It was 50 years ago today that the “shot rang out in the Memphis sky,” and Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.

Growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, I learned about MLK, of course, but growing up in Canada I didn’t learn a lot. And coming of age in the early ’90s as a white Evangelical, what I did learn was that Martin Luther King was one of those “iffy” Christians, one of those “social justice” Christians who didn’t preach the true gospel and whose salvation status was uncertain.

My perspective has changed a great deal in the last 25 years, of course, and over the last 10 years I have deliberately engaged MLK’s writing and preaching, learning from his life and legacy. He was a flawed man, no question, but he was just as certainly one of the great lights of the twentieth century, even of all human history.

Martin Luther King, Jr., has appeared in my preaching several times over the past few years. Here are the times he also made it into my blogging. Rest in peace, MLK, until the coming of our Lord and the renewal of all things, and the dream is fully realized.

• Sermon from a Morden Church: on “others” and how they are made.
• “Turn the Other Cheek” ≠ “Be a Doormat”: on “turning the other cheek” as “creative, transforming, non-violent resistance in the footsteps of Jesus.”
• MLK and “The Things that Make for Peace”: on King’s principles of nonviolent resistance, reflecting Jesus’ “things that make for peace.”
• God’s Dream for the World: on Jesus’ vision of “the kingdom of God” as “God’s dream for the world.”