I always come to the remembrance of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with some measure of shame, because I was a latecomer to the action. I hang around with a lot of 1960's activist types, the primary one being my husband, but also with many others from Oberlin and the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. I often feel somewhat like somewhat of an imposter in such company–not that my own vision and conscience don’t span the globe in 2008, but they surely didn’t in the 1960's.

I was born in 1952, so I was ‘coming of age’ in the days when Martin Luther King, Jr., and so many others, were leading the charge against legalized segregation in our country. My teenage years were spent in a large suburban high school, a white enclave of middle class values. While some were fretting over injustice and conflict in Selma, Alabama; Washington, D.C., and Marquette Park, Illinois, my days were consumed with teenage crushes, overachieving at school, and how well my Beethoven Piano Sonata was memorized for my next piano lesson. As caring of an individual as I sought to be, my attention was focused on the usual fare of teenage life, with an extra dose of genuine volunteerism thrown in.

It was really marrying a news junkie and marketing third world handicrafts through Jubilee Crafts during our early years in Oberlin that widened my world profoundly. These two experiences offered me the opportunity to see that justice is wider and deeper than charity, and yet when a person is hungry or homeless or dispossessed of mind, body, or spirit—charity is as needful as justice.

In our scripture reading from the Letter to the Ephesians today, the author is sitting in prison and writing to his fellow Christians. Scholars dispute whether or not this letter was written by the Apostle Paul, with some landing on either side of this question. I have always believed the letter is Pauline for a myriad of reasons, so today we will assume that it is Paul’s message to the Church in Ephesus.

“Grow up! Grow up! Grow up!” he says. “Don’t stay a newborn in the faith! Keep growing! Keep maturing! Keep journeying!”

Being around my newborn grandchild, Sofia, I have noticed something about young children. Every time I see Sofia, something noticeable has changed about her. Her face is more mature; she focuses on objects more intently. Her little fists are not so tight; her fingers open more often. Her head is stronger, and she moves it more easily from side to side. She smiles a little bit. Now she is smiling a lot, and it has only been two weeks since I last saw her.

As newborns in the faith, we change so much so quickly. Yet, the older we get, the more imperceptible are the daily transformations. If we don’t see an 8 year old for a year, she might have grown several inches! If we don’t see a 54 year old for a year, he might just have added a few pounds or a few silver hairs!

One of my favorite parenting stories comes from an exchange between me and one of my daughters who had been away for awhile during her late teen years. In this case, absence did make the heart grow fonder!

We were standing in the kitchen one day after she returned home and my daughter said to me, “Mom, you have changed so much while I’ve been gone!”

I smiled at her and said, “Oh, my dear, when you are my age, you don’t change that much in four months. I do believe it must be you that has changed!”

The point I am trying to make is that the changes in our lives may seem harder to see the longer we journey with God. In my journal, I recently wrote, “I am growing so slowly, but I am growing deeply.”
The important part is that we are growing at all. We must continually ask ourselves, “What is God doing in my life? How am I growing spiritually?” We must continually ask one another, “What is God doing in your life? What are the growing edges of your spiritual journey?”

I encourage each of us to ponder these questions for ourselves and find someone at church whom you want to know better and share these questions and your responses with one another.

This year, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Planning Committee of the Oberlin-Area Cooperating Ministries moved beyond planning the usual Oberlin events and decided to offer a week of opportunities that allow us to grow and stretch in new ways. The theme of the week is “Moving Beyond Our Boundaries: Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.” If there is one thing we take away from our celebrations this year that endures beyond this particular week, I hope it will be the call to move outside our usual spaces, our usual relationships, our usual activities. Listen there for God. Look there for God. Learn there from God. Grow slow, but grow deep.