October 16, Ordinary 29C (Luke 18:1–8)
Luke says this story is about prayer. But the widow keeps asking for justice.
My husband and I were born and bred in the Upper Midwest. When our son moved to Atlanta, we got our first exposure to that part of the South. One of the first places we visited was the Martin Luther King Jr. Center. We toured the old Sweet Auburn neighborhood and the house where King grew up. We checked out the exhibits about the civil rights movement and heard stories about the lives of King and his family.
At the gift shop, I bought a book: No Turning Back: My Summer with Daddy King, by Episcopal priest Gurdon Brewster. I ended up reading the whole book on the plane home.
In 1961, Brewster was a seminary student in New York, and he spent the summer working with Martin Luther King Sr. and his son at Ebenezer Baptist. He worked with the youth group, and he tried to put together some special events for integrated youth groups. He had a couple of successes, a lot of setbacks, and some close calls.
