*April 1, 2007*

*//*

**

*The Cost and Promise of Being Vulnerable*

**

*By Harry T. Cook*

/**/

/*Luke’s Passion Narrative*/

/* */

Supposing you knew that either a warrant was out for your arrest or that an ambush awaited you just up the road. Would you go there, right into the teeth of trouble? Even if you believed your errand to be of great importance, would you take the chance of being arrested or attacked? The question is, “Would you deliberately make yourself vulnerable?”

A conventional answer would be a definite “No.” One’s personal safety and freedom usually trump the urgency of the errand.

Would Martin Luther King have been assassinated 39 years ago this coming Wednesday (April 4, 1968) if he had not insisted on going to Memphis, Tenn., to show solidarity with the striking sanitation workers? But what if he had not? Would Gandhi have been shot in cold blood by one of his fellow Hindus had not he put himself on the line to give Hindus and Muslims equal rights on the subcontinent? But what if he had not?

Four Christian gospels give varying but similar accounts of Jesus of Nazareth deliberately entering Jerusalem where it was imagined the powers that were would not appreciate his presence, as one who, if we read those gospels correctly, was perceived as unsympathetic to the Roman cause. The gospels insist, moreover, that Jesus did not sneak into town under the cover of darkness but in a kind of triumphant procession that, if such a thing did actually take place, must have appeared to the authorities to be a mockery of the emperor’s ceremonial parades.

Among other things the gospels are thereby telling us is that Jesus was not only vulnerable but deliberately making himself vulnerable. It is one thing to have a revolutionary message. It is quite another to whisper it anonymously, hoping it will catch on. Such a message thus given seldom does. You have to do something like go up to Memphis and cast your lot with striking sanitation workers to get your message the kind of audibility it requires for effectiveness.

All that made Dr. King as vulnerable as vulnerable could be – until, to catch a breath of fresh air in the humidity of a spring evening in Memphis, he stepped out on to the balcony of his motel . . . and into the crosshairs of his assassin’s rifle sights – giving his famous oratorical refrain a new and profound meaning: “FREE AT LAST. FREE AT LAST. THANK GOD ALMIGHTY I’M FREE AT LAST.”

Dr. King may have been one of the freest persons of our time, of any time. He was free to stay in his Birmingham pulpit and preach the gospel of freedom, and no one would have criticized him for that. He could have worn body armor and traveled in bullet-proof limousines, and anyone would have understood. But he came unarmed and unarmored to the streets of Memphis as he had come to the streets of Montgomery and Chicago and Washington, D.C., and, yes, to those of Detroit to put his whole body where his mouth was. And what if he had not?

Who would remember him and take the strength that his witness still offers? What if Jesus was not remembered for making himself vulnerable by walking into the crossfire of competing forces? I stood just a year ago today, tears in my eyes and on my cheeks, at the grave of Dr. King knowing that he chose vulnerability for the sake of his message. It was the same message of non-violence, human liberty and justice lived and preached by one who also made himself vulnerable – not to an assassin’s rifle but to a Roman gallows whereon, it is said, he died speaking in the end the one word that matters most: “Forgive.”

/Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do./ /Forgive seventy times seven./

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.