On January 18^th, we had a national holiday celebrating the birth of a national hero, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. More importantly, however, we celebrated our whole nation, including black, white, indigenous American, Asian, from its ongoing enslavement to injustice, prejudice and hate. We are all "free and last," more in hope than in reality, but the annual observance we have recently completed helps us to keep that hope alive.

Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo about a year after the peaceful march on Washington , Dr. King said:

I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets [it was December 1964, Vietnam War time in the Johnson era] there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.

Justice reigning supreme? Do we really hope in that? Today we still live with many inequities in our American society. Babies of color are still dying earlier because of infant mortality. People of color are still less able to get primary or secondary education. People of color are still stereotyped by the media as less intelligent than they are; less hard working than they work. Young people of color are still trapped in second-class schools and first-class jails. The crisis is still wealth going up while jobs leave this country in droves.

We who believe in Jesus Christ call him the "light of the world," as we follow him to achieve justice and insure peace. But do we really mean that? Or do we spend more time deploring black crime while avoiding substandard schools and housing and job opportunities, while we hope to get the economy "back on track," in part by selling arms to any buyer?