A Revolutionary Radical

"It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or laws; but to break up both, and make new ones."
-- Abraham Lincoln

Meditation:  by Anne Alexander Bingham a poem entitled “It Is Enough”

To know that the atoms

of my body

will remain

to think of them rising

through the roots of a great oak

to live in

leaves, branches, twigs

perhaps to feed the

crimson peony

the blue iris

the broccoli

or rest on water

freeze and thaw

with the seasons

some atoms might become a

bit of fluff on the wing

of a chickadee

to feel the breeze

know the support of air

and some might drift

up and up into space

star dust returning from

whence it came

it is enough to know that

as long as there is a universe

I am a part of it.

Reading: by the Iranian born author Reza Aslan from Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (p. xxiiv – xxvii)

It is a miracle that we know anything at all about the man called Jesus of Nazareth. The itinerant preacher wandering from village to village clamoring about the end of the world, a band of ragged followers trailing behind, was a common sight in Jesus’s time – so common, in fact, that it had become a kind of caricature among the Roman elite…

The first century was an era of apocalyptic expectation among the Jews of Palestine… Countless prophets, preachers, and messiahs tramped through the Holy Land delivering messages of God’s imminent judgment. Many of these so-called false messiahs we know by name. A few are mentioned in the New Testament…

The problem with pinning down the historical Jesus is that, outside of the New Testament, there is almost no trace of the man who would so permanently alter the course of human history…

In the end, there are only two hard historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth upon which we can confidently rely: the first is that Jesus was a Jew who led a popular Jewish movement in Palestine at the beginning of the first century C.E.; the second is that Rome crucified him for doing so. … The Jesus that emerges from this historical exercise – a zealous revolutionary swept up, as all Jews of the era were, in the religious and political turmoil of first-century Palestine – bears little resemblance to the image of the gentle shepherd cultivated by the early Christian community….

Reading: by Stephen Prothero from God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World  (p. 70) 

Jesus means different things to different people in different times and places. Shifting with the cultural, political, and economic winds, images of Jesus are about as stable as the weather in Kansas’s Tornado Alley. In the ancient world, He was the messiah in Jerusalem, a truth teller in Athens, and an emperor in Rome. In the United States, He has been black and white, gay and straight, liberal and conservative, a capitalist and a socialist, a pacifist and a warrior, an athlete and an aesthete, a civil rights agitator and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Muslims embrace him as a prophet, Hindus as an avatar, Buddhists as a bodhisattva. So when Jesus asks, “Who do people say I am?” [in the Gospel of Mark], there is no easy answer, either in His lifetime or in ours.

Reading: by Tim Rice from the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar,” this is from the first song following the Overture, “Heaven on their Minds,” sung by Judas. 

My mind is clearer now. 

At last all too well 

I can see where we all soon will be. 

If you strip away The myth from the man, 

You will see where we all soon will be. Jesus! 

You've started to believe

The things they say of you.

You really do believe

This talk of God is true. 

And all the good you've done

Will soon get swept away.

You've begun to matter more

Than the things you say.

Listen Jesus I don't like what I see.

All I ask is that you listen to me.

And remember, I've been your right hand man all along.

You have set them all on fire.

They think they've found the new Messiah.

And they'll hurt you when they find they're wrong.

I remember when this whole thing began.

No talk of God then, we called you a man.

And believe me, my admiration for you hasn't died.

But every word you say today

Gets twisted 'round some other way.

And they'll hurt you if they think you've lied.

A Revolutionary Radical

A Sermon Delivered on April 20, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

This year, in our family, our Easter and Lenten activities involve a very special religious and cultural observance. Thanks to the initiative of my wife, Elaine, we have procured four tickets for the upcoming revival of the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar.” I think it will be quite an experience.

According to the official website of “Jesus Christ Superstar: Arena Spectacular,” this summer we will “feel all the power and the glory of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar in the most awe-inspiring North American arena tour ever staged.” We will experience “the rock music phenomenon that has entertained audiences worldwide for 40 years.”

The tour will visit over 50 cities, starting with New Orleans on June 9^th. And, in case you are wondering, the show will be at the United Center in Chicago on June 29. Tickets are still available.

* * *

Jesus Christ Superstar has a prominent place in our family. I myself was first introduced to it in the early 1970s. Soon after the album was released my parents bought a copy, and I remember listening to it closely, carefully reading along the words. This was one of my first, and perhaps the most formative exposure to the story of Jesus. I was in elementary school at the time, growing up in Frankfurt, Germany. 

Little did I know at the time, that while I was listening in Frankfurt, a young girl my age was listening to the same music in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was equally impressed. I didn’t meet her until about twenty years later, when Elaine and I met in seminary. 

And so, perhaps it is no surprise that when our children Noah and Sophia were in elementary school, they were introduced to the same music, the same songs, in our home here in Urbana. This was during the years Elaine and I served this church as co-ministers.

On long car trips, when our kids were young, Elaine and I would pass the time by trying to sing the entire “Jesus Christ Superstar” soundtrack from memory, or we would sing along to the CD.

In a newsletter column Elaine wrote in 2001, she recalls the impact Champaign Central High School’s production of the musical had on our kids. It inspired them to “reenact it whenever and wherever possible.” Elaine writes, “they sing the songs everywhere, and loudly.  In the grocery store, at their friends' houses, at the bus stop.  It is a little startling to have little Sophia all of a sudden belt out, “I don't want your blood money!”  And Noah loves to sing the 'theme song'—“Jesus Christ, Superstar, do you think you're what they say you are?”

 Jesus Christ Superstar is a modern passion play – a new take on a tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages, to Lenten observances in Europe. 

And I continue to be impressed with both the music and the message. They bring the familiar characters of the Gospels to life in a new way. Jesus is not an otherworldly prophet, but rather a complicated and conflicted young person, uncertain about his life and calling, torn by conflicting desires. He is a reluctant revolutionary. 

And Judas is not a ruthless traitor, but rather a close friend of Jesus, a firm supporter of his religious and political goals. Judas is a keen observer of the movement that seems to be growing around Jesus, and critical of a rising religious fervor that threatens to undermine the message of Jesus. Judas realizes that as religious and political radicals they are treading on dangerous ground.

The musical touches on religious themes that have been debated since the earliest days of Christianity. How to separate the myth from the man Jesus? As Tim Rice sees it, neither Judas nor Jesus considered him a messiah. This was an idea invented by others. 

* * *

It is baffling how stories of Jesus have continued to fuel our religious imagination for centuries. Jesus inspires ethical arguments about right and wrong, political arguments about the power of church and of state, and theological arguments about the nature of humanity and divinity, and what it might look like if we were able to fully embody God’s will.

To this day, as Stephen Prothero points out, there is no easy answer to the question, “Who is Jesus?” And, amazingly, the question continues to be controversial and loaded. 

Maybe you heard about the new statue of Jesus that was recently installed in front of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Davidson, North Carolina. It is a life-sized bronze sculpture of a man huddled under a blanket on a park bench, with face and hands obscured. If you drive by, it is easy to mistake the statue for an actual homeless person. And in fact, a neighborhood women driving by called the police when she first saw it. 

Only at second glance do most people realize it is a statue. And only when looking more closely do they see that the bare feet sticking out under the blanket have nail wounds in them, and then realize the homeless person under the blanket is supposed to be Jesus. As you might imagine, not all Christians in Davidson, North Carolina appreciate this depiction of Christ. They prefer to imagine Jesus as exalted rather than downtrodden.

Jesus has been imagined black and white, gay and straight, liberal and conservative. There is no end to the debates about who Jesus was, or who Jesus might be if he walked the earth today. For instance, yesterday this interpretation was forwarded to me via Facebook: 

“Jesus was a radical nonviolent revolutionary who hung around with lepers, hookers, and crooks; wasn’t American and never spoke English; was anti-wealth, anti-death penalty, anti-public prayer (Mt 6:5); but was never anti-gay, never mentioned abortion or birth control, never called the poor lazy, never justified torture, never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest Nazarenes, never asked a leper for a copay; and was a long-haired, brown-skinned homeless community-organizing… Middle Eastern Jew.” Of course that’s only if you actually believe what’s in the Bible. (based on remarks by actor/comedian John Fugelsang)

* * *

“Who is Jesus?” continues to be a controversial and loaded question. This is also what Reza Aslan realized when his book on Jesus of Nazareth was published last summer. A groundswell of Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists were “furious that a Muslim published a book about Christianity’s origins.” (Alexander Nazaryan) 

But the thesis of the book is not particularly provocative. The portrait of Jesus as a religious radical and political revolutionary draws on the works of well-known religious scholars and historians, some of which were published over a century ago.

Aslan describes Jesus as a man of “profound contradictions, one day preaching a message of radical exclusion, the next, of benevolent universalism.” But more striking than his speculations about Jesus, is Aslan’s description of the political and cultural landscape in which the religious beliefs of Jesus’s followers gradually developed. 

Those were wild and desperate times in the ancient Near East. Palestine was occupied by the armies of Rome. Jews lived in poverty and oppression, exploited by the Roman rulers and the complicit Jewish religious elite. And Jesus was by no means the only Jewish leader who challenged Rome. 

Three years after his death, in the year 36, there was the so-called Revolt of the Samaritan. In 44 there was the Revolt of Theudas, in 46 there was the Revolt of Jacob and Simon, and in the year 66 there was the so-called “Great Revolt” of the Jews. All of these revolts were crushed by Rome. And in response to the Great Revolt, Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem, and obliterated the Temple, and cast the Jewish people into exile.

It was in this political context that Paul wrote his letters to the early Christian congregations throughout the empire. And it was in the wake of these revolts that the Gospels were written. Understanding this context goes a long way toward explaining why several of the Gospel writers went to great lengths to distance themselves from the Jews, and to emphasize the otherworldly implications of Jesus’s life and teaching – the gentle, peaceful incarnation of a loving God – rather than the radical revolutionary message that clearly challenged the power of Rome. 

The revolution Jesus envisioned during his lifetime – God’s reign on earth - did not come pass. And yet the life Jesus had lived continued to inspire his followers, and led them to reinterpret “not only Jesus’s mission and identity, but also the very nature and definition of the Jewish messiah.”

Crucifixions were not uncommon under Roman rule. It was a well-established form of execution for common criminals and enemies of the state. Also the notion of resurrection was not unheard of. The prophet Isaiah imagined a resurrection of the dead, with gravestones cracking open, and the earth coughing up the buried masses. Ancient Egyptians and Persians also believed in a resurrection of the dead. But the resurrection of one lone individual was unusual. Imagining Jesus resurrected, and as a living presence among them, was something that set early Christians apart.

As Reza Aslan puts it, 

“The resurrection solves an insurmountable problem, one that would have been impossible for the disciples to ignore: Jesus’s crucifixion invalidates his claim to be the messiah and successor to David. According to the Law of Moses, Jesus’s crucifixion actually marks him as the accursed of God: “Anyone hung on a tree [that is, crucified] is under God’s curse,” [it says in the Book of Deuteronomy]. But if Jesus did not actually die – if his death were merely a prelude to his spiritual evolution – then the cross would no longer be a curse or a symbol of failure. It would be transformed into a symbol of victory.” (p. 176)

* * *

Who was Jesus? What is the meaning of his life and death? How can we make sense of the resurrection story? Men and women have grappled with these questions for centuries. Some believe they have found a final answer to each of them. Me – I’m not so sure. And in fact, I prefer to keep kicking these questions around. 

Some believe Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. I prefer to believe that we are all God’s children, each of us an incarnation of the Spirit of Life, within each of us a seed of divinity, each of us endowed with the capacity to practice compassion and kindness, each of us able to live a life devoted to justice and love.

I prefer to believe there is a miraculous spirit of life, a profound and powerful force at the heart of all existence, a spirit that cannot be contained, not even by death. It is a spirit that continues to grow, and change, and flourish. It is the spirit of rebirth and of countless resurrections, as the natural world escapes the icy grip of winter, and awakens to warmth and sunshine, to the green grass and bird song of spring.

The story of Easter tells us is that there is a miraculous spirit at work within us, and all things, a spirit that eternally binds each to all. There is a spirit that, like the atoms in our body, will remain, in countless manifestations, through endless transformations. Like our very atoms that one day may rise through the roots of a great oak to live in leaves, branches, twigs… or rest on water, freeze and thaw with the seasons…. or might drift up and up into space, stardust returning from whence it came. 

May the stories of Easter open our eyes and ears 

to the miracle of new life all around us.

May we be inspired by a vision of love and justice, 

that embraces all people

that reminds us that we are all sisters and brothers,

sons and daughters of humanity.

And that when we join together in love,

each of us can be a superstar.

And together we can save the world.

Amen.

Faith in Action or Inaction

"A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all." 
-- Georges Bernanos

Reading: by Rebecca Parker from an essay entitled “What Shall We Do with All This Beauty?” (Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now, p. 123)

… We are living in an ugly time. I will not recite the litany of oppression, injustice, and environmental degradation because it is all too familiar, repeated before our eyes every day as we read the newspaper and watch the news…

The times we live in demand something of us. In fact, I believe they demand more from us than many of us ever expected. One of my friends says, “Everyone likes to have the best asked of them.” I believe that we are living in a time when the best is asked of us, and this best is far beyond what we thought we were capable of or what we thought we would ever be asked to do. I believe that in rising to the occasion of what is asked of us now, we will discover a depth of strength and richness of love and courage that we did not know we could claim or achieve. I believe that in rising to the challenge of our times we will wade into the mystery of life to a depth we did not know was available to us.

Reading: by William Schulz from an essay entitled “Our Concern for Social Justice” (A Unitarian Universalist Pocket Guide, 1983, p. 55) 

Though it may be cliché by now, it is nonetheless still true that “not to decide is to decide,” that neutrality in the face of injustice is close to the equivalent of endorsement. This is most obvious when the institution itself is forced to be an active agent of the tyrannous as it was, for instance, during the Vietnam War when a 10% federal tax was placed on all telephone charges to pay for the war effort. To ignore the tax in that case, to carry on “business as usual,” was self-evidently to contribute to military operations. The inseparability of religion and politics is often more subtle but nevertheless quite real.

For every decision, whether tacit or explicit, about the use of our institutional resources, our power, is a political decision and a reflection of what we value. This is not to suggest, please understand, that the church’s only business or even its primary business ought to be social action. But it is to say that every act, including the tacit choice to remain passive, is a political statement with implications for the public realm… 

The question, then, is not whether we possess the power and can use it but rather whether we are willing to use it, self-consciously and explicitly, in the interests of our ideals. The issue is whether we squander our power or incarnate it. Let me suggest that Unitarian Universalism at its best offers us impetus for incarnation.

Reading: by the psychologist and scholar of Eastern philosophy Ram Dass from How Can I Help? (co-authored by Paul Gorman, p. 5) 

Caring is a reflex. Someone slips, your arm goes out.  A car is in the ditch, you join the others and push.  A colleague at work has the blues, you let her know you care.  It all seems natural and appropriate.  You live, you help.

When we join together in this spirit, action comes more effortlessly, and everybody ends up nourished.  Girding against the flood… setting up a community meeting… preparing a funeral… people seem to know their part.  We sense what’s called for, or if we don’t, and feel momentarily awkward, someone comes quickly with an idea, and it’s just right, and we’re grateful…  

We take pleasure not only in what we did but in the way we did it.  On the one hand, the effort was so natural it might seem pointless… to make something of it.  It was what it was.  Yet if we stop to consider why it felt so good, we sense that some deeper process was at work.  Expressing our innate generosity, we experienced our “kin”-ship, our “kind”-ness. It was “Us.” In service we taste unity.

Faith in Action or Inaction

A Sermon Delivered on April 13, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

Deeds not creeds. This is one of the catchy phrases Unitarian Universalists have long used to convey the essence of our faith. Deeds not creeds, means we are more interested in action, and less interested in arguments about the nature of God, doctrines on sin and salvation, or questions about life after death. We are more interested in this life, than the possibility of a next life. And if there is a possibility of heaven, we assume it is up to us to create it, beginning right here, right now. Deeds not creeds, we say. 

Or as William Schulz puts it, “No matter what our theological beliefs, we… would be hard-pressed, I think, not to agree in some sense with the Koran that “one hour of justice is worth seventy years of prayer.” Religion to us must have an impact on the world.”

The task of putting our faith into action is at the very heart of our religious tradition and conviction. And that is why Nancy Dietrich’s remarks this morning about our next two-year initiative are really about much more than our Social Action Committee’s attempt to tackle one of the goals of our latest strategic plan. Our effort to promote justice is at the very heart of our congregation’s mission. More important than what we say, it is the practical application of our ideals. It is how we attempt to embody and incarnate our beliefs, and change the world. 

This is what we say. But changing the world is easier said than done.

* * *

Part of our challenge going forward is that we are of many minds. We each have our own assumptions and our own convictions about what the biggest problems confronting us are. Is it population explosion? Is it corporate greed? Is it the overabundance of money in politics? Is it militarism? Is it poverty? Is it climate change?

Our celebrated differences and diversity of belief can make it difficult to reach agreement on what, exactly, we should do and what we should leave undone. 

Rebecca Parker says we live in ugly times, and that in the face of injustice and oppression something is asked of us. What makes this all the more difficult, is that there is no universal agreement on how best to respond to the challenges of our time. 

How shall we meet these challenges? Rebecca Parker writes, 

“First of all, our times demand that we exercise our capacity for prophetic witness. By prophetic witness, I mean our ability to see what is happening, to say what is happening, and to ensure that our actions – personal and collective – accord with what we know… A prophet is one who is able to name those places in our lives where we are resisting what needs to be known, closing our eyes that what is really happening, silencing what the world is telling us. Silence and denial create an environment in which violence and evil flourish. 

But to see what is happening, to say what is happening, and then to act in accordance with what we know is no simple task. It often means breaking down our own silence and numbness…”

Confronting the ugliness of our time can be profoundly dispiriting. Seeing the suffering, hearing the voices of the poor and powerless can be heartbreaking. Once we try to take on the injustices of the world, once we begin to educate ourselves, once we begin to understand some of the underlying causes and connections, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.

Exposing ourselves to the suffering of others can remind us of times when we ourselves were struggling through experiences of pain and powerlessness. If we try to open our minds and hearts to the grief and hardship of others, we may be reminded of times when we too were grieving and hurting. And so we may be tempted to fall into the habit of closing our eyes and ears. We turn our attention to the more manageable and immediate challenges of our own lives – holding down a job, supporting a family, maintaining a home.

The spiritual activist and teacher Joanna Macy believes that “the primary barrier that prevents us from doing what is necessary to save the planet is our inability to face the realities of our world.”

“We can watch the images flicker on our television screens, but to know what is happening fully, to feel it viscerally, to open ourselves to it completely is something that many of us cannot accomplish. We may see, but it is only out of the corners of our eyes. …Our despair keeps us from being able to see [clearly]. Through our inability to be present to the depths of our own grief and fear, we shut our eyes to the world,” she says.

At times when I feel overwhelmed by the ugliness and injustices that deserve my attention and engagement, I try to remind myself that we don’t have to do everything. In fact, we can’t. But we can do something. And in fact, we must.

And it is very helpful to be a part of a religious community like this one, which reminds me that I am not alone. I find inspiration and draw strength from others who share my concerns and who share my desire to somehow make a difference. 

* * *

This morning we have heard of four important issues, each of which could potentially be a major focus of our congregational social justice efforts. If you have been reading the materials published in recent weeks, you may already have gained some background information on Environmental Stewardship, on Homelessness, on Immigrant Justice, and on Prison Justice. You may know about the issues surrounding the protection of the Mahomet Aquifer, or the environmental impact of the Keystone oil pipeline that runs from Western Canada to Illinois. You may know the number of homeless in our community in need of shelter, or the number of immigrants in need of advocacy and social services. You may know about the problems of mass incarceration in this country, which is yet another manifestation of insidious racism. 

If you haven’t had a chance to educate yourself on these issues, I encourage you to do so. Gathering information and disseminating information, is one important first step, if our goal is to overcome silence and numbness, and to face the realities of the world.

Ram Dass says, when it comes to social action, it’s sometimes enough simply to share information with others: wage rates of women compared to men; the unemployment statistics of minorities; the number of children hungry and homeless. We trust these facts to speak for themselves. We believe the injustice will strike others as injustice, just as it struck us. We believe a sense of collective understanding and compassion will take hold. 

But then things get trickier. As he points out, 

“much of the time we come into social action – knocking on a door with a petition, addressing a meeting, writing a pamphlet – and we’re just a little self-righteous. We’re convinced we’ve got something to say, something we’re “correct” about…. Some of the time this attitude it blatant; at other times it’s more understated. But at some level what we’re communicating is the feeling that we know, others don’t, and we’ve got to Change Minds. Changing minds is a tricky game, especially when it is being fed with urgency and self-righteousness. There’s often an air of superiority in what we say. People instinctively back off. They feel they are being told [what they “should” do]. Social action, they understand intuitively, ought to be fully voluntary if it’s to have power and endurance. But we’re not quite leaving them enough room when we set about trying to change minds.” (p. 158)

These words certainly strike a chord for me. If I stop and think about it, I realize I have often taken on the role of someone who has something to say, with some very clear ideas about social wrongs, and very clear ideas on what I think others ought to do to make things right. I know I can sometimes be preachy… (Perhaps not surprising for a preacher.)

And I know that I have been on the receiving end of others’ sermons – whether preached from a pulpit, or delivered over a potluck dinner in casual conversation – that seem a bit self-righteous. And I have felt myself inwardly back off. 

Sometimes, when we try to engage with others around issues of justice and injustice, we can find ourselves focusing on different issues. And the air of urgency and slight self-righteousness can end up leaving us stuck and divided – unable to agree on which course of action to take. We can end up like a crowd of cranky blind men and women, standing around an elephant, unable to agree whether we are dealing with a tree trunk, a branch or a rope, as we grab hold of a leg or trunk or tail.

* * *

Each of us can be a prophet. Each of us has the capacity to unleash prophetic powers. Each of us can open our eyes and ears to the world around us. We can open our minds and hearts to people around us, and to share our perceptions frankly and honestly and humbly. 

The Unitarian Universalist scholar Dan McKanan recently published a book entitled Prophetic Encounters: Religion and the American Radical Tradition. In it, he documents a long and proud tradition of social activism in America. He links the abolitionist movement, the worker’s movement, and the environmentalist movement, highlighting the roles of leaders like Frederick Douglass, Dorothy Day and Starhawk.

It is a mistake to imagine these three as separate, self-contained movements, he says, for they are in fact all part of a larger, ongoing activist tradition. And this tradition draws on distinct religious themes. “Activism is almost a form of religion,” he says. “It occupies much of the same psychological and sociological space. People are drawn to religious communities and radical organizations in order to connect their daily routines to a more transcendent vision of heaven, salvation, or a new society.” (p. 4)

And like Rebecca Parker, Dan McKanan sees a prophetic dynamic at work. “[Whenever] human beings encounter one another deeply, in the midst of their struggles for freedom and equality and community, prophetic power is unleashed… Prophetic power enables people to speak boldly in the face of brickbats and bludgeons and fire hoses. It empowers them to tell new stories and build new communities.” (p. 3)

* * *

Each of us can be a prophet. Each of us has the capacity to unleash prophetic powers. Each of us can open our eyes and ears to the world around us. Each of us has the power to change the world.

The question is not whether we possess the power and can use it but rather whether we are willing to use it, self-consciously and explicitly, in the interests of our ideals, Schulz says.

Yes, we will face challenges. Yes, we must work to overcome our differences to build community and consensus. But our ability and our longing to do so is rooted in our deepest nature. Caring is a reflex. Someone slips, your arm goes out. A friend has the blues, you let her know you care.  It all seems natural and appropriate.  You live, you help. When we join together in this spirit, action comes more effortlessly, and everybody ends up nourished.  

When we join together in service, we discover a depth of strength and richness of love and courage we did not know we could claim or achieve. And we will wade into the mystery and wonder of life to a depth we did not know was available to us. 

We don’t have to do everything. In fact, we can’t. But we can do something. And in fact, we must. We can get involved. We can join the conversation. (We can vote.) We can do our part to help build community, seek inspiration, promote justice, and find peace.

May we find new depths of courage and commitment.

May we be inspired to join together in service.

May we open our eyes and ears, 

and do our part to build a better world. 

Amen.