‘Handle Your Situation’: Stirring Sermon, ABC House Student Address at MLK Day Service

In important ways, race relations in the United States in recent years recall the nation’s civil unrest of the 1950s and ’60s—the years during which Dr. Martin Luther King became most active, a New Canaan High School senior said Monday morning.

After wrestling with issues such as police brutality and domestic terrorism, “from the Trayvon Martin case of 2012 to what took place in Ferguson [Mo.], Charleston and Dallas over the last three years, the country has an increasing desire to put such tensions to rest,” Rajon Mitchell, an ABC House of New Canaan student, said during a special service at United Methodist Church.

“To sum up the issues of the ‘60s and today in a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King himself: ‘People fail to get along because they fear each other, they fear each other because they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other,’ ” Mitchell told more than 200 people gathered at the South Avenue church for an annual “Service of Remembrance” on Martin Luther King Day.

“While it is true for both eras, there is one thing that separates this day from the 1960s, and that is the means of communication. In an age where the entire world is your audience when you post something online, we have an opportunity to build bridges between communities, in an era where communities and cultures that may never have known that each other existed 350 years ago now know are able to connect and share in a cultural fusion. We are at a pinnacle of opportunity, the opportunity to connect. This generation of future world leaders has the chance to have a dialogue, to have a discussion about race relations and how the country may progress stronger and more united, whether it be face-to-face, man-to-man, through Facebook, Facebook Messenger or through FaceTime. I, too, have the desire to embark on this journey with my fellow Americans, see Martin Luther King’s dream come true.”

The hour-long service featured a stirring sermon from the Rev. Dr. Tommie Jackson of the Faith Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church of Stamford (more on that below), reading from King’s work by Gregory Thornewell, proclamation read by First Selectman Rob Mallozzi, music from the Serendipity Chorale and Bassick High School KEYS program and welcome, invocation, offertory and benediction from several local and area religious leaders including Rev. Eric Fjeldal of the United Methodist Church, Rabbi Jay TelRav of Temple Sinai in Stamford, the Rev. Daniel Hickman of the Community Baptist Church, Rev. Eric Dupee from the Congregational Church of New Canaan and the Rev. Derrick Fallon of St. Michael’s Lutheran Church.

Representatives from the Interfaith Prayer for Peace also addressed those gathered at the church, reading out alternating lines from prayers spoken from the Baha’i, Christian, Islamic and Jewish faith traditions, such as: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, where there is hatred, let me sew love; Send Thy peace, oh Lord, that we may endure all, tolerate all in the thought of Thy grace and mercy; You are forever mighty, oh God, you give life to all, you sustain life with love, give life to all through great compassion; In Thy holy presence, we are all Thy servants, all mankind are sheltered beneath Thee.”

In his sermon, drawing murmurs and shouts of agreement and encouragement as well as applause from those gathered, Jackson drew out similarities among those feeling alienated or “displaced” by the recent presidential election, King himself and the exiled Jews of Jerusalem as described in the Book of Jeremiah.

King in taking up—reluctantly, Jackson said—the cause of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s came to find himself at times in jails and holding cells, and in April 1963 he wrote out his so-called “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” on smuggled bathroom tissue.

“Dr. King understood how to handle his situation,” Jackson said.

“He learned how to handle his situation. If you want to learn how to handle your situation, my brothers and sisters, the first thing you have to do is learn to be productive. And after you learn how to be productive if you handle your situations, you must also be persistent when you are handling your situation and being productive. And if you are going to be productive and persistent in handling the situations, you need at times to be prominent in what you are doing and what you are saying.”

Turning then to the Old Testament’s Jeremiah 29—a letter that the prophet sent to those exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar—Jackson said the people asked how they could sing and flourish when they were in a strange land, teased and tortured.

“Let me bring it a little closer to home, because I must admit that on Nov. 9 I was surprised by the outcome of the election,” Jackson said. “If you were [too], you can just wink you don’t have to raise your hand. I was surprised at the outcome of the election. But as a person of faith, I realize it is my obligation to pray for Mr. Trump, no matter how much I disagree with him. No matter if I do not like anything he says, I must pray for him. And the reason I must pray for him is because prayer makes a difference. The history of the people I serve in the community the culture where I come from, we believe in the power of prayer. If prayer was not something we believed in, we would still be in the Dark Ages.”

Though the exiles in Jeremiah’s time did not like where they ended up, the message was that “while you are there, do something,” Jackson said.

“Don’t just hang your heads and look at your feet and complain,” he said. “Build houses. Plant gardens. Give your sons and daughters away in marriage. Let them begin to prosper.”

He added: “You will be blessed. God is telling us to handle our situation. Don’t worry about who is in the White House. Don’t worry about who is in the state house. Don’t worry about who is in the local government house. Just pray and God will pull you through.”

Mitchell told those gathered on South Avenue that he himself two years ago visited the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where King had been baptized and where the Civil Rights leader became co-pastor with his father.

Mitchell said he “had the honor and privilege” to “see the eternal fire burning and the legacy of Martin Luther King.”

“A fire was lit inside me, as well, to go be a part of that next generation of diplomats, politicians, urban and community planners and future leaders that will carry out Dr. King’s dream through direct courses of action, courses of action in which we get to know on the other side and work together to see country evolve into a truly united nation for the generations of tomorrow,” he said. “To my fellow young people in the crowd, I ask you all to think about this subject-matter and make sure that in your lives you work to solve issues of great concern with diplomacy, passion and elegance.”