Holy and Unholy Concurrences
On the Celebration of MLK Day and the 2nd Inauguration of Donald Trump
This essay contains excerpts from a sermon of the same title that was preached at Greenwood Forest Baptist Church in Cary, NC on January 19, 2025, on the Sunday before the concurrence of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the Second Inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States.
I want to speak with you this morning from the gospel of Luke chapter 3 on the topic of holy and unholy concurrences. Christmas is not only the celebration of the birth of Jesus, but also the day Charlemagne was crowned king of the Holy Roman Empire, the day William the Conqueror became King of England, and the day George Washington crossed the Delaware River. Christmas is the day the Ku Klux Klan was founded, and the day President Andrew Johnson issued a full pardon to all Confederate soldiers. Luther nailed his 95 Thesis to the Wittenberg door on Halloween. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone on Valentine’s Day. Robert E. Lee surrendered on Palm Sunday. And the U.S. Capitol was attacked by a mob of insurrectionists on the day of Epiphany. These are what you might call concurrences.
A concurrence is when two events happen at the same time. But what is the difference between a holy and unholy concurrence?” (I’m so glad you asked.) It depends on where you stand, your place is in the world, and your social location. Tomorrow we will be faced with concurrent celebrations honoring two of the most diametrically opposed human beings in history on the same day—the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. As one scholar said, it will be nothing less than “a spiritual and moral eclipse of America’s messy soul.”[1] And I would say, it will most definitely be an unholy concurrence.
As followers of Jesus, we’re no strangers to holy or unholy concurrences. The Bible is full of them and our story from Luke 3 is a classic example. It begins, “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John in the wilderness.” Luke took great pains to list out all the rulers presiding over Israel when Jesus’ ministry began. Why? Was it to set the stage, communicate the setting, establish the historical accuracy of the story? What is the purpose of this social and political preamble?
Growing up, I was told it was to convey that God chose the perfect time in human history for Jesus to come—the Pax Romana or “peace of Rome” we all heard about in Western Civ. class. We were taught Augustus Caesar secured peace throughout the world, which made it the ideal moment for the arrival of the Messiah, the transmission of the gospel in Greek, along well paved Roman roads, at a time of relative tranquility. The only problem is the Pax Romana was not peaceful at all, but a time of great violence and oppression. As it was said, “Rome makes a desert, and they call it peace.” The Jewish people did not see Rome and its leaders as “peaceful.” They would have heard this list of leaders as a roll call of violent oppressors.
For the gospel writers, the concurrence of Jesus’ ministry with the Pax Romana was not holy, but a stark and unholy contrast between the word of God and the power of empire. In fact, one could argue there may not have been a worse time in history for Jesus to come. Roman military power, economic oppression, and political domination seemed invincible and intractable the way capitalism or Christian Nationalism seem today. When the word of God came to John the Baptist in the wilderness, Luke saw as a fulfillment of Isaiah 40 where the prophet proclaims, “Listen here, King Hezekiah, the liberation of God is coming and that means anything that gets in the way (including you) will be leveled. “Every valley shall be filled, every mountain shall be made low, crooked paths shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.”
Like Isaiah before him, John had strong words for the people who came out to the Jordan River. Contrary to the way many interpret this passage, John did not say, “Thanks for coming out today. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts.” No, John said, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor;’ for I tell you, God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
I can testify that sermons like the one John preached can have dangerous consequences! Why was John so strongly worded? Because the religious people in his day were a lot like they are today. They did not believe they had anything to repent for. In fact, their response to John’s invitation was to appeal to their status as “Children of Abraham.” Just as many nationalists call themselves “Christians” yet live in ways that do not reflect life or teachings of Jesus—people in John’s day called themselves “Children of Abraham,” even though their lives did not bear the good fruit of love and justice. But John was extremely clear with them. He said, “your lineage, your history, your religion, your status, your appeals to Abraham cannot save you.”
Just like the people appealed to Abraham, today it seems like everyone appeals to Dr. King as their father. We’ve become incredibly cavalier in quoting Dr. King. Gratuitous, out of context, and “tone deaf” uses of his words have become so common Cornel West has dubbed it “The Santa Claus-ification of Dr. King.” We tend to sanitize, sterilize, and sentimentalize his words. Or worse, we reduce King’s entire canon of material down to a single catchphrase or soundbite. King delivered over 2,500 public speeches and spoke nearly a million published words, yet it is astonishing that if you listen to the politicians today, you’d think the only thing King ever said was, “People should be judged not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character.”
Quoting this one line from Dr. King may seem lazy or ignorant, but it’s part of a long and intentional effort to co-opt King’s message for the cause of creating a colorblind racist society. Legislators proposed a holiday honoring Dr. King immediately after his death in 1968, but it was voted down 15 years in a row until 1983 when it barely passed no thanks to two North Carolina Senators, John Porter East and the infamous Jesse Helms who led a filibuster by reading a 300-page document, asserting that King was an un-American communist puppet of the Soviet Union. Even after MLK day became a holiday, the state of Virginia combined it with the celebration of Confederate heroes Lee-Jackson. And in Alabama and Mississippi today MLK still shares his birthday with Robert E. Lee! Talk about an unholy concurrence!
President Regan initially opposed a national holiday for King, before signing the bill into law. But he marked the very first MLK day by using King’s words to oppose employment quotas designed to address racial discrimination even though King believed in them. Regan said, “We’re committed to a society in which all men and women have equal opportunities to succeed, so we oppose the use of quotas. We want a colorblind society that in the words of Dr. King,” (You guessed it) “judges people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Regan gave birth to a tradition of misusing King’s words for policies he would oppose, and politicians of all stripes have continued this horrendous and hypocritical tradition.
Hypocrisy is not a new phenomenon. People are doing the same thing to King’s words that they've been doing forever to the words of Jesus, picking what suits their needs and proof texting the gospel to support all manner of cruelty and inhumanity. As Rev. Dr. William Barber claimed, “they say so much about what Jesus said so little, and so little about what Jesus said so much.” How do we navigate all the hypocrisy? How do we sort out the holy from the unholy concurrences? It’s simple, according to John the Baptist, we focus on what people do, not on what they say. We focus on their work, not their words. We focus on their fruit, not their façade. As James Baldwin famously said, “I cannot believe what you say, because I see what you do.”
I’m sure you are thinking, “Well Ben, what do we do?” Fascinatingly, the question on our hearts and minds today is the same one the people asked who came out to the Jordan to see John. Everyone was asking, “what do we do?” and John provided very practical answers rooted in a vision of economic justice for all—what the Hebrew Bible called Jubilee and Jesus called the kingdom. It is important to notice that John’s answers to these questions weren’t addressed to the poor and powerless, but to people with power and privilege—people with surplus resources, with extra coats and excess food, people who had more than they needed. He spoke to people with money and power like tax collectors and soldiers, and he told them to share what they have, to only collect what was prescribed, to refrain from extortion, to never use their power to oppress or exploit their neighbors, and to be satisfied with what they have. When John said, “bear fruit worthy of repentance,” he was talking about good works of economic justice and equity for all people. That’s the gospel.
And it is exactly what Dr. King was focused on at the apex of his life and ministry. In his sermon at the Riverside Church, King warned of the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism. He established the Poor People’s Campaign and developed the Freedom Budget which proposed a guaranteed job, a guaranteed income, and a living wage for everyone. He was in Memphis when he was assassinated because he was standing in solidarity with striking sanitation workers for better wages and conditions. King said, “Capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of enslaved Africans and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad…God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous, inordinate wealth, while others live in abject, deadening poverty. God intends for all his children to have the basic necessities of life…[and] if America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.”[2] Perhaps he was a prophet in more than one sense of the word.
Tomorrow Donald J. Trump will say that he is going to “Make America Great Again,” but we know a tree by its fruit. He will say he going to bring unity to America, but we know a tree by its fruit. He will he say he’s going to bring peace to the world, but we know a tree by its fruit. He will say he’s going to make America strong again, wealthy again, proud again, and safe again, but we know a tree by its fruit. He will say his oath with a hand on a Bible, claim his status as a follower of Jesus, and probably quote from Dr. King, but we know a tree by its fruit. AND “every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” There’s going to be so much dead wood tomorrow that we’re going to be able to build a billion bonfires.
We must be careful not to get bamboozled by the chicanery of this unholy concurrence but instead allow the dissonance of MLK day and the inauguration to reveal the contradictions of the American experiment and highlight the places in our society where we still need the water of change and the fire of justice. All the words about peace and unity, prosperity, safety, security, and strength we will hear tomorrow will be hallow and hypocritical cover for the fact that the President-elect is preparing to sign over 100 executive orders on the same day. These orders will ensure that America is only peaceful, safe, and prosperous for a small minority of the population—conservative wealthy white cis-gender heterosexual males and their tribes. These executive orders will be diametrically opposed to the teachings of John, Jesus, and Dr. King, and hurt millions of Americans who we have been called by God to love as we love ourselves. But do we have any power to stop it?
At the beginning of Luke 3, it looked like the odds were stacked against Jesus. The roll call of the unfaithful leaders is enough to make a person want to give up. Tomorrow may feel the same way. But while it may look like this incoming regime is invincible and insurmountable, we must remember that when the world is at its worst, the odds are stacked against us, the powers that be are aligned in opposition to life, love and liberation, when it seems like there is no hope, when the domination system is at its cruelest, when the forces of death and evil are at their strongest, when the empire is at its most powerful, that is precisely the time when God shows up in the world in an overwhelming way. Look at what happened in the Bible when God showed up for the people suffering in the empire of Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, Greece and Rome? Do you think America is any different?
When the empire is at its worst, that is precisely when God is at her best! When the empire threatens the poor and powerless, that is when God’s word comes onto the scene in a new and startling way, that is precisely when God raises up prophets among us and empowers and activates her people. When it seems like all hope is lost, that’s when God comes on the strongest. When the world is at its bleakest, God shows up with justice that rolls down like water and righteousness like an ever flowing stream, with an ax to lay at the root of fruitless trees and a winnowing hook to separate the unholy, with the cleansing water of change and with holy fire of justice that inspires us and emboldens us for acts of life, love, and liberation.
We need to be on the lookout right now for where God is bringing water and the fire. We need to get ready because we may be in for a revival of the spirit and a revival of our moral witness. When it looks like there is no way, God makes a way, because our God is a way maker. Just as water and fire are two elements in nature that can penetrate any structure, so too can the holy water of change the holy fire of justice. When the powers and principalities line up like they did at the beginning of Jesus ministry and as they are in America today, God sends word that she does not concur with these unholy concurrences, and we don’t have to concur with them either.
We do not concur with any overreach of executive power.
We do not concur with a patronage system that disenfranchises government workers.
We do not concur with mass deportation, family separation, or scapegoating of immigrants.
We do not concur with violence or second-class citizenship for transgender siblings.
We do not concur with limiting access to gender affirming or reproductive health care.
We do not concur with whitewashing American history by eliminating CRT, DEI or whatever other acronyms they don’t understand but still want to ban.
We do not concur with removing environmental protections or rejecting climate change
We do not concur with more tax cuts for wealthy people or corporations
We do not concur with oligarchy
We do not concur with racism, materialism, or militarism
We do not concur with fascism or Christian nationalism
We do not concur with genocide
We do not concur with imperialism or colonialism (leave Greenland and Panama alone!)
We do not concur with peace that comes through destruction
And we will resist every policy or practice that harms the poor, marginalized or oppressed. Like John, Jesus, and Dr. King, we will resist non-violently but we will not go quietly. We will challenge every act of hatred and injustice we see. We will do all the good we can, all the ways we can, and change the things we can. And even if we cannot change it, we will not be silent, we will not be polite, we will not be moderate, we will be loud, obnoxious, and ungovernable. We will make it painful and difficult for anyone to harm our neighbors. We will not go down without a fight. As Bonhoeffer said, we will bandage the wounds of victims suffering beneath the wheels of injustice, AND we will drive a spoke into the machinery itself.”[3] We will pour water on the unrepentant, lay an ax to the roots of fruitless trees, put a winnowing fork to the chaff of oppression, and bring fire of justice to the architecture of evil.
We may feel small and powerless in the face of the insurmountable forces of empire, but our God is bigger than any president or empire the world has ever seen, and she will not be mocked! Our God has uprooted mountains, overturned empires, toppled dictators, and liberated her people time from empire time and time again. As Bob Marley sang, “If you are the big tree, then we are the small ax, sharpened to cut you down.”[4] Whenever the forces of evil and domination rear their ugly head, and bear their teeth, God is busy equipping the saints with the tools of resistance, resilience, and revival—God is busy sending us prophets, axes, and winnowing forks. When the empire flexes its muscles, God is busy equipping us with the water of change and the fire of the Holy Spirit.
So, whenever you feel overwhelmed or hopeless tomorrow, or over the next four years, remember that water and fire are coming. It may feel terrifying, but water and fire are coming. It may be horrifying, but water and fire are coming. It may look intractable, but water and fire are coming. It may seem impossible, but water and fire are coming. It may even feel like evil has won, but water and fire are coming. God is still at work in our world and that we can be sure that the water of change, and the fire of justice are coming—and it is coming through us. Our God loves nothing more than taking unholy concurrences and turning them into holy revolutions.
What do we do? We continue bearing the good fruit of love, working for economic justice, fighting for equity, protecting the poor and vulnerable, liberating the marginalized and oppressed. We continue offering mutual aid and survival pending revolution. And if we do this together we will ensure that history knows there were followers of Jesus and people of good conscience who did not lay down, who did not acquiesce, who did not stay silent, who did not go along, who did not give up, who did not consent, who did not concur, but who stood tall, who spoke truth to power, who fought the good fight of faith, and resisted the forces of empire with every resource we have and every fiber of our being. Like our ancestors, John, Jesus, Dr. King, we will keep on bringing the cleansing water of change and the holy fire of justice to the world every single day, and we will not stop until…
Every valley is filled,
every mountain is made low,
every crooked path is made straight,
every rough way is made smooth;
and all people in this world experience
the liberation of our God.
[1] Adrienne Johnson Martin, “MLK Day and the inauguration: Looking forward, looking back,” Faith & Leadership, Duke Divinity School: January 15, 2025.
[2] Martin Luther King Jr., “The Three Evils of Society” at the National Conference of New Politics, Chicago, IL: Aug. 31, 1967.
[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Edition,13.402, Fortress Press: 2007
[4] Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Small Axe,” Burnin’, Tuff Gong: 1973.