Shattered Dreams & That Indescribable City: MLK Day Community Discussion 2025
Empathizing with Dr. King and his faith that God would work all things out for good - even shattered dreams. This presentation was made to the YMCA and Brotherhood Mutual on MLK Day.
Our shattered dreams
Trouble maker, adulterer, not to be respected as a Christian minister, that’s the vague message I received about MLK in the mid-1980s in my rural white church culture of Canada, in Southern Ontario. I was a pastor’s kid starting to pay attention to who were the heroes of the faith, I enjoyed growing up in the church and loved learning the stories of the Bible. While Dr. King was rarely mentioned, what little I heard did not leave much of an impression.
I discovered MLK's writings, particularly his collection of sermons entitled Strength to Love, in the mid-2000s while completing my Masters of Divinity coursework. He became a vital source of encouragement as I pastored a small neighborhood church in Fort Wayne with members who were impoverished, addicted, recovering from incarceration, and facing mental health challenges. As I sought out Christian ministers to read and learn from to better pastor my members with shattered dreams, Rev. King continued to resonate more and more.
I’m not an expert on MLK in any way, just a dense student and fellow brother in Christ and fellow minister trying to teach the love of Jesus Christ in the real world of shattered dreams and optimistic faith. When I started reading his writings, I was in a season of life reeling from shattered dreams, it then seemed ironic to me that a minister of my childhood who had been ignored and slandered was becoming an important guide to my spiritual life and pastoral work.
It is ironic that a man of God committed to nonviolent action against community injustices should have so many shattered dreams, especially from so many of his own people, fellow Christians, and clergy colleagues. But then you realize that nonviolence in the face of violence is not about convenience, but about your soul: either you use violence to resist violence and become the monster you feared or you love the violent ones so that they become part of the Beloved Community. It’s a hard road too few want to take.
It’s also ironic that MLK was reluctant to join the civil rights movement, as his primary purpose was to be a good son and continue co-pastoring Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father, a figure larger than life for their black community. He was a brilliant young man, earning his undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees by his mid-twenties. It set him up to see things differently than his dad, to preach differently, and to look to minister differently.
But it was Rosa Park and her bus boycott that helped pull Martin into the movement. He was a reluctant leader. He was willing to join the team organizing the boycotts, but it took Rosa and the fellow leaders to ask him to be their spokesperson. In 1955 he and Rosa ascended as leaders in the boycott movement, 13 months later they succeeded at the US Supreme Court. By 1964 MLK was receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for his national work in nonviolent resistance to injustice, and less than four years later he was assassinated for his work. He had a sense early on that he might not live long doing this work. The more complicated the work got, the more sure he was of his impending death. I saw the film of his daddy weeping over Martin’s body at the funeral visitation; so many shattered dreams for MLK and his family, his friends, his people, and us.
That indescribable city
In a sermon titled “Shattered Dreams”, near the end he reflects on his faith in God and a future indescribable city that sustains him in all that he has endured.
Through this sermon and his writings and life, we can see how it fueled his optimistic vision of a Beloved Community where men and women with different skin color and languages, from different nations and cultures could support one another in love, truth, trust, and whole-hearted integrity.
It fueled his optimism amidst shattered dreams, that what God was building through Martin – and us – is bigger than us and will have to go on after us – the work will go beyond us. And since it is ultimately God’s plan at work through us, we can trust him to finish what he started. What will it finally look like? How will God finish it? It’s indescribable. But it will be good.
That indescribable city, for Rev. King, gave him strength to love his enemies in the face of death threats to his family, slander of his name, and the shattered dreams of their movement.
“Our capacity to deal creatively with shattered dreams is ultimately determined by our faith in God. Genuine faith imbues us with the conviction that beyond time is a divine Spirit and beyond life is Life. However dismal and catastrophic may be the present circumstances, we know we are not alone, for God dwells with us in life's most confining and oppressive cells.
And even if we die there without having received the earthly promise, he shall lead us down that mysterious road called death and at last to that indescribable city he has prepared for us. His creative power is not exhausted by this earthly life, nor is his majestic love locked within the limited walls of time and space.
God through Christ has taken the sting from death by freeing us from its dominion. Our earthly life is a prelude to a glorious new awakening, and death is an open door that leads us into life eternal.”
God works all things for good
If anything on MLK Day we can empathize with one another’s shattered dreams, connecting to the emotions behind the experiences of those who suffer around us. This is also the antidote to the shame that swamps us when we feel like we’re not doing enough, our feeling that we are not enough, the shame of feeling that we are alone in our shattered dreams.
Martin knew that the odds were long in the work he took up with Rosa in 1955, and yet they believed with all their heart that God would work everything out for good, especially their suffering for doing good in the face of injustice.
When MLK went to Memphis to support the Poor People’s Campaign, his leadership team urged him not to go, for their work in Chicago was not finished, it was too much to take on. He went anyway. Even his children begged him not to go, they clung to his legs as he left the house to head to the airport, they even layed themselves on the car pleading with him not to go. Still, he went. Memphis ended up being a source of ultimate shattered dreams for Martin, his wife and children, his parents, his friends and those who supported the movement. Riots broke out, and young people gave themselves over to the violent despair that raged around them - “I’ve got nothing to look forward to now” cried one 12 year old boy in grief.
A close associate of Martin, Stokely Carmichael began to preach a form of violent black power, fueled by impatience at the pace of change, increasing anger at the unstoppable violence, and a desire to fight back, all of which was diametrically opposed to the life’s work and message of the Beloved Community. Not only was MLK not idolized by all who worked with him, he was resented and feared and violently slandered across the country at the time of his death.
And yet, Dr. King remained optimistic, though he was tired and new the end might be near for him. He continued to rely on his faith in God to trust that good would be worked out, not just through his life, but in generations to come, including ours. He believed that God was always at work, no matter how dire or how stiff the resistance, loving our enemies and building a Beloved Community was the way forward.
Maybe today you’ve been able to connect more to the shattered dreams of Martin, can more clearly see the complexity of his own family life, the difficulty of the work God gave him, and yet how his faith in God and that indescribable city sustained his optimism that through righteous suffering, God will work it all out for good. And for you as well.
Here’s how he ends his sermon “Shattered Dreams”:
“The Christian faith makes it possible for us nobly to accept that which cannot be changed, to meet disappointments and sorrow with an inner poise, and to absorb the most intense pain without abandoning our sense of hope, for we know, as Paul testified, in life or in death, in Spain or in Rome, "That all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.””
Read the entire sermon “Shattered Dreams” in his popular book Strength to Love, a collection of his best sermons available at most any bookstore.
