Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

We turn the corner and walk into a photograph.

All of my life, I've seen grainy photos of the Lorraine Motel, men hunched over, weeping, as Martin Luther King Jr. dies on the concrete. Today the motel in Memphis houses part of the Civil Rights Museum, and curators have taken care to preserve the look and feel of the motel's exterior, down to the 1960s cars parked in the lot.

A young man named Keenan takes our group through the museum. To accommodate another crowd, we start backwards, with the story of the assassination, including questions about James Earl Ray's guilt. Then we walk across the alley and start at the beginning of America's sordid history and enslavement of black people.

Keenan is passionate. When we reach an exhibit of a lunch counter, Keenan asks members of the group to sit in the cherry red, soda fountain seats. The rest of us watch, as he sets the scene of the sit-ins that played such a pivotal role in the civil rights movement. He asks us to start chanting, "Get out. Right now." Then he leans into each volunteer: You're being thrown on the floor. Someone is putting cigarette ashes in your hair. You're being pushed. Prodded. Taunted. Hated.

Just outside Room 306, Keenan stops our group. With the art of a master storyteller, he recounts King's last night and the famous Mountaintop speech.

"And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

"And I don't mind.

"Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!"

Tears roll down our faces, but no one bothers to wipe them away. No one even moves as the voice of this young man carries us to a different time, a different day, when one man was willing to sacrifice everything.

As Keenan finishes, we walk single file, silently past the room where King slept his last night.

"No one dreams of being a tour guide as a kid," Keenan tells us. "But God works in mysterious ways." Then Keenan shares his story of how he came to be our guide that day.

As we leave, we each hug him, some weeping, some drawn inward, but all of us transformed.

I give thanks for Keenan for answering God's unexpected call to serve in an unexpected way. And I wonder how many of us are ever listening to that still small voice, calling us to new life, to be agents of transformation.

Martin Luther King did. So did Keenan. And, I pray, so will you.