Member Contributions

GOD DID NOT GIVE US A SPIRIT OF TIMIDITY,
BUT A SPIRIT OF POWER AND LOVE AND SELF-CONTROL
2 Timothy 1:7

Grace to you and peace, my brothers and sisters in Christ. I greet you in the name of God and proclaim to you that which you already know - that Jesus Christ lives. And because Jesus Christ lives, we who are in Christ also live and we are bound together in him with bonds of unity that the powers of evil in this world cannot break or destroy.

I speak to you as a white man, a citizen of the United States of America, and as a man. I describe myself in terms of my race, my nation, and my gender - three facts which strongly influence my identity but over which I have no control. I was born a white person in a world that is mostly non-white. I was born an American in a world in which Americans are a tiny minority. I was born a male in a world in which the majority of human beings are female.

Each of these groups into which I was born - my race, my nation, my gender - has asserted itself with undue pride, as if it were in the majority, and has acted to dominate others and control their destinies, at times to enslave them and compel them to serve its own demanding interests.

Sadly, the embargo which you have lived with for over 40 years is only one example of such actions

In acting in this way - each group has demonstrated the viciousness of racism, nationalism, and sexism, and has destroyed God's gift of unity for the human species. Each has provoked great hostility by exploiting others and making them poor, denying them justice and economic opportunities. Each group has earned the enmity of the poor and oppressed of the world.

(This fact was revealed with shocking clarity to the world by the events of September 11th, 2001. When oppressed people are denied justice and kept in poverty, they will use violence and terror to express themselves. This fact is still not understood by many of my countrymen, many of whom are in complete denial that "we" might have done anything at all to provoke such hostility.)

As a representative of these three groups, I acknowledge to God and to you the sins of pride and arrogance and selfishness of my white people, my fellow Americans, my male brothers - which have disrupted the relationships of unity that God intended from the beginning of creation for all human beings, whom God made of one blood to dwell on the face of the earth. We have not loved God with our whole heart and mind and strength; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves; we have not loved ourselves as we ought.

On behalf of the people of my race, my country, and my gender - I ask for God's forgiveness and yours. You are free to give or withhold that greatest gift of love. I ask you to release the gift of grace given to you by the Holy God and to share it with us lovingly and generously. For only the grace of God can break down the dividing walls of hostility between us. I ask your undeserved, forgiving love, that we may dwell in unity - whites and "people of color", Americans and the rest of the world's population, males and females - all together in peace with justice.

(To those of you who share my race or gender or nationality - I ask you to listen with great care to my analysis of the situation, to consider it seriously and prayerfully. I invite you to join me in acknowledging our sin against God and our neighbors and in asking for forgiveness - because this is the first step toward reconciliation and establishing relationships of harmony and peace.)

To the people of God gathered in this congregation - I also come before you as a Christian, one created - like you - in the image of God,
one who - like you - has too often denied my God-given heritage and live as a sinful person in a sinful world,
one who - like you - is nevertheless loved by God, one for whom Christ died and rose again and who has been adopted by grace as a redeemed child of God,
one who - with you - has received the empowering gift of the Holy Spirit and is grafted into the Body of Christ through the sacrament of Holy Baptism.

It is in this capacity alone that I presume to come before you - as a brother in Christ. I rejoice that Christ, by his suffering and death, has broken down the dividing walls of hostility and made us one. He has won for us the unity that overcomes all human barriers and especially those barriers of racism and nationalism and sexism.

We are, together, called to follow the Prince of Peace who calls us "friends" and "disciples". We are invited to follow his example of loving service, empowered by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, to serve the world in the name of Jesus Christ.

United, with Christ and with each other, we fear nothing.

Let us appropriate the spirit of power and love and self-control to overcome the forces that would separate us, and demonstrate with great joy the unity we have in Christ.

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but God gave us a spirit of power and love and of self-control.