Grace Episcopal Church, Norwalk, CT: Yes we did remember and celebrate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today. We, too, "sang the heck" out of LEVAS II, ending with "We shall overcome" and "Keep the dream alive". Sermon was a timeline of MLK and local life, interspersed with substantive portions of several of his speeches, read by a "choir" of voices. The Prayers of the People was a litany, written many years ago in the Diocese of Delaware by the (now late) Rev. Toni Schissler. The whole thing took on a poignancy for me not only because Dr. King's adult life ran along my growing up years, but because in the congregation were two young couples from the Hispanic congregation who seem to be making the English service their home.

St Matthew's Episcopal, Horseheads, NY: Our organist played a medley of spirituals for both prelude and postlude.We had We Shall Overcome as processional, Here I Am pre Gospel,and Lift Every Voice and Sing to close.I used the collect for Martin Luther King Jr from "Holy Women, Holy Men" Began the sermon with inviting our Sunday Schoolers (@15, age3 range 5 - 13)to come and stand with me in front of the congregation, then beginning with the youngest each told us one good thing they knew about Dr. King. The one that blew me away was a 5 year old boy who said "We can all drink from the same water fountains because of Dr. King." Their commnents were a wonderful lead in to a sermon highlighting Dr. King's work and reflecting on how much still needs to be done

Grace and Holy Trinity in downtown Richmond, VA is the annual host of a celebration of unity. Monday starting at 7:30PM

We had gospel music, Stephanie Spelleras was our guest preacher, we had a "Bail Out the Food Banks" food drive as our MLK Day service project and we read this MLK quot for the "epistle" in the Eucharist:

“Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.

John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: ‘No one is an island entire of itself. Every one is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ And he goes on toward the end to say, ‘Any one’s death diminishes me because I am involved in humankind; therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ We must see this, believe this, and live by it if we are to remain awake through a great revolution.”

Minister: Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
People: Thanks be to God.

PS ... The Reverend Susan Russell, All Saints Church in Pasadena

The "feast day" of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King is a concept which I very much doubt the Pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church would find either flattering or applicable to himself, in much the same way that he might take sizable exception to his own words being inserted into a celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Dr. King was a man of deep and abiding Faith whose memory might be best served in honoring his strict adherence to his own tenets of belief and by not conflating him with anyone else, regardless of how flattering the intention might be when doing so.

Blessings!
Rev. CW Brockenbrough

St. Paul's, Pawtucket(RI) remembers Dr. King every year on this Sunday. We do so through music, prayers and the sermon - this year noting one who heard the call from God and responded in ways that have changed our world and call us to make our own response.

Bill Locke+

honoring his strict adherence to his own tenets of belief and by not conflating him with anyone else

???

O_o

Considering Dr King worked w/ those of all (and no) faiths, I wouldn't think a celebration of his life in an Episcopal eucharist per se would be objectionable (nor seen as a "conflation").

It's honoring him ---without also doing the the kind of work he gave his life for--- that would ring hollow for him, I believe.

JC Fisher