’ in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It’s all right to talk about ‘streets flowing with milk and honey,’ but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can’t eat three square meals a day. It’s all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God’s preachers must talk about the New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do.”

The speech in its entirety can be read here. A video clip is here.

‘Loving Your Enemies’

The Rev. King delivered a version of this sermon at Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel in Washington, D. C., the week before he gave it at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in November of 1957.

An excerpt:

“I’ve said to you on many occasions that each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality. We’re split up and divided against ourselves. And there is something of a civil war going on within all of our lives. There is a recalcitrant South of our soul revolting against the North of our soul. And there is this continual struggle within the very structure of every individual life. There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Ovid, the Latin poet, ‘I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do.’ There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Plato that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions. There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Goethe, ‘There is enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue.’ There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Apostle Paul: ‘I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do.’

“So somehow the ‘isness’ of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal ‘oughtness’ that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals. The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it. And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls ‘the image of God,’ you begin to love him in spite of. No matter what he does, you see God’s image there. There is an element of goodness that he can never slough off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.”

The full text can be read here. The audio of the sermon is here.

‘Paul’s Letter to American Christians’

In this sermon, delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the Rev. King imagined what the apostle Paul would write in an epistle to Christians living in the United States in 1956.

An excerpt:

“... America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress. Your poet Thoreau used to talk about ‘improved means to an unimproved end.’ How often this is true. You have allowed the material means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which you live. You have allowed your mentality to outrun your morality. You have allowed your civilization to outdistance your culture. Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brotherhood. So America, I would urge you to keep your moral advances abreast with your scientific advances.

“I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the midst of an unChristian world. That is what I had to do. That is what every Christian has to do. But I understand that there are many Christians in America who give their ultimate allegiance to man-made systems and customs. They are afraid to be different. Their great concern is to be accepted socially. They live by some such principle as this: ‘everybody is doing it, so it must be alright.’ For so many of you morality is merely group consensus. In your modern sociological lingo, the mores are accepted as the right ways. You have unconsciously come to believe that right is discovered by taking a sort of Gallup poll of the majority opinion. How many are giving their ultimate allegiance to this way.”

Read the entire sermon here. Listen to the audio here.

‘A Knock at Midnight’

Variations of this sermon have been dated to 1958. This version was delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1962. The title of the sermon later became the title of a book, edited by Clayborne Carson and Peter Holloran, about the Rev. King’s greatest sermons.

An excerpt:

“The most popular preachers are those who can preach soothing sermons on ‘How To Be Happy’ and ‘How To Relax.’ Some have been tempted to re-translate Jesus’ command to read ‘Go ye into all the world and keep your blood pressure down and lo I will make you a well‐adjusted personality.’ All of this is indicative of the fact that it is midnight in the inner lives of men and women.

“It is also midnight in the moral order. Midnight is a time when all colors lose their distinctiveness and become merely a dirty shade of gray. In so many instances moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. Nothing is absolutely right or absolutely wrong for modern man; it is just a matter of what the majority of people are doing. For most people right and wrong are merely relative to their likes and dislikes and the customs of their particular community. We have unconsciously taken Einstein’s theory of relativity, which properly described the physical universe, and applied it to the moral and ethical realm.

“Midnight is a time when everybody is desperately seeking to avoid getting caught. It is the hour when hardly anybody is concerned about obeying the Ten Commandments; everybody is passionately seeking to obey the 11th commandment — ‘thou shall not get caught.’ According to the ethic of midnight the only sin is to get caught and the only virtue is to get by. It’s all right to lie, but do it with real finesse; it’s all right to steal, but be a dignified stealer, so that if you are caught it becomes embezzlement rather than robbery; it’s all right even to hate, but dress your hate up in the garments of love and make it appear that you are loving when you are actually hating. So in place of the Darwinian survival of the fittest, many have substituted a philosophy of the survival of the slickest. This has led to a tragic breakdown of moral standards. And so the midnight of moral degeneration grows deeper and deeper.”

Read the full sermon here.

‘The Man Who Was a Fool’

Variations of this sermon were given at different churches, and sometimes entitled “Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool.” This was delivered at Central Methodist Church in Detroit at an interfaith Lenten series in 1961.

An excerpt:

“Now it is true that one day a man came to Jesus wanting to raise certain questions about eternal life, and Jesus said to that man, ‘Sell all.’ But at that point he was prescribing individual surgery and not setting forth a universal diagnosis. There is never a sweeping indictment against all wealth in the New Testament. As I said, it is the misuse of wealth that Jesus constantly condemns. And so there is nothing inherently vicious about wealth, and there is nothing inherently virtuous about poverty. I am sure that if there is a hell there will be plenty poor folk in it. Why then did Jesus call this man a fool? Where do we find the basic reasons for this?

“It seems to me that the first reason that Jesus called this man a fool was because he allowed the ‘within’ of his life to be absorbed within the ‘without’ of his life. Each of us lives on two levels, so to speak, and we operate within two realms — the ‘within’ and the ‘without.’ ... This is the ‘without’ of life — the car we drive, the house we live in, the clothes we wear, and all of those material objects that are necessary for our earthly survival. Then there is a ‘within’ of life. And this is that realm of spiritual ends, which expresses itself in art, literature, morality and religion, for which, at best, we live.

“Now, the foolishness of this man consisted in the fact that he allowed the ‘within’ of his life to become absorbed in the ‘without.’ In other words, he allowed the means by which he lived to become, to absorb, the ends for which he lived. He allowed his civilization to outdistance his culture. And so he was a victim of that something that Thoreau referred to when he said, ‘Improved means to an unimproved end.’ He failed to keep a line of distinction between ‘him’ and ‘his.’ He failed to keep a line of demarcation between his life and his livelihood.

“And there is always the danger that we will find ourselves caught up in this foolishness. We must always be careful in America because we live in a capitalistic economy, which stresses the profit motive and free enterprise. And there is always the danger that we will be more concerned about making a living than making a life. There is always the danger that we will judge the success of our professions by the size of the wheel base on our automobiles and the index of our salaries rather than the quality of our service to humanity. There must always be a line of distinction between the ‘within’ and the ‘without’ of life.”

Read the full sermon here.