Dear Servant Teacher,
People don't believe me when I tell them I once met Martin Luther King Jr. They always think I'm lying because he died 12 years before I was born, but I really did meet him. My 11th grade students did too.
I met him when I was six months pregnant. Maybe it was pregnancy hormones, but as my students and I sat around the same vinyl-topped table where Martin Luther King Jr. sat when he lived at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church parsonage in Montgomery, AL, prior to leading the Civil Rights Movement, I could not help but wonder about the world I was bringing my son into and the kind of man I wanted him to grow up to be. After meeting Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy face to face in February of 2013, I decided I wanted my son and my students to be drum majors for justice like King.
I have a freakish obsession with the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. The obsession started in college when my professor brought his perfectly, preserved copy of the Birmingham News that contained "Letter from The Birmingham Jail" to class. He read it aloud, and it rocked me to the core. This was not the same MLK I had read about and colored a picture of in elementary school.
This was a man who commanded authority with the stroke of a pen and turned a metaphor into a brick that broke through the glass of racism annihilating every stronghold in its path.
From there I read everything ever written by MLK: Strength to Love, I Have a Dream, Eulogy for the 4 Little Girls, but one of my favorite pieces was, and still is, "The Drum Major Instinct." If you've never read it, I encourage you to do yourself a favor and carve out some time to read it today.
You're out of school for MLK day anyway, so why not? (Link below)
Last week, I reread it for the 500th time. Somehow, it seemed different with the current civil unrest in our nation. If you don't know anything about the piece, it's actually a sermon delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, two months before King's assassination on a Memphis balcony in 1968.
The sermon is anchored in the disciples arguing over who would be first in Jesus' kingdom. He goes on to address this idea of the drum major who seeks to be out front- the center of attention, leading the charge and even equates it to nations who desire to be first - or at a dangerous tip-toe, I might even add a political party.
Surprisingly, King does not condemn this idea of being superior but charges his parishioners to redefine this idea of being first. He commands them to be first in love, first in moral excellence, and first in generosity. He further adds that the servants will become the greatest.
It makes me sad to think how far we have strayed as a country. When I reread the sermon, I felt like he was talking straight to 2020 America when he said, "God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world right now. God didn't call America to engage in senselessness. God has a way of even putting nations in their place. The God that I worship has a way of saying, 'Don't play with me.' Be still and know that I'm God. And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power.' And that can happen to America. Every now and then I go back and study the Fall of the Roman Empire, and when I come and look at America, I say to myself, the parallels are frightening."
I have to agree with King. It was frightening then, and it's frightening now.
I do not arrogantly presume to have any answers to the fear or fighting in our nation, but I do know if there is even a shred of hope for substantial change, it will come from drum majors without perverted agendas.
When I think of the servant-definition of greatness, I think of teachers- some of the greatest servants I know. The best teachers love when they don't feel like they have the strength to love anymore. They forgive even when they've been mistreated. They give even when others are taking, and they are always, always, last: the last one in line for a vaccine, the last one to leave for the day, the last one to be heard.
Being last has a way of making people feel dejected, insignificant, like maybe what they say or do doesn't matter one bit, like it won't fix a thing, but could it be that the ones teaching and loving others well are actually leading the charge without even knowing it?
-CDB
The Drum Major Instinct: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/drum-major-instinct-sermon-delivered-ebenezer-baptist-church