Transcript: The Last Sunday Sermon of MLK (March 31, 1968)

Full text of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last Sunday sermon titled “’Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution” which was delivered on March 31, 1968, from the Canterbury Pulpit at The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here this morning, to have the opportunity of standing in this very great and significant pulpit.

And I do want to express my deep personal appreciation to Dean Sayre and all of the Cathedral clergy for extending the invitation.

It is always a rich and rewarding experience to take a brief break from our day to day demands and the struggle for freedom and human dignity and discuss the issues involved in that struggle with concerned friends of goodwill all over our nation. And certainly it is always a deep and meaningful experience to be in a worship service. And so for many reasons I’m happy to be here today.

I would like to use as a subject from which to preach this morning: ‘Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution’ .

The text for the morning is found in the Book of Revelation. There are two passages there that I would like to quote, in the [21st] chapter of that book:

“Behold, I make all things new (Revelation 21:5); former things are passed away (2 Corinthians 5:17).”

I’m sure that most of you have read that arresting little story from the pen of Washington Irvin entitled ‘Rip Van Winkle’. The one thing that we usually remember about the story is that Rip Van Winkle slept 20 years.

But there is another point in that little story that is almost always completely overlooked. It was a sign in the end from which Rip went up in the mountain for his long sleep. When Rip Van Winkle went up in the mountain, the sign had a picture of King George III of England. When he came down 20 years later, the sign had a picture of George Washington, the first President of the United States.

Rip Van Winkle looked up at the picture of George Washington but in looking at the picture he was amazed. He was completely lost. He knew not who he was.

And this reveals to us that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle is not merely that Rip slept 20 years but that he slept through a revolution.

While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountain, a revolution was taking place that at points would change the course of history and Rip knew nothing about it. He was asleep. As he slept through a revolution.

One of the great liabilities of life is that all too many 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 and they end up sleeping through a revolution.

There can be no gainsaying of the fact that the great revolution is taking place in the world today. In the sense it is a triple revolution: that is, a technological revolution with the impact of automation and cybernation; then there is a revolution in weaponry with the emergence of atomic and nuclear weapons of warfare; then there is the human rights revolution with the freedom explosion that is taking place all over the world.

Yes, we do live in a period where changes are taking place, and there is still the voice crying through the vista of time saying, ‘Behold, I make all things new; former things are passed away.’

Now, whenever anything new comes into history it brings with it new challenges and new opportunities. And I would like to deal with the challenges that we face today as a result of this triple revolution that is taking place in the world today.