Gandhi broadened King's interpretations of the ethics demonstrated by Jesus, in that Gandhi taught King that Jesus" ethics of "turn the other cheek" and "love your enemies" could be applied to a nation or ethnic group, rather than only conflicts dealing with individuals. King said that from his background he gained his amendable Christian ideals, while from Gandhi he learned his operational technique (Warren 118). .
Another prominent theme within King's sermons is good neighborliness. Whether it is directly stated or implied, it is a recurring theme of Martin Luther King Jr.'s sermons. The idea of good neighborliness demands that all people live together in harmony as equal human beings. A common expression of King's theme of good neighborliness can be seen in the following:.
The real tragedy is that we see people as entities or merely as things. Too seldom do we see people in their true humanness. A spiritual myopia limits our vision to external accidents. We see men as Jews or Gentiles, Catholics or Protestants, Chinese or American, Negroes or whites. We fail to think of them as fellow human beings made from the same basic stuff as we, molded in the same divine image. The priest and the Levite saw only a bleeding body, not a human being like themselves. But the Good Samaritan will always remind us to remove the cataracts or provincialism from our spiritual eyes and see men as men. If the Samaritan had considered the wounded man as a Jew first, he would not have stopped, for the Jews and the Samaritans had no dealings. He saw him as a being first, who was a Jew only by accident. The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human, and therefore, brothers (Warren 124).
King's sermons used words more powerfully than any weapon imaginable. King's words left dazzling impacts on the listeners of his preaching. Martin traveled to India to learn more from an eminent influential figure named Gandhi.