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"His work transcended all the cultures and colors and ethnicities and personified love, and the Bible says that God is love,'' a pastor notes.
By GAIL HOLLENBECK
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 13, 2001
INVERNESS -- The Greater Mount Carmel Baptist Church sits on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. With a day set aside to honor King on Monday, and Black History Month being celebrated in February, members of the African-American congregation will be remembering their heritage.
"We'll show how it's important to remember our history, and we'll start with remembering Martin Luther King," said Charlene White, assistant youth director for the 107-year-old church. "Then for the month of February, every Sunday the kids usually portray a character out of black history.
"But we also teach our kids that it's important to basically keep the dream alive and to do it through non-violence. We try to teach our kids to do the right thing and to make Christ the head of their lives."
The church's pastor, Leroy E. "Ed" Jones, says the greatest lesson that can be learned from the ministry of the slain civil rights leader is the importance of peace and love. "We celebrate his birthday," Jones said, "because it is necessary to know our past in order not to repeat the mistakes of the past. We don't want to walk in the past, but we do want to look at the past and learn from it.
"As far as Dr. King was concerned, he was a man of peace and he was a man of love. In order for us to really combat what's really going on in the world today, I don't believe there's anything stronger than love to do that. I don't believe that suing folk or marching or fussing and cussing or anything else will work," the pastor said.
"I believe that love is the strongest power on earth. No matter what you do, if love isn't the foundation of it, then all you are doing is an exercise in futility. You may be bringing attention to things, but I don't believe anything is going to be accomplished without the foundation of it being love."
Jones works as a probation officer with the Florida Department of Corrections and has been the pastor of the Baptist church for the past seven years because, he said, "God has put that calling on my life."
He said King has had an impact on his life and ministry.
"Martin Luther King affected everyone. If it were not for him, I don't believe that any of us could be where we are today, not only physically but I mean emotionally and spiritually. He lived a life that personified sacrifice in the face of tribulation. He gave the example that we should follow, that when you're spit upon and when you are being abused and misused and you believe in what you're doing, stand up and be counted."
King's message was not just for black people, said Jones.
"That was for all people, not just for blacks. I don't believe we're made up of a black world or a white world. I believe we touch each other's lives and in love we can do that. If we don't have love, then we'll stand for the black or we'll stand for the white or we'll stand for the Jewish or for other things, but if we don't have love, we are a lost people.
"His work transcended all the cultures and colors and ethnicities and personified love, and the Bible says that God is love."
In his famous "I Have a Dream" speech made on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, King borrowed words from the prophet Isaiah when he passionately stated: "I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."
Jones said, "I think by that he meant that it will be a level playing field. Everyone will look at each other as being equal. All people will be people, and you will respect them for who they are, as he said earlier in his speech, not for the color of their skin, but for their character."
King closed his speech with these words: "When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing, in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!' "
Jones interprets freedom this way.
"Freedom, I think, means more than a physical position or location. It is freedom of heart. You can be free, but no matter how much money you have in the mansion, you can still be bound up in chains. Freedom is being at peace with God, with man and yourself."