PETERSBURG, Va. – On the day that the nation paused to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the keynote speaker at a ceremony Monday in the city where the holiday originated reminded his audience that service to others is based on compassion and some divine intervention.
“If the dream is ever going to become a reality, we must have love for our fellow man,” Bishop Lanier Twyman told a packed sanctuary at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Petersburg, Virginia. “Our love must not just be in words only. Compassion will rearrange your priorities.”
Twyman drew similarities between King’s service to civil rights and the biblical story of the Good Samaritan who stopped to help an injured man when priests and others would not. Like King, Twyman said the Samaritan decided that helping the injured person was more important that what he originally planned to do that day.
“Interruption may be a divine appointment,” he said. “John the Revelator said it like this, ‘My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue but in deed.'”
King lived by that example, and Twyman said today’s society should as well. The Samaritan story, Twyman said, serves as an example of inclusion because it proves that service should not be limited to any one group.
“This Samaritan didn’t ask him if [the injured man] was Black or white because that didn’t matter,” Twyman said. “He didn’t ask him if he was rich or poor because that didn’t matter. He didn’t ask him if he was a Democrat or a Republican because that didn’t matter. He didn’t ask him if he was gay or straight because that didn’t matter. What matters is that there was a need that had to be met. What matters most is that he was in trouble and he needed help.”
Twyman, a bishop at St. Stephen’s Baptist Church in Temple Hills, Maryland, wound down his remarks with a quote from King: “The time is always right to do what’s right.”
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Kaine’s ‘death of childhood’ experience
Before Twyman took the podium, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, a frequent visitor to Tabernacle for the King observances, shared a memory from his childhood that he said inspired him to learn more about King and his legacy.
As a 10-year-old growing up in a Kansas City, Missouri suburb, Kaine recalled him and his brothers being cared for by a grandmotherly-type neighbor while his parents were away. It was the day that King was assassinated, April 4, 1968, and a news bulletin interrupted the normal television programming.
Kaine remembered the initial reaction that the woman he earlier had described as a “sweetheart” gave when the bulletin came on.
“The first words out of her mouth were, ‘Serves that blank right,'” Kaine said to audible gasps and reactions from those in attendance. “I was so confused by that. I call this a ‘death of childhood’ experience because when you’re a youngster, people who treat you nice, well, they’re a good person. People who treat you bad, well, they’re a bad person. It’s just simple. But I’d never had a good person in my life say something so cruel. using language that I know was bad but also celebrating the death of someone.”
Kaine, a former Richmond mayor and Virginia governor, said that experience led him to become a civil-rights attorney and later enter the political arena.
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‘Day of Service’
Following the ceremony, Tabernacle hosted its annual “Day of Service” in its Community Life Center. Volunteers were on hand to offer blood-pressure screenings and demonstrate life-saving techniques, give away food and provide information about influenza and COVID vaccinations. There also was a demonstration of how to administer Narcan to someone who has overdosed on drugs and in need of revival.
“We know that the work that is needed here in the Petersburg community is very vital,” said Paula Starnes, chief operating officer for Aetna Medical, one of the event’s sponsors. Starnes said the people who traditionally attend activities like Monday’s “often don’t know their health care needs because they don’t have time to go to the hospital, they don’t have time to get regular checkups.”
Monday marked the seventh year that Tabernacle has hosted a celebration of King and the day of service.
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