A Call to Service and Slamming Ram

 There’s that one Sunday in America, in which millions of people will hear words of inspiration intended to change their lives. Words meant to encourage them to strive for something more. Those responsible for these words wonder, will it work? Will change occur?

I’m not talking about Christmas, Easter or Mother’s Day. I’m talking about Super Bowl Sunday. Those words of inspiration are from advertisers, and they are attempting to inspire people to buy something. A few of the people watching the Super Bowl were in church that morning. You may wonder, which will be more inspirational, a Sunday morning sermon whose purpose is to get people to connect with God, or a Sunday evening commercial that’s purpose is to get someone to buy a new Chrysler?

But hold on, let’s level the playing field. These advertisers have millions of dollars for a production budget. They’ve got the latest special effects. They have trained animals, puppies, Clydesdales. They have Eminem, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood.

The Sunday preacher stands alone.

Plus, the ad guys have a year to work on the Superbowl ads. Sunday morning sermons come up once a week.

And with Superbowl ads, you’re looking at the very best work of the very best people in the business. There are plenty of advertisers out there, making ads everyday, who are working hard and doing their best, but will never rise to the level of being good enough to be hired to do a Super Bowl ad.

If you’re wondering why I’m talking about football in May, that’s just an indicator of how far behind I am. But don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll be all caught up by the time Annual Conference comes around about six months from now.

Let’s go back a few years. 2018. The before times. There was an ad break, and suddenly many of us were surprised to hear the familiar voice of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preaching about a call to service. It’s from his sermon entitled The Drum Major Instinct, which is critical of our inherent desire to be the one out front, in the lead. It went on to be one of the most discussed ads of the game.

Some of my clergy friends couldn’t tweet or Facebook post fast enough. The common initial reaction was this: “Are they using Martin Luther King’s words to sell trucks? That’s wrong.” They were indignant that this sacred sermon was used for a commercial.

They weren’t the only ones. A couple of days later one headline read: Martin Luther King's family slams Ram for using his speech to sell trucks in most-hated Super Bowl ad.

Most people watching the game probably weren’t familiar with this sermon, given at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta exactly 50 years to the day preceding the commercial, and also exactly two months before King’s assassination in Memphis, Tennessee.  

In case you missed it, here’s the full script of the commercial, an unabridged excerpt in King’s voice taken directly from his sermon:

If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.

And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great,  because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

Everyone agrees that is a strong message. And Ram trucks, formerly known as Dodge, spent upwards of $5 million to get it in front of people, when they could have been talking about their best in class V-8 towing capability (12,700 pounds!).

I’m pretty sure the person who pitched the idea was well intended. Had it not kept flashing to pictures of the truck, and had it not ended with the silent tagline that read “Ram trucks, built to serve,” the public at large may have thanked Dodge for its generosity of putting out a Public Service Announcement calling for public service.

Astute scholars of King also picked up on something that made the whole situation even more ironic. Earlier in the very same sermon, King warned about consumerism pushing people toward buying a car they can’t afford. He got specific, saying you shouldn’t buy a car the cost more than half of your annual salary. Let’s read the part of the speech that didn’t make it into the commercial.

Now the presence of this instinct explains why we are so often taken by advertisers. You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. In order to be lovely to love you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know, before you know it, you're just buying that stuff. That's the way the advertisers do it.

I got a letter the other day, and it was a new magazine coming out. And it opened up, "Dear Dr. King: As you know, you are on many mailing lists. And you are categorized as highly intelligent, progressive, a lover of the arts and the sciences, and I know you will want to read what I have to say." Of course I did. After you said all of that and explained me so exactly, of course I wanted to read it.

But very seriously, it goes through life; the drum major instinct is real. And you know what else it causes to happen? It often causes us to live above our means. It's nothing but the drum major instinct. Do you ever see people buy cars that they can't even begin to buy in terms of their income? You've seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don't earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford. But it feeds a repressed ego.

You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual income. So if you make an income of five thousand dollars, your car shouldn't cost more than about 2,500. That's just good economics. And if it's a family of two, and both members of the family make ten thousand dollars, they would have to make out with one car. That would be good economics, although it's often inconvenient. But so often, haven't you seen people making five thousand dollars a year and driving a car that costs six thousand? And they wonder why their ends never meet. That's a fact.

So this is about as ironic as you can get – in the same sermon that a car company used for its Super Bowl ad, King is advising people not to buy a new car. But this sermon is too good to walk away from, so I’m going to give you some more.

Now the economists also say that your house shouldn't cost—if you're buying a house, it shouldn't cost more than twice your income. That's based on the economy and how you would make ends meet. So, if you have an income of five thousand dollars, it's kind of difficult in this society. But say it's a family with an income of ten thousand dollars, the house shouldn't cost much more than twenty thousand. Well, I've seen folk making ten thousand dollars, living in a forty- and fifty-thousand-dollar house. And you know they just barely make it. They get a check every month somewhere, and they owe all of that out before it comes in. Never have anything to put away for rainy days.

Lots of good stuff here, but I’m going to skip down a bit further in the sermon, when he’s talking about the danger of exclusivism.

And you know, that can happen with the church; I know churches get in that bind sometimes. I've been to churches, you know, and they say, "We have so many doctors, and so many school teachers, and so many lawyers, and so many businessmen in our church." And that's fine, because doctors need to go to church, and lawyers, and businessmen, teachers—they ought to be in church. But they say that—even the preacher sometimes will go all through that—they say that as if the other people don't count.

And the church is the one place where a doctor ought to forget that he's a doctor. The church is the one place where a Ph.D. ought to forget that he's a Ph.D. The church is the one place that the school teacher ought to forget the degree she has behind her name. The church is the one place where the lawyer ought to forget that he's a lawyer. And any church that violates the "whosoever will, let him come" doctrine is a dead, cold church, and nothing but a little social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.

When the church is true to its nature, it says, "Whosoever will, let him come." And it does not supposed to satisfy the perverted uses of the drum major instinct. It's the one place where everybody should be the same, standing before a common master and savior. And a recognition grows out of this—that all men are brothers because they are children of a common father.

The drum major instinct can lead to exclusivism in one's thinking and can lead one to feel that because he has some training, he's a little better than that person who doesn't have it. Or because he has some economic security, that he's a little better than that person who doesn't have it. And that's the uncontrolled, perverted use of the drum major instinct.

And just a bit further down in his sermon he takes us to his jail cell, and does a better job at it than the Apostle Paul:

The other day I was saying, I always try to do a little converting when I'm in jail. And when we were in jail in Birmingham the other day, the white wardens and all enjoyed coming around the cell to talk about the race problem. And they were showing us where we were so wrong demonstrating. And they were showing us where segregation was so right. And they were showing us where intermarriage was so wrong. So I would get to preaching, and we would get to talking—calmly, because they wanted to talk about it. And then we got down one day to the point—that was the second or third day—to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, "Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us.  You're just as poor as Negroes." And I said, "You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And you're so poor you can't send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march."

Now that's a fact. That the poor white has been put into this position, where through blindness and prejudice, he is forced to support his oppressors. And the only thing he has going for him is the false feeling that he’s superior because his skin is white—and can't hardly eat and make his ends meet week in and week out.

Put that in your pickup truck ad. But let’s keep going.

But this is why we are drifting. And we are drifting there because nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. "I must be first." "I must be supreme." "Our nation must rule the world." And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I'm going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.

God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now. God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.

But God has a way of even putting nations in their place. The God that I worship has a way of saying, "Don't play with me." He has a way of saying, as the God of the Old Testament used to say to the Hebrews, "Don’t play with me, Israel. Don't play with me, Babylon. Be still and know that I'm God. And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power." And that can happen to America. Every now and then I go back and read Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And when I come and look at America, I say to myself, the parallels are frightening. And we have perverted the drum major instinct.

Man, that would have preached in 2018. Ram missed the best part. But just a little further down in the sermon he gets to the section that they used for Ram trucks.

And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness.

Ok, they cut out the first sentence, because, come on, you can’t just come right out and say Jesus on TV. But the next part is uncut. Let’s read it again.

 If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.

And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

Commercial ends. So that was it, a great call to servanthood. But the next paragraph was even better. You didn’t get to hear it on TV, so let’s look at it now.

I know a man—and I just want to talk about him a minute, and maybe you will discover who I'm talking about as I go down the way because he was a great one. And he just went about serving. He was born in an obscure village, the child of a poor peasant woman. And then he grew up in still another obscure village, where he worked as a carpenter until he was thirty years old. Then for three years, he just got on his feet, and he was an itinerant preacher. And he went about doing some things. He didn't have much. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never went two hundred miles from where he was born. He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

Wow. What a sermon. Truly great. It’s too bad Methodists can’t preach that good.

Now comes the plot twist.

If you’ve ever learned much about King outside of celebrating in legacy, you know it has been found that he sometimes plagiarized a bit in some of his college papers, including big ones like his doctoral dissertation. And it also comes up in his sermons. King’s Drum Major Instinct sermon was largely based upon a homily called… I’ll give you one guess… The Drum Major Instinct. It was by J. Wallace Hamilton, an old white guy, and a Methodist. He preached it first in 1949. Many of his sermons were published in books. Hamilton was famous enough to be talked about in seminaries, but not famous enough to have a page on Wikipedia.

So maybe you’re saying, ok he used some of the same metaphors, but that’s not really stealing, right. Well, remember the magazine letter story that I shared a bit ago? Here’s Hamilton’s version:

I received a letter from the subscription manager of a newly launched magazine. He started off on what he called a perfectly honest note: “As you undoubtedly know,” he said in the first paragraph, “Your name is on several mailing lists in which you are classified as ‘highly literate, progressive, interested in world affairs, good literature and science.’ Therefore I believe you will be interested in what I have to say.” Of course I was interested since he had described me so exactly.

Ouch. Ok, that’s not just using the same theme.

But now I had an in. I could write about the whole Super Bowl commercial fiasco in the Methodist magazine because I now had a Methodist angle on it. And I could say to my upset Methodist friends, “Hey relax. Don’t worry about the sacred words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King being used for a commercial purpose, because they weren’t really his words anyway. He stole them from a Methodist.”

I quickly dismissed that idea. I don’t think anyone was going to be too well served by me coming out with a piece in the magazine in black history month talking about King being a plagiarist. The wrong kind of people would applaud me for writing that story. I don’t need those kind of fans.

King’s sermon follows Hamilton’s most closely in the beginning, by the end it becomes pure King. One piece that I read on this topic noted that it could be argued that preachers swapping generic stories to illustrate a point is a tradition in Baptist rhetorical style. I would argue that’s it’s not just Baptist.

One of my favorite preachers is recently retired Rev. Fred Leist. He works hard on his sermons. They are well researched. You know they are well researched because, better than anyone that I know, Fred does a great job of attributing his sources. That’s challenging to do a sermon. Because Fred doesn’t just say, J. Wallace Hamilton once said, because he knows his audience doesn’t know who that is. He would say, J. Wallace Hamilton, a Methodist elder in Florida who preached from the 1930s through 1960s, said in his homily entitled The Drum Major Instinct…”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King didn’t do that. I wouldn’t have worked well with his delivery. This is hard for me to say because I’m a writer, not a talker, but when I read King’s sermons I may nod in agreement and think, “hmm… good point.” But when I hear actual audio of the same sermons, I get chills. I’m moved to tears. His delivery was phenomenal. It gave his words power, so much so that it made him dangerous to people that opposed his words, which is why he was killed. I’m not saying J Wallace Hamilton was a bad preacher, but he preached the same words and got to live to be a bout 70, and King didn’t make it to 40.

Out of respect for J. Wallace Hamilton, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and all great preachers, I suppose I should have three points and a conclusion. So what are the points?

1. Preachers – Gain inspiration from Super Bowl ads, maybe even model a sermon after one (but not too closely), but don’t compare your message to them too harshly – they have a lot resource.
2. Don’t be too hard on people - I feel for the Ram truck ad guy who chose the King speech for commercial. I think he thought he was doing the right thing, and thought he’d be praised for it. To have the immediate reaction go off the rails must have hurt,
3. Realize that there’s a lot of good stuff out there that has already been written. We’ve had the written word for something like 5,000 years. Most topics have been covered by now. If you can contextualize something in a powerful way, good for you.

Shall we pray?

Gracious good, please give us wisdom as we go about our work, so that the impact of our actions may stay inline with the purpose of which we intend them. And help us follow the teachings of your son, as he called us to be servant leaders. Amen.