They Love Him Dead

A Sunday Sermon on America’s Necrophilic Relationship With MLK and His Dream

The doors of the church are open. Good morning, Saints.

Beloved children of the sun, turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor … dreams tell the truth.”

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. Tomorrow, America will say his name out loud. They’ll say it slowly. Reverently. They’ll say it like a prayer it does not intend to answer.

Schools will close. Corporations will post a quote. Politicians will recite a line about a dream. And the nation will once again try to turn a radical prophet into a harmless holiday. And that has always been the ritual. But this year hits different. This year MLK’s dream is being evicted.

When I say the dream is being evicted, I mean the very ground it needs to stand on is being stripped away. Because saints, a dream needs a house. A dream needs conditions. It needs laws, protections, resources, and moral commitments that allow human dignity to actually live and breathe.

Church, turn with me to Matthew 7:24–26. It reads: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock … But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.”

Jesus said a house without a foundation will . . . not . . . stand. When the ground of justice is stripped away, when the rock of righteousness is replaced with the sand of greed, fear, and domination, the house collapses and the dream becomes homeless.

Somebody say Amen.

Dr. King’s dream assumed a nation at least moving, however imperfectly, toward democracy, toward rights, toward justice, toward care, toward the sacred worth of every life. But church, his dream is being EVICTED!

Isaiah 10:1-2 says, “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed.”

Beloved children of the sun, eviction is when the sick are rationed care while corporations are guaranteed profit. Eviction is when voting rights are stripped. Eviction is when migrants are hunted. Eviction is when workers are discarded. Eviction is when truth itself is pushed out and lies move in. Eviction is when the poor are priced out of shelter and told it’s the market’s will. Eviction is when history is banned from classrooms and replaced with comforting lies.

Church, eviction means the house of justice is being condemned! The doors of dignity are being locked. The furniture of freedom is being thrown to the curb. And the people the dream was meant to shelter are being told, “You don’t belong here no more!”

Saints, a dream cannot survive in a structure that no longer pretends to be a home for it. A dream can no longer survive in a nation pretending to be a democracy when ballots are stolen, courts are captured, borders are weaponized, poverty is criminalized, truth is optional, and the lives of the vulnerable are treated as collateral damage.

A dream can no longer survive when a president rules by grievance, racism, spite, and cruelty. A dream can no longer survive when ICE crawls through our streets like the devil and disappears our neighbors.

This nation is not merely failing to fulfill Dr. King’s vision. It is actively clearing space of it. Removing the legal, economic, and moral foundations that made the “beloved community” imaginable. Choosing punishment over care, profit over people, borders over babies, order over justice and calling that all that shit normal. Black Jesus forgive me for cussin’ from the pulpit. Please be patient with me. God is not through with me yet, Saints.

And tomorrow, they will invoke Martin Luther King Jr. while doing the very things he warned against. Because America has a necrophilic relationship with Dr. King. It loves the King that forgives its sins and washes its feet.

It doesn’t just remember him. It feeds on him. It caresses the corpse and fears the living man. It kisses the monument and runs from the movement. It lights candles for the martyr and calls the prophet “too radical.”

It loves him dead because dead men don’t organize. Dead men don’t shut down streets. Dead men don’t boycott, don’t strike, don’t disrupt, and don’t demand redistribution of wealth. Dead men don’t call out Empire and don’t name white supremacy. Dead men don’t link racism to capitalism and militarism in the same damn breath.

It loves him frozen in 1968 because a frozen King can’t speak the truth. A frozen King can’t talk about guaranteed income. A frozen King can’t talk about dismantling the whole economic structure. A frozen King can’t stand with sanitation workers and the poor and the undocumented and the disposable.

America loves him embalmed in “I Have a Dream” because an embalmed King can be turned into a damn Hallmark card, a school poster, a corporate diversity slogan, a hashtag, and a moral pacifier. But a living King would be a whole problem. A living King would be a threat. A living King would be a disruption to the whole order.

Beloved children of the sun, they don’t want his voice. They want his body. They don’t want his analysis. They want his image. They don’t want his revolution. They want his remains.

They want a King who can’t march. A King who can’t preach. A King who can’t organize the poor. A King who can’t indict the state. A King who can’t call America what it is. This is not remembrance and honor. This is consumption. This is continued exploitation of a dead prophet to protect a living system.

They don’t love our Dr. King. The King that told Black people to stop begging for a seat at the table and start demanding the whole damn house. The King that said we were somebody, that our lives had sacred worth, that we were not asking for favors but for what was already owed by god and stolen by man.

Naw, they don’t love our Dr. King. They love the silence that comes after the bullet.

A living King would stand in this moment and say what he said in 1967: “We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.”

Not next election. Not next commission. Not next study. NOW! He would say what he said in “Beyond Vietnam,” the speech this nation tried to bury. That America is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

He would say what he said in “Where Do We Go From Here?” that justice for Black people requires “radical changes in the structure of our society,” not cosmetic reform, not representation without redistribution, and not symbolism without surrender.

He would look at a nation that can fund war but not healing and repeat his warning that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Not decline, Y’all. Spiritual death.

And he would name names. Not just of men, but of systems and the people who profit from them. He would call out presidents and parties as moral agents, and say, as he said before, that changing faces without changing structures is cosmetic surgery on a diseased body.

He would say that Donald Judas Trump is not an aberration but a revelation. Dr. King would say that Trump is the unmasked theology of a country that has always chosen order over justice and profits over people. But he would not stop with one man. He would indict the liberal establishment that manages inequality while calling it progress, that funds wars while posting his quotes on Facebook and Substack, and that speaks of inclusion while protecting extraction.

He would turn to corporate America and keep it 100. To CEOs who celebrate him on Monday and union-bust on Tuesday. To pharmaceutical executives who price insulin out of reach and then sponsor “health equity” panels. To tech oligarchs who profit from surveillance, displacement, and misinformation while cloaking themselves in the language of innovation. He would say, as he did, that an economic system producing “glaring inequalities” is immoral.

He would confront the military-industrial complex by name and the lawmakers married to it. He would say the madness of militarism is not an accident but a business model, and that those who profit from weapons while cutting social programs are, in his words, engaged in a “cruel manipulation of the poor.” He would remind them that bombs abroad and abandonment at home are two sides of the same spiritual crime.

Y’all don’t want me to preach this morning.

Dr. King would speak directly to white Christian nationalism and the churches that sanctify it. Pastors who wrap the cross in the flag. Congregations that bless borders more than babies. Theologians who preach personal salvation while defending structural inequality. He would repeat what he once said of the church. That when it becomes an archdefender of the status quo, it ceases to be the headlight of justice and becomes a taillight of tradition. He would say that any Christianity silent in the face of oppression is not the gospel but an irrelevant social club.

He would address white moderates and white liberals with the same fire he had from a Birmingham jail cell. He would say, again, that the greatest obstacle to freedom is not the open racist but those white liberals who prefer “order” to justice, “negative peace” to the presence of righteousness, civility to truth. He would tell those who police the tone of protest, who ask for patience while people are suffocating, that “shallow understanding from people of good will” is still injustice.

Hallelujah.

He would turn to the media and say that neutrality in the face of cruelty is participation in oppression and complicity in the evil. He would indict the language that sanitizes racism as “anxiety.” State violence as “controversy.” Fascist policy as “politics.” Dr. King would call it what it is. He would call it moral laundering. He would say that to normalize domination is to help administer it.

He would look at the philanthropic class and ask why in the hell inequality has become a branding opportunity. Why poverty is endlessly studied and rarely ended. Why diversity is celebrated while ownership and control remain untouched. He would ask why charity is allowed to substitute for justice and why repair is always postponed.

He would look at the treatment of immigrants and remember that he once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He would say that borders do not suspend morality, that legality does not absolve cruelty, that the stranger at the gate is still a neighbor in the eyes of god. He would remind the nation that he called the Good Samaritan a radical because he crossed boundaries others said were sacred.

And he would speak to the protesters and the oppressed with the same truth he always spoke. Church, remember when he said that the riot is the language of the unheard.

The riot means people have been pushed past the last polite option. The riot means the nation is being told “somethin’ is broken.” The riot means the oppressed are speaking in the only language power notices. The riot means the country is being confronted with its own violence. The riot means the system is being indicted. The riot means the nation has reached a moral crossroads.

Dr. King would ask the question that still terrifies this nation: Who is willing to pay a real price? Not a tweet. Not a march. Not a slogan. But economic risk, political rupture, social exile, and even the loss of your own life. He would say, as he did in 1968, that the problem is not that we are trying to do too much, but that we are trying to do too little. That we are waiting for a white supremacist system to betray its own founding principles to save and heal us.

Then, Saints, he would address this strange, haunted love affair America has with his memory. He would say, “You quote my dream and ignore my diagnosis. You celebrate my birthday and resist my message. You honor my name and fear my analysis. You love me embalmed because a dead prophet cannot organize, cannot disrupt markets, cannot demand justice finally.”

He would remind them that when he was alive, he was called dangerous, divisive, and un-American. That he was surveilled, slandered, and threatened. That the same institutions that now canonize him once tried to crush him. Because prophets are always more comfortable once they are silent.

And then he would return us to the deepest truth of Black Liberation Theology which says that god is not neutral. God is not hovering politely between Pharaoh and the enslaved. God is not balancing between Empire and the crucified. God is in the exodus, not the palace. God is with the poor, the undocumented, the uninsured, the incarcerated, the targeted, the disposable. God is not impressed by national anthems sung over mass suffering.

He would say what he said in his final book, Where Do We Go From Here? King said that “White America must recognize that justice for Black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society.” Not diversity brochures and symbolism. Radical changes.

King would say, as he always did, that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, but only when hands pull it. That faith without restructuring is sentimentality. That prayer without redistribution is performance. That unity without repair is a lie that protects the powerful.

So tomorrow, when they say his name, when they quote him, remember this: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not a mascot of harmony. He was a critic of Empire. He did not give us a dream to admire. He gave us a nightmare to confront! He warned that a society that chooses order over justice, property over people, and comfort over conscience ain’t just flawed, it is spiritually dying.

Beloved children of the sun, a dead King is easy to praise. But a living gospel still demands everything. He would say he had a dream and America answered it with a bullet. That the bullet was America’s real reply to the dream.

He would say, I offered y’all a vision of multiracial democracy, economic justice, demilitarization, and beloved community, and you answered with state surveillance, slander, and an assassin’s rifle. You answered not because the dream was naive, but because it was dangerous. Because it threatened the architecture of white supremacy, the profits of war, and the moral cover of capitalism.

And then he would draw the line straight to now. He would say, that when a nation answers a dream with a bullet, it is telling you somethin’ about itself.

He would say that the same spirit that pulled the trigger in 1968 is alive in every policy that lets people die for lack of healthcare. Every law that criminalizes migration while sanctifying wealth. Every police bullet that is justified as law and order. Every prison cell that disappears a life. Every bomb dropped in the name of security.

He would say that the bullet is not only metal. It is bureaucratic. It is legislative. It is economic. It is slow. It is normalized. It is called “policy.”

And he would say this moment is another such crossroads for America. He would say that once again, America is being confronted with the choice between transformation and repression. Between dismantling injustice and doubling down on it. Once again, those who name the truth are being labeled dangerous, divisive, unpatriotic. Once again, the state is expanding its machinery of punishment while shrinking its commitments to care. Once again, the dream is being answered not with structural change, but with force, surveillance, and law.

Dr. King would remind us that every empire eventually reaches the moment when it must decide whether it will be reformed or whether it will rely on violence to preserve itself. And he would say that America, in killing its prophets, has too often chosen the second.

And then he would leave us with the question that still hangs over this country in 2026 like smog. America, will you keep turning dreams into martyrs? America, will you keep converting hope into headstones? America, will you keep answering calls for justice with cages, bullets, and budgets for war? America, will you keep sanctifying wealth while sacrificing the vulnerable? America, will you keep choosing empire over humanity and calling it Manifest Destiny?

Or will you finally do what you refused to do when I was alive? Not admire the dream, Not quote the speech. Not canonize the man. But dismantle the racist, capitalist system that made the bullet necessary?

Let us pray.

God of justice and memory, on this Martin Luther King Day, keep us from loving the dream more than the work. Keep us from honoring the man while ignoring the message.

Give us courage to build the justice he preached, the community he envisioned, and the peace that only truth can make. In his name and in your holy demand, let the church say Amen, Amen, and Amen.

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