Save us from plaques without policy,
from memorials with incomplete memories,
optics without an option for the poor and
power with no intention to redesign the redline,
reform the in-justice system
or uproot the orchards that still grow strange fruit.
Save us.
Save us from cheap condolences about
100 year old accusations that brought violence, destroyed families and
let terror reign in the land of ‘liberty.’
Save us from thinking we have come so far and made so much change,
save us from "good people on both sides."
Save us from the accusations that shoot to kill innocent teens
and unarmed men watching tv,
accusations that lock up possibility for the profit of a few and breed trauma everyday.
Save us from the sin of injustice, inaction and half-hearted change. Save us.
Save us for You are the God of prophets and poets,
save us for you are a God of bigger dreams.
You inspire each sacred voice crying out for change, you bring us from wilderness to promise,
you move mountains of people from indifference and defeat to the fullness of their sacred worth and not even the sea can stand in their way.
Save us from oppressing the poor after finishing the praise band chorus.
Save us from making our Sunday best into our weekday worst,
red letter faithful wreaking havoc in fine print and predatory schemes.
Save us from Christians worshiping the gospel of White Supremacy,
caging and incarcerating for profit with the blessing of their ‘church.’
Save us from our cheap grace that looks to the captives with indifference,
turns a blind eye to recovery and sets no one at liberty.
Save us with the Good News that requires more of you and of me,
save us from our blighted faith.
Save us for You are the God of presence, Emmanuel, with us in our brokenness,
our longings and our breathtaking courage.
Save us, for you turn the tables and send the money changers out,
you touch the untouchable and call the powerful to account.
Save us, for you set the feast and throw the door open wide.
Save us from from our economics that don’t trickle down,
from our stolen manifest destiny
and blind faith in the market’s all-mighty hand.
Save us from every dollar we spend that votes for terror and indifference,
violence and greed.
Save us from the gospel of meaningless stuff
and open our eyes to make each moment count.
Save us from our thoughts and prayers,
our anemic faith in the face of violence that draws blood in classrooms and theaters,
in homes and streets and cities around the globe.
Save us from healthcare that’s not free,
pollution that poisons without fee,
every structural inequity,
every wall and every threat to having life and having life abundantly.
Forgive us, we deal death incrementally. Forgive us, we are quiet in the face of sin.
Forgive us, we are too comfortable to change and call us to a reckoning.
All creation waits. King and Parks, Wells and Tubman wait,
Ruston and Lorde, Huerta and Chavez wait,
Angelou and Hughes, Standing Bear and LaMere wait
with every voice lifted to sing in a chorus of change,
the future begs us, each sacred soul bids us to God’s All Loving Call.
Will Brown bids us rise, with a chorus of hundreds and thousands more,
rise to the work of justice and the occasion of this and every day.
Will Brown calls us to more, with a chorus of hundreds and thousands and millions more,
calls us to a faith that is more than lukewarm when the world needs the pressure to cook and temperature to rise.
God calls us, bids us with each breath.
May we say, “Yes.”
© Crafted by Rev. Debra McKnight, Founding Pastor of Urban Abbey
No comments:
Post a Comment