To the rupture convulsing our nation’s heartland
Assembled by Ken Sehested
Invocation. “Within our darkest night, / You kindle the fire / that never dies away.” —“Within Our Darkest Night,” J. Berthier, Taizé
Call to worship. “Jesus is the reality of which Caesar is the parody.” —N.T. Wright, New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop
§ § §
Matt Moberg
Minneapolis pastor and co-chaplain of the
Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team
“If you’re a church posting
prayers for peace and unity today
while my city bleeds in the street,
miss me with that softness you only
wear when it costs you nothing.
“Don’t dress avoidance up as holiness.
Don’t call silence “peacemaking.”
Don’t light a candle and think it
substitutes for showing up.
“Tonight an ICE agent took a photo of me
next to my car, looked me in the eye and told me,
“We’ll be seeing you soon.”
“Not metaphor.”
Not hyperbole.
A threat dressed up in a badge and a paycheck.
“Peace isn’t what you ask for
when the boot is already on someone’s neck.
Peace is what the powerful ask for
when they don’t want to be interrupted.
“Unity isn’t neutral.
Unity that refuses to name violence
is just loyalty to the ones holding the weapons.
“Stop using scripture like chloroform.
Stop calling your fear “wisdom.”
Stop pretending Jesus was crucified
because he preached good vibes and personal growth.
“You don’t get to quote scripture like a lullaby
while injustice stays wide awake.
You don’t get to ask God to “heal the land”
if you won’t even look at the wound.
“There is a kind of peace that only exists
because it refuses to tell the truth.
That peace is a lie.
And lies don’t grow anything worth saving.
“The scriptures you love weren’t written to keep
things calm. They were written to set things right.
“And sometimes the most faithful thing you can do
is stop praying around the pain and start standing inside it.
“If that makes you uncomfortable—good.”
§ § §
Hymn of lament. “Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear / It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.” —Bob Dylan, “Not Dark Yet”
Eucharistic invitation. Fear displacement is the most important pastoral duty we have in our communities, to heal the dis-ease of anxious hearts and timid decorum, thereby unleashing confident defiance of the vindictive politics of distraction, panic, and fury. Jesus beckons us to the Table for just this purpose, to restore the daring, blessed assurance that the world—despite much evidence to the contrary—is in God’s hands and is promised only to the meek who know their true and only source of security, an assurance which not even threat of death can dislodge. Fearless citizens are Caesar’s greatest nightmare. —Ken Sehested
§ § §
When a Baptized Conscience Refuses Anesthesia
Rev. Allison Burns-LaGreca
When a baptized conscience refuses anesthesia,
the senses sharpen like flint.
The air smells of iron and smoke.
The hymns echo hollow in rooms where truth has been embalmed.
Every silence starts to speak.
I walk through the streets with my collar tight against my throat,
feeling the pulse beneath concrete,
bones of old empires grinding under asphalt,
their promises bleaching in the sun
like abandoned crosses on a hill.
Water remembers me.
It remembers the day it claimed my body,
the day oil traced a cross on my skin
and said, Wake up.
You belong to God now.
There is no numbing that kind of claim.
When a baptized conscience refuses anesthesia,
sleep fractures.
Dreams fill with children calling names we forgot to learn,
with borders stitched into flesh,
with angels standing guard at detention centers,
their wings singed, their eyes unblinking.
I try to pray politely.
You do not let me.
Instead, you bring me fig trees stripped bare,
coins clinking in Judas’ pocket,
Pilate washing hands that never come clean.
You set a table in the presence of drones and ledgers,
and ask me to eat anyway.
Jesus, I see you still refusing the wine mixed with myrrh.
Still choosing pain over forgetting.
Still loving with nerve endings intact.
Still breathing forgiveness through cracked lips
while the crowd rehearses its excuses.
How dare I ask to be spared consciousness
when love itself stayed awake.
When a baptized conscience refuses anesthesia,
hope is not soft.
It is bone-deep.
It is a fist closed around a seed in winter.
It is Mary’s song rattling the palace windows at midnight.
It is Amos pounding his staff into the marble floor
until justice echoes like thunder.
I feel it in my chest, Lord.
This burning.
This grief that refuses to curdle into hatred.
This anger that keeps choosing compassion
even when it would be easier to disappear.
Do not let them lull me, God.
Not with comfort.
Not with patriotism dressed as piety.
Not with the lie that this is just how the world works.
Keep my conscience unsedated.
Let it ache.
Let it imagine another way.
Let it see resurrection even while standing at the grave.
Because when a baptized conscience refuses anesthesia,
the empire trembles,
the stone begins to shift,
and somewhere beneath the weight of brutality and lies,
new life draws breath
and waits for dawn.
§ § §
The best concise summary on this topic: “How We Got Here: The Racist Myth of a ‘Broken’ Immigration System” by Craig Nash
§ § §
Of the Empire
Mary Oliver, published in “Red Bird”
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
§ § §
Word. “The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, say to this people: You are a land that is not cleansed. Your officials are like wolves tearing their prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain. You have practiced extortion, committed robbery, oppressed the poor and needy, and tyrannized the immigrant.” —adapted from Ezekiel 22
§ § §
Conscientious Objector
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself: I will not give him a leg up.
Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.
I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much, I will not map him the route to any man’s door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living, that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city are safe with me; never through me
Shall you be overcome.
§ § §
Benediction. “We must do what they fear—tell the truth, spread the truth. This is the most powerful weapon against this regime of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. Everyone has this weapon. So make use of it.” —Alexi Navalny, a lawyer, human rights and anti-corruption activist, who died in a Russian prison, in his posthumously published memoir, “Patriot”
Recessional. “We are not alone . . . for God is with us.” —“We Are Not Alone,” The Riverside Choir
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