"...the time is always ripe to do right."

I've been reading this morning Dr. Martin Luther King's final Sunday sermon, delivered 51 years ago today --- on March 31, 1968 --- from the Canterbury Pulpit during the late morning service at Washington National Cathedral.

Dr. King already was at work in Memphis, preparing to launch the Poor People's Campaign, when the dean of the Cathedral asked him to come to the nation's capital and preach on the themes that campaign would incorporate. He did that, but also spoke out on racism, pervasive then and now in the United States, and in opposition to the war in Vietnam and on other topics. The sermon is a memorable and still-relevant work, although not as widely remembered as others delivered by Dr. King.

Days later, on April 4, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis. 

That Sunday, he declared that "racial injustice is still the black man's burden and the white man's shame.

"It is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle-the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent than for America to work passionately and unrelentingly-to get rid of the disease of racism.

"Something positive must be done. Everyone must share in the guilt as individuals and as institutions. The government must certainly share the guilt; individuals must share the guilt; even the church must share the guilt.

"We must face the sad fact that at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning when we stand to sing 'In Christ there is no East or West,' we stand in the most segregated hour of America.

"The hour has come for everybody, for all institutions of the public sector and the private sector to work to get rid of racism. And now if we are to do it we must honestly admit certain things and get rid of certain myths that have constantly been disseminated all over our nation.

"One is the myth of time. It is the notion that only time can solve the problem of racial injustice. And there are those who often sincerely say to the Negro and his allies in the white community, 'Why don't you slow up? Stop pushing things so fast. Only time can solve the problem. And if you will just be nice and patient and continue to pray, in a hundred or two hundred years the problem will work itself out.'

"There is an answer to that myth. It is that time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. And I am sorry to say this morning that I am absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation, the extreme rightists of our nation-the people on the wrong side-have used time much more effectively than the forces of goodwill. And it may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time."

"Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right."

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Later on, discussing his then unpopular opposition to war in general and the war in Vietnam specifically, Dr. King said, "On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right?

"There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right."

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I was a University of Iowa senior when Dr. King delivered that sermon --- and wish that I could say  I was paying attention and attending to his words at the time.

Fifty years on, it's possible to look back and see signs of the progress that hard work by Dr. King and countless others brought about. Then, it's necessary to look around --- to Washington, D.C., where an amoral administration is more than happy to pander to all of the dark forces Dr. King fought against, to a church where the loudest voices still champion intolerance and even hate, to a major political party so obsessed with power it has sold its soul to the devil, and to a society where too many have traded in their allegiance to Jesus as down-payment on an assault rifle.

And remember, "Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right."