Struggle Sun, 13th March, 2014
Today was a big day for me spiritually and emotionally. This blog entry, in addition to being late, is not about poetry, not about flowers, not about warm hugs and acceptance. It's about the very hard work—the overwhelming, painful work—of putting our faith into action.
I had the privilege of serving as worship assistant this morning for a moving Palm Sunday service led by our intern minister Cecilia Owen. We collaborated on some of the readings. We would start with the traditional reading about Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey. Then I added a reading from Unitarian "prophet" and abolitionist Theodore Parker. The rest was all Cecilia, who turned it into a meaningful and challenging call to social justice.
What made it real and challenging was our guest Romona Taylor Williams, who leads a local non-profit working on the challenges that face low income people and especially people of color in our North St. Louis neighborhoods. Bridging the economic and racial divide between those north of Delmar and those south became the topic that energized the service and made it real.
Romona spoke of the crumbling housing stock, the homelessness, the unemployment and, perhaps most disturbing, the gun violence that plagues too many of our neighborhoods. How can we sit in our beautiful and comfortable sanctuary, sing our lovely hymns and talk about our favorite European trips while just a few blocks away young people are dying in the streets? Romona's neighbor and dear friend is at this moment still grieving the loss of her 18-year-old grandson who was gunned down in her street last Thursday.
Parker knew something about having the courage of his convictions, having once earned the reputation of the most hated man in America in the mid-19th Century for his strong stand against the scourge of slavery. And the wakeup call for a comfortable professional-class America is still ringing.
I fear I may not have the strength to answer the call.
We say we believe in the worth and dignity of every person. Easy to say. Harder to do. Especially when those who desperately need social justice are so often out of sight, out of mind. And when the needs come and find us, and look us in the eye, how many of us—myself included—find ourselves looking away, unable to look injustice in the face.
Will we have the strength and courage of our convictions? Or will we shrink away to the comfort of our sanctuary, sipping from our cups and saucers and contemplating T.S. Eliot?
I'll leave you with the words of Theodore Parker, who in 1852 proclaimed that our faith must be one of "higher, moral courage, which can look danger and death in the face unawed and undismayed; the courage that can encounter loss of ease, of wealth, of friends, of your own good name; the courage that can face a world full of howling and of scorn,—ay, of loathing and of hate; can see all these with a smile, and, suffering it all, can still toil on, conscious of the result, yet fearless still.... The courage that dares resist evil, popular, powerful, anointed evil, yet does it with good, and knows it shall thereby overcome."
Today was a big day for me spiritually and emotionally. This blog entry, in addition to being late, is not about poetry, not about flowers, not about warm hugs and acceptance. It's about the very hard work—the overwhelming, painful work—of putting our faith into action.
I had the privilege of serving as worship assistant this morning for a moving Palm Sunday service led by our intern minister Cecilia Owen. We collaborated on some of the readings. We would start with the traditional reading about Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey. Then I added a reading from Unitarian "prophet" and abolitionist Theodore Parker. The rest was all Cecilia, who turned it into a meaningful and challenging call to social justice.
What made it real and challenging was our guest Romona Taylor Williams, who leads a local non-profit working on the challenges that face low income people and especially people of color in our North St. Louis neighborhoods. Bridging the economic and racial divide between those north of Delmar and those south became the topic that energized the service and made it real.
Romona spoke of the crumbling housing stock, the homelessness, the unemployment and, perhaps most disturbing, the gun violence that plagues too many of our neighborhoods. How can we sit in our beautiful and comfortable sanctuary, sing our lovely hymns and talk about our favorite European trips while just a few blocks away young people are dying in the streets? Romona's neighbor and dear friend is at this moment still grieving the loss of her 18-year-old grandson who was gunned down in her street last Thursday.
Parker knew something about having the courage of his convictions, having once earned the reputation of the most hated man in America in the mid-19th Century for his strong stand against the scourge of slavery. And the wakeup call for a comfortable professional-class America is still ringing.
I fear I may not have the strength to answer the call.
We say we believe in the worth and dignity of every person. Easy to say. Harder to do. Especially when those who desperately need social justice are so often out of sight, out of mind. And when the needs come and find us, and look us in the eye, how many of us—myself included—find ourselves looking away, unable to look injustice in the face.
Will we have the strength and courage of our convictions? Or will we shrink away to the comfort of our sanctuary, sipping from our cups and saucers and contemplating T.S. Eliot?
I'll leave you with the words of Theodore Parker, who in 1852 proclaimed that our faith must be one of "higher, moral courage, which can look danger and death in the face unawed and undismayed; the courage that can encounter loss of ease, of wealth, of friends, of your own good name; the courage that can face a world full of howling and of scorn,—ay, of loathing and of hate; can see all these with a smile, and, suffering it all, can still toil on, conscious of the result, yet fearless still.... The courage that dares resist evil, popular, powerful, anointed evil, yet does it with good, and knows it shall thereby overcome."
