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You know the last sermon that Brother Martin was gonna preach? You know what the name of it was? “Why America May Go To Hell.” That’s what he called in for the last sermon at Ebenezer. He never got a chance to preach it. Why? Because he knows any nation stands under the judgment of the cross. What kind of unconditional love do you have? What kind of unarmed truth are you willing to confront?

If you’re treating the least of these—echoes of the 25th chapter of Matthew—in an unjust way and… anytime you love somebody, you hate the fact that they’re treated unjustly and unfairly, then sooner or later, your empire will fall. That’s why he talked about America connected to barbarity in Vietnam. …

Those of us who love him know we got to pick up our cross and be transgressive, tell some truths America and the world doesn’t want to hear and we ourselves don’t want to hear. We got to tell some truths Black people don’t want to hear. What does it mean to love a people who’ve been taught to hate themselves? That’s Martin’s lesson too. …

That’s why Martin would always want us to talk about him as a moment in the collective struggle, a wave in an ocean, not an isolated icon in a museum. And thank God that we get a chance to reflect on his death so that his afterlife is manifested in the life we choose in space and time to sacrifice and serve and love in the way that he tried to do.