Liberty community gathers to remember Martin Luther King Jr., celebrate unity in Christ

Liberty University looked back on the legacy of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday during Celebrate Unity: A Reflection of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The event, hosted by LU One’s Opportunity & Enrichment Office, welcomed students, faculty, and staff on the first day of the spring semester to the Montview Student Union, Alumni Ballroom to honor the inspirational work of King and celebrate how his dream and vision is still alive today.

Associate Director of Strategic Projects and Alliances for Opportunity & Enrichment Walter Virgil introduced the event by reminding attendees of the purpose.

“Today is about a message, a message that confronted the nation, challenged consciences, and called America to examine its own participation in injustice, division, a dehumanization,” he said. “The life and leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. emerged in a moment where evil had normalized and discrimination was lawful. His voice forced America to look in the mirror, not to shame but to reckon, not to divide but to heal. For us as believers, this moment matters.”

“Unity is not the absence of difference,” Virgil added. “It is the presence of Christ-like love in the midst of it.”

His remarks were followed by an opening prayer by Liberty President Dondi E. Costin before Liberty’s multiethnic gospel choir LU Praise led the audience in singing “Jehovah” and “You are Worthy of it All.”

Five students representing LU One’s community recited Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. A video was shown featuring many student leaders from around campus encouraging the audience to make a difference and ignite change in their communities.

Gospel Community Church Lead Pastor Brenton Lehman then took the stage to deliver an address focused on spiritual unity and oneness in the body of Christ. Using John 14 and 15, Lehman emphasized Jesus’ prayer for unity in the Church and the importance of depending on the Holy Spirit to achieve “oneness.”

“The Lord has so designed the Christian follower of Jesus, as an individual and the church community of followers, (to be) by nature spirit-dependent things,” Lehman said, noting how in Jesus’ last moments before His death, He spent them communing with His friends around a dinner table.

Lehman said Jesus’ prayer for His disciples and all His followers was to come to Him as one, that for “every tribe, tongue, and nation … a category-defined oneness of heart and soul that is so profoundly countercultural and radically different from anything any human being has ever seen. Jesus had already made it clear: this kind of oneness would require a power and strength that they did not have.”

Lehman said displaying Christ’s message to the world is not done through strategies, human acts of will, miracles, or demonstrations of power.

“You and I are the miracle that’s supposed to sway the world to believe that Jesus is who He says He is. The quality of our community, it turns out, is what determines the credibility of our message.”

Lehman said Christians must depend on the Holy Spirit to reach across differences and establish unity.

“What God has called the Church to is not possible without the Holy Spirit, without the blood of Jesus covering our relationships, without the grace of God beaming from the cross, extending into the space between our relationships. Oneness in the body of Christ is hopeless without these things.”

“With the Holy Spirit of God, enemies are transformed, not just into friends, not just without hostility … but into brothers and sisters,” he added. “It’s not just ‘neighbor love’ that defines the ethics of followers of Jesus. It’s also enemy love.”

Lehman said the call to oneness from Jesus is “piercingly relevant” to our day, and followers must be united for nonbelievers to see a Church that is “sustained by the Holy Spirit” and “looks like the heart of God alive in the world,” rather than divided based on preferences.

“When the church sees us, friends, they’re not meant to see ‘us.’ They are meant to see the face and the heart of God, through a radical and impossible oneness that’s only possible through the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit, alive and at work. One Church, one faith, one baptism, one Lord and Savior and Father of all, Jesus Christ.”