welcome to the world, dear loved one!!
my best friend of 22 years is a mommy!!!! & i'm an auntie!
Month: April 2008
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on the 40th anniversary of his assassination, we remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
here's the tail-end of Martin Luther King Jr's last speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0FiCxZKuv8In Ethics class last night, we talked about how America treats our prophets. 40 years after MLK Jr's assassination, here we are threatening and hating on Jeremiah Wright...
My seminary has a close relationship with Trinity UCC, and everyone who's met or heard Jeremiah Wright recognizes his ability to speak truth to power.
But that's the thing about prophets, their society is never really ready or willing to repent and accept their message of truth.by the way, the week before MLK Jr. died, he was working on a sermon entitled: "Why
America May Go to Hell." sometimes tough (but nonviolent) love is necessary. -
The following statement is made by Rev. John Buchanan, the senior
pastor of the congregation where i'll be serving as a pastoral resident
for the 2 years of my life following graduation from seminary:John Buchanan: “On Jeremiah Wright”
A statement made during morning worship
at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago
on Sunday, March 30, 2008I want to take a moment and think together about the continuing
controversy surrounding Trinity United Church of Christ; its former
pastor, Jeremiah Wright, a friend of mine; and its new pastor, Otis
Moss III, also a friend and a new board member of the Christian Century.Trinity Church has been in the news every day for the past two weeks
because one of its members is Senator Barack Obama. Jeremiah Wright was
pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side for
thirty-six years. During his ministry, the congregation grew to 8,000
members, the largest in the United Church of Christ. More importantly,
the church, under Wright’s leadership, reached out to the community
with mission programs, education, social services, AIDS education and
treatment, and health care. Trinity Church shares with us a worldview
and commitment to mission in the world. When you drive north on Stony
Island Avenue, from the South Side toward downtown, you pass by a large
community health center sponsored by Trinity United Church of Christ.
One way to evaluate and measure a ministry is by the mission it
generates and the organization that supports and enables it. Among
Chicago churches and Chicago clergy of all denominations, Jeremiah
Wright’s ministry is widely admired as a model of what a public church
can and ought to be, and he, himself, is widely respected.I wish he had made his point without saying “God damn America,” but not
for a moment do I wish he had been less prophetic. In fact, the great
biblical prophets did and said outrageous, controversial things, which
consistently got them in trouble and occasionally in jail. One thinks
of Jeremiah, for instance, or Amos and the Amaziah affair. I wish
Jeremiah Wright had not said “The chickens are coming home to roost”
about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, even though he was
referring to a speech made by Edward Peck, former Ambassador to Iraq
and President Reagan’s Terrorism Task Force Deputy Director. Wright was
paraphrasing Ambassador Peck, who went on to list America’s domestic
and foreign policy decisions that had put the nation in peril. I wish
he hadn’t suggested that the government were responsible for AIDS. But
then again, the government never deliberately—and misleadingly—left
untreated members of my race who had late-stage syphilis simply so it
could document the disease’s deadly toll.Senator Obama’s critics wonder how the senator could have remained in
Wright’s congregation and under his leadership for twenty years. The
answer is that Wright didn’t say “God damn America” every Sunday. In
fact, Wright’s sermons were biblically based, relevant, literate, and
eloquent, week after week. When the preachers of the land decide whose
sermons and lectures or preaching they want to hear, Jeremiah Wright’s
are near the top of the list.I’m distressed that the Chicago Tribune continues to regard Jeremiah
Wright’s sermons as front-page news and led us yesterday to, of all
things, a report on his retirement home.
I’m distressed by white people, out of a very different religious, cultural, racial, theological/ecclesiasticalexperience, presuming to judge African American faith practices and religious expression and preaching. Most of all I deplore CNN’s and other networks’ decisions to play a few
seconds out of thirty-six years of preaching, several-sentences-long
sound bites over and over again. It’s no wonder people who don’t know a
thing about Trinity Church or Jeremiah Wright come to wrong
conclusions. I’m not the only preacher in the land who knows how
vulnerable any one of us is should ill-chosen words lifted out of a
sermon be played and replayed, over and over again as Wright’s were.So let’s all settle down and put the whole matter of Jeremiah Wright
and Trinity Church and Barack Obama’s membership into the context of
the 365-days-a-year life of an extraordinary and faithful Christian
congregation.Katharine Moon, a professor of political science at Wellesley, a Korean American, in a
March 25, 2008, Chicago Tribune editorial remembered the church in which she was nurtured:"Churches, synagogues, mosques, prayer meetings are . . .
communities of mutual help, support, and practical guidance. As social
scientists know, they are instrumental to building and maintaining
social capital. For new immigrants, as well as racial and ethnic
minorities, they serve a particular purpose. Often, the immigrant or
ethnic church is the one public place where a common language, food,
and humor particular to one’s cultural heritage can be shared. . . . It
is through the congregation that we ask for help—to look after our
children or elderly parents. . . . Often it is the people in the
worship hall who . . . help us paint our houses and visit us in
hospitals. . . . A house of worship is much more than a pastor."Sensible, valuable words about pastors and congregations, one of which
happens to count among its members a candidate for president and his
family.And I ask you to join me in reaching out in friendship to our brothers
and sisters at Trinity United Church of Christ and to pray for them,
their former pastor, and their new pastor:Lord of the church in all its magnificent expression, the
body of Christ in all the world, we pray for our neighbors, our
brothers and sisters of the Trinity United Church of Christ, with whom
we share a passion for justice and for mission and reconciliation
across all the barriers that divide.Continue to bless them by your own Spirit.
We pray for their newly retired pastor, their pastor for
thirty-six years, Jeremiah Wright. We thank you for his strong and
faithful ministry, his outspoken advocacy for justice, his passion for
your kingdom. Bless him and keep him in these difficult days.And we pray for Trinity’s new pastor, Otis Moss III. Bless and
keep him and his family. Give him the gifts he needs to serve you and
his people with love and commitment, patience and good humor.And bless us, O God, as we seek to be your faithful church here in this place.
Startle us again with the news of a risen Lord, of hope and love, not defeated by death, but alive and vigorous among us.
Amen.
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