Reflection on The Exodus

by Fr. Dennis McAuliffe

Pastor, Catholic Church of the Holy Comforter

February, 2011

The images that keep me on the journey for justice come through the book of Exodus.

One: it tells us what we have to do. Two: what we can expect. And three: assures us that we will get there.

What do we have to do?

First of all, we must step out trusting in the LORD. This means we must at all times put ourselves under divine protection and guidance. And if we do, there will be a divine cloud leading us by day, and a pillar of fire by night.

Two. To say the least, the journey of the Israelites had numerous difficulties. Their struggles even came down to the basics—food and water. We are struggling with folks who at times need the basics, which comes in the form of access to social service agencies, healthcare needs, and education, to name but a few.

Like the Israelites, on their journey, we can not always be sure what lies before us. So our issue [campaigns] have taken twists and turns and for a time, even elude us. But look at the number of times we’ve gotten to Mount Sinai.

Three: We will get there. This happens when a new congregation signs the covenat that binds us together in God. And yes, we will make it to the land of milk and honey. Where people will exchange bondage for liberty, poverty for plenty, and bias for justice.

We might get struck at times by complacency towards working for justice.

We might feel too weary to work for justice on a given day.

We might even come to doubt our efforts on a given day.

Like the travelers of Exodus, we can be predisposed to complacency, weariness, and doubt.

But we are NOT predestined to be dragged down by them. Do not let negative feelings take the lead in your life.  Instead, take yourself to the one who gives you the strength and courage to keep on keeping on.

As we continue the march of justice, let us join Moses who sang out:

I WILL SING TO THE LORD FOR HE IS GLORIOUSLY TRIUMPHANT

HORSE AND CHARIOT HE HAS CAST INTO THE SEA

MY STRENGTH AND MY COURAGE IS THE LORD AND HE HAS BEEN MY SAVIOR

HE IS MY GOD, I PRAISE HIM;

THE GOD OF MY FATHER I EXTOL HIM

 

“We Need a Moses”

IMPACT Listening Process Kickoff, August, 2012

Min. Erik W. Wikstrom

Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church-Unitarian Universalist

So . . . anybody feeling excited?   Inspired? Okay, but is anybody also feeling a little bit of dread? 

What I mean is, is anybody feeling that they’ve got a bit of a slog ahead?  That it’s not as easy as it should be to get folks from the congregation as involved as you know they should be?  As they, themselves, say they want to be?  Is anybody feeling a little bit weary about returning to the fray to once again battle people who are overscheduled, and under-motivated, and misinformed, and otherwise difficult to get to the table?

If so . . . you’re not alone.  It’s obvious that there are others here who can “feel your pain.”

And this puts me in mind of someone who isn’t here.  The guy was an early organizer, and a really successful one at that.  He was able to mobilize a pretty impressive number of people to make some really substantive changes, not only in their own personal lives but in the systems that ruled the country where they lived.  I mean huge.  This was a guy who set a really ambitious goal of totally transforming conditions for a large group of people . . . and hit the mark.

So why do I think he knows anything about what I’ve been talking about here?  Because change takes time.  The initial change?  Oh that can sometimes come pretty easily.  But the “rooting” of that change?  The establishment of this as the “new normal?”  That can take some time and some real, on-going work.

And as soon as these people hit that phase of the process they started complaining.  And backsliding.  They stopped following through on all of the commitments they’d made.  They even started saying that all this work wasn’t worth it, that they were better off before, and they started saying that the organizer of demanding too much of them, that he had is own agenda and wasn’t really listening to them, that he was too confrontational. 

Can you guess who I’m talking about?

The guy I’m talking about, of course, is Moses who was able to mobilize the Hebrew people to essentially overturn the Egyptian way of life and to free themselves from their bondage.  And this story has resonances all over the place, because there are lots of kinds of bondage, and all kinds of Pharaohs.  And because the very folks who should be most involved in creating the needed transformative changes often grumble the most about them.

“Why didn’t you leave us in Egypt?” they cry.  “At least there we knew where our food was coming from!”  “This manna tastes terrible!”  “What?  Weren’t there any graves in Egypt that you had to bring us out here to die?”

Doesn’t that sound kind of like, “I’d like to help change things in Charlottesville, but I really can’t take two hours out of my schedule to talk about ways of making a difference.” ?  Or what about, “I really can’t commit to asking three of my friends to attend the Action – they’re all way too busy.”?  Or, “I really do want to make a difference, but I just don’t want to have to deal with the traffic at the JPJ Arena.”?

It’s hard to deal with that kind of thing.  And some of you here tonight have been dealing with this kind of thing in your congregations for years now.  Even successful organizers get discouraged.

Yet here we are.  And we are facing a tremendous task.  Not only carrying on the effort we began last year to create something really, radically new in the way the folks in this area collaborate for the good of our youth (and, of course, our entire community),but also to once again mobilize people to dream together of a new challenge for us to engage.  And we do all of this within a context of IMPACT no longer being the new kid on the block – having passed through the initial years of excitement-because-it’s-new to the harder period of sustaining on-going effort – and while we hold up a goal of growth in both depth and breadth and in numbers – can you imagine 4,000 people at the Nehemiah Action of 2017?  We’re talking about doing again what we’ve always done while we create “IMPACT 2.0.”  IMPACT is at a turning point to dream bigger…do you want to be a part of it?

We need a Moses.

And luckily, we’ve got a few of them here.

Now I know that some of you are thinking that any kind of comparison to Moses is overblown.  Well, maybe not so much.  As a Rabi friend from Maine liked to remind people, “Even Moses wasn’t . . . well . . . ‘Moses’.”  For one thing he stuttered; terrible public speaker.  And he had low self esteem.  And he seriously doubted that he could take on the job.

And then, once he had it, it was pointed out to him, by his helpful father-in-law, that he couldn’t do it himself.  He needed to delegate the job, to spread the work around, to involve others.   No one can do it all by themselves.

We need a Moses to lead IMPACT into the next phase of it’s evolution, and to lead Charlottesville into more good for more people, and friends I am here to tell you tonight that we are the Moses we need.

Let Justice Roll
A Reflection on the Occasion of the 2011 IMPACT Annual Assembly

Rev. Erik Walker Wikstrom
Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church – Unitarian Universalist

I have to say that I am really proud and grateful to be standing here tonight.  And by “here” I don’t just mean up here at this podium, with the opportunity of sharing some thoughts with you all.  By “here” I mean here – with all of you, among all of you, a part of this incredible gathering.  Thirty-one different faith communities have sent hundreds of different people to do one thing – to work together to do justice.

I’m new to Charlottesville.    My family and I moved here this summer when I began serving the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church – Unitarian Universalist.  I have to say that one of the things that drew me to TJMC was its involvement in IMPACT.  Let me tell you, they did a real good job of representing this relationship prominently in the packet of materials they sent to prospective clergy people.  I read everything they had to say.  I followed up by reading the IMPACT web site.  And that led me to the DART Network site.  I suppose I should have been paying more attention to the congregation’s own budget and history, but I was fascinated by this stuff.  Drawn to it.

It’s not too hard for a congregation to be involved in social action.  Lots of congregations of all kinds would say that they’re interested in it.  They have a Social Action Committee.  Maybe there’s a Director of Social Justice Ministries.  Maybe checks get written to good causes.  Maybe some folks volunteer to bring food to the Food Bank once in a while.  Oh, it’s not too hard at all for a congregation to be involved in social action.

But for a congregation to be involved with others who are involved in social action?  To intentionally seek out other congregations, other communities – and not just others who are like us but also others who are not like us? And then to join with these  others – even those who are not like us – not simply to work toward those issues that we’re most excited about getting involved with but to try to determine the issue which actually is most pressing for our entire community?  Wow.

No wonder I feel proud to be standing here tonight.  Protestants of so many stripes, Roman Catholics, Jews, Unitarian Universalists, Muslims – we’ve come together to try to do something that will benefit not only our own communities but, more importantly, the wider Charlottesville  – Albemarle County community.  That’s something to be proud of.

Are you proud of being here tonight? 

¿Se siente orgulloso de estar aquí esta noche?

I’m grateful, too, because this congregation based community organization, this CBCO, isn’t just one more opportunity for a bunch of well-meaning people to get together and moan about everything that’s wrong “out there” and then wring our hands because “they” aren’t listening to all of our good ideas.

No!  In the eight years since its inception here in Charlottesville, IMPACT has . . . well . . . had an impact.  Things are different because of gatherings like this.  There have been substantive changes because of this work; and there are no doubt more to come.  Although Charlottesville has recently been described as the #1 city to live in in the country — #4 for book lovers! – and has been called “the healthiest place to live” and “the number one city for retirement,” we all know that there’s still work to do here.  Lots of it.  We all know that this can be a tough place to live if you’re African American, or a refugee, or have a mental illness, or are poor.  We know that it’s not all like the glossy magazines portray it.

So let me not hold up the work we’re here to do much longer.  I would like to share one thing with you, though, an observation I made while working on a sermon for a congregation I was once serving up in Maine.  The text for the morning was the well-known passage from the Hebrew Scriptures, the book of Amos, Chapter 5, verse twenty-four:  “ ¡Pero corra el juicio como un río, la justicia como un torrente inagotable!”  “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

I can’t tell you how many sermons I’ve heard that used this as a starting place.  Can’t tell you, even, how many sermons I’ve preached that have used this as a starting place.  And they all end up at pretty much the same destination – encouraging the congregation and the individuals that make it up to getmore active in working for social justice. 

Oh, most of them have had a particular focus – a new project the congregation’s taking on, or an old one that appears to be running out of steam – but the general outlines are usually the same.  Amos is telling us to get out there and get busy doing justice in the world.  As a friend of mine likes to say, “Am I preaching to the choir?  Sure I’m preaching to the choir.  And what I’m preaching is, get out of your chairs and sing!”  ¡Salir de sus sillas y cantar!

Like I said, I’ve preached that sermon myself.  More than once.  Every choir needs a little encouraging now and then.  But this one time I had an honest-to-goodness revelation!  Suddenly I didn’t hear Amos telling us to get out and work building justice in the land.  I didn’t read those words as an encouragement to put more energy and more commitment into some social justice project or other.

But let justice roll on . . .  Pero corra el juicio . . . 

Suddenly I saw this river – fast and free-flowing.  Almost at flood stage.  Unstoppable.  A seething torrent.  Roiling.  White water of a class V or VI.  A get-out-of-the-way-because-I’m-comin’-through-and-nothing’s-gonna-stop-me-now kind of river.  You get the picture?

This is the river of justice, rolling on like a never-failing stream.  Flowing on.  Rich, and full, and life-giving.  A little dangerous too, maybe, but powerful.  And beautiful.  Awe-inspiring.

Except that it’s not flowing.  It’s dammed up.  I don’t know how.  Maybe some beavers got to it.  Or it was buried during a mountaintop removal.  Or some folks built a dam thinking that it could generate power for I don’t know what.  Or maybe people got to littering and stopped it up, and fouled it up, and filled it up so full of sludge and slime that now that river’s all backed up.  I don’t know how it happened; I just know that it happened.  That mighty river, that never-failing stream, has been clogged up and it just isn’t flowing anywhere like it used to.  Oh, maybe a trickle here and there, but nothing like it’s supposed to be – swollen with spring melt and flowing free.

I got this picture and suddenly realized that Amos wasn’t telling us to go out and make a river of justice.  He wasn’t telling us to construct a concrete culvert and to start pumping water into it.  Not at all!  The river’s already here, he’s telling us – we just got to get out and let it flow!

That’s the message I want to share with you tonight, my new friends.  Justice, righteousness . . . we aren’t responsible for going out and making them.  Creating them.  Building them.  Developing them.  They’re already here.  All we have to do is clean out the muck, get out the gunk, jettison the junk that’s been damming up the works for far too long.    That’s what our job is.

I want to remind each of us and us all that we’re not responsible for it all.  The river can take care of itself, thank you very much, and if given half a chance it can wash away any obstacle.  To mix my metaphors, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.  We just have to get it rolling.  We just have to clear away the things that are damning it up – the things that have gotten there by accident, the things we’ve put there on purpose, the things that some people think make life better and more enjoyable for them (even while there are people dying of thirst just a few feet downstream).  Our job is to do what needs to be done to let justice roll.

Nothing more.  And, of course, nothing less.

¿Es una buena noticia?  Is this Good News?

Let the people say, “Amen.”

Address to the 7th Annual Assembly, October 22, 2012

The Rev. Jim Richardson

Rector, St. Paul’s Memorial Church

Co-President, IMPACT

I want to have some straight talk with you tonight – you the leaders of IMPACT.

          I begin with a passage of Scripture from my tradition, the Christian New Testament, from the Gospel of Mark 9:35.

          “Jesus sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ ”

          Some people in our community are accustomed to going first – maybe too accustomed.

          And some people in our community are accustomed to going last – maybe too accustomed.

          We are here to change that in this community. We are here so that those who seem consigned to going last get a chance to go first.

          We are here, I think, because we agree on bringing justice in our community, and we are here because our faith traditions compel us to that position.

          But this gets complicated quickly, and that’s what I want to talk about with you tonight.

          The name of our organization is IMPACT – Interfaith Movement Promoting Action by Congregations Together.

          IMPACT has had several great successes over its six year life: a dental clinic, new bus routes, a mental health re-entry program. But we are still a young organization, and we are at a tender moment in our life together.

We are still a six-year-old.

          The first word in our name is Interfaith. The last word is Together.

          Interfaith means we come together as people of God who have very different experiences of God, different ways of explaining God, different ways of telling and hearing our sacred stories. We don’t all read the Bible, and those who do, don’t read it the same way.

          We also reflect this complex community where we live – we are Anglo, African American, Latino, Latina, Asian. We come with different educational backgrounds, different vocations, different income levels, and we are young, old, and in between. Some of you Twitter, and some of you have no idea what that means.

          We see and understand the world very differently.          

          The last word in our name – Together – is not always easy to achieve. We are, after all, still a six-year-old as an organization.

Some of you are quite accustomed to being around power, though you may not fully realize that. You know whom to call to get something done, and you are comfortable analyzing public policy and taking a position.

          We need you.

          Some of you are not accustomed to be around power. You don’t know whom to call, and analyzing public policy and taking a position is not something you have much experience with.

          We need you.

          All of you are being asked to do something that, if you take this seriously, I guarantee will make you uncomfortable.

I am calling upon you tonight to recommit yourself to being together, and doing the very hard work of being together.

          Let’s start by being gentle with each other. Let’s not be too quick to carve out our positions. I am asking us to see through each other’s eyes. Let’s not presume to talk for each other. I’m asking us to ease up on our own agendas, and listen closely to the presentations on the issues you will hear tonight.

          And then I am asking you to do something more that is hard.

I am asking each of us to reach out of our familiar comfort zones by standing together to confront the structures and systems of this community that keep some people last. I am asking us to be passionate together, and not be satisfied with doing things the way they have always been done.

If we really do that together, I guarantee it will make us uncomfortable.

I am asking all of us to stand up with one voice, and to use our power as the beloved people of God that we share together.

          None of us can do this alone. All of us can do this by our willingness to be uncomfortable together.

          It is why the Nehemiah Action in the Spring is so crucial to what we do together. To fill the John Paul Jones Arena with people who have one passionate voice, for one evening, is nothing less than a gift from God.

          If we can do this together – if we can share our power, we really will change this community. When we do that, all of us go first.

Last spring, we brought 1,537 people to the Nehemiah Action to speak with one voice and have an impact in our community.

If we were to bring the combined equivalent of just one day’s average worship attendance of our congregations, we would have 8,000 people in that arena. Think of the impact we would have with just half that many voices. Think of what we might accomplish together if 4,000 came.

          And you know what? We already have accomplished much in six short years.

          Many of our successes take more than one year.

It took two years to win expansion of pre-school education programs.

It took two years to win approval from the city and county for the healthy transitions program for the mentally ill.

It took three years to win approval of an affordable housing trust fund and the refurbishment or creation of hundreds of housing units for low-income people.

And now we are engaged in our most ambitious project yet, pushing our largest employers – the two major hospitals – and our vocational education system to create new opportunities for training people for entry-level jobs.

The issue is complex and we have more research to do, and more engagement with these institutions. We are far from through and we have miles to go together.

I will end with this: Martin Luther King Jr. once said, anyone can be great because anyone can be a servant. And that means everyone can go first because everyone here serves.

And that makes all of you great because all of you are servants TOGETHER.