By: Vincent L. Hall
Pastor Thomas Hayden Garner strolled to the pulpit at our Holy Week mid-week musical. He was on to deliver a sermonette.
The late Dr. E. K. Bailey once warned that sermonettes make “Christianettes.”
But with our limited attention spans today, a well-placed homily may be all we can stand.
Anyway, amid his 11-minute oration, he laid out a sentence that led me back to a whole speech Dr. King wrote on toilet paper and scrap papers. Garner mused that “Holy Week turned into the week from Hell” as Jesus sojourned from the triumph of Palm Sunday to the tragedy on the cross on Calvary on Friday.
After coming off a successful Holy Week of planning and protests, Dr. King landed in a Birmingham jail on Good Friday.
There is a lot of symbolism in that, but suffice it to know that for the White folks who preferred segregation,
any Friday was a good Friday to put a sassy, N!gg3R in jail!
There is little difference in the White Segregationists movement in 1963 and MAGA in 2025. The leaders have just gotten less blatant and more devious and demonic in their acts of racism and tribalism.
Trump would have had his imps send King to El Salvador to a fellow dictator.
I digress. But Garner’s graphic description of the Holy Week from Hell led me to a piece of Dr. King’s letter from a Birmingham Jail.
“Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ecclesia and the hope of the world.
But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom.
They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom.
Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers.
But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the
gospel in these troubled times.
They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour.
But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future.
I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood.
We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.”
We have to believe that the goal of America outside the MAGA regime is still freedom.
And as we watch another Holy Week turn into the week from Hell, we must, like King, hold onto our optimism, whether the White Church is with us or not.
A long-time Texas Metro News columnist, Dallas native Vincent L. Hall is an author, writer, award-winning writer, and a lifelong Drapetomaniac.
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