Gay minister remembers King as a follower of Jesus

Gay minister remembers King as a follower of Jesus

By Gary Barlow

Staff writer

 

Like many, the Rev. Juan Reed remembers how he felt on learning that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated.

Reed, an openly gay man who’s now vicar of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Chicago, was a seminarian in 1968 when King was killed. At a special service honoring King Jan. 14 at Lakeview’s St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Reed recalled that King’s death coincided with the beginning of Holy Week, he and other students at the seminary spent long hours in church.

“What I remember very strongly about those days, being in church hour after hour, I kept confusing Jesus with Dr. Martin Luther King,” Reed said. “I remember thinking vividly, ‘Are they talking about King or are they talking about Jesus?’”

Finally, Reed said, he had a revelation.

“Then I remember the insight that it should not be unusual to say that a disciple of Jesus reminds us of Jesus,” Reed said. “More than anything, King followed Jesus.”

As such, Reed said, King took an often-difficult road, a road that requires faith in the commitment to taking action in the face of injustice. Jesus, Reed noted, never told his followers to worship him—he told them instead to emulate his example in their own lives.

“King, like us, was on a pilgrimage,” Reed said. “He was climbing Jacob’s ladder. He was on a spiritual path. All these images of the spiritual life involve risk and movement and action, not just thought.”

Reed, who was inducted last October into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame, said taking those risks can turn challenges into opportunities.

“It’s been the greatest gift to be black, gay and Christian,” Reed said. “When I speak, I’m free, and the more I speak, the more free I become. When I love, I’m free.”

King, he said, like Jesus, would want us to honor his day not by praising him, but by emulating his example.