Day 461 Sunday June 20th, 2021

A PRAYER FOR JUNETEENTH

by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

Almighty God, we praise your name, for you alone are God. There is none like you—gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, full of love, truth, and justice.

You care for the orphans and widows and look upon the immigrant with affection. Your love is not threatened by the ways we diminish, marginalize, and destroy each other. There is no one like you.

You have made your faithfulness known from generation to generation. And you declare it is better to do justice than to make sacrifice. Throughout the biblical story, we hear again and again how you have continued to rescue your people, releasing us from bondage so that we might live fully and freely as your children. We remember Moses and the Exodus. We remember the cycles of deliverance and repentance under the Judges. We remember the prophets and the returns from exile.

And we remember where you declared in Isaiah 10

"woe unto those who legislate evil, robbing the poor and making women and children their prey."

We remember how you have in all of these things made known your generous love for the least of these. We recall most of all how you entered this story in the flesh, releasing us from our sins through Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. You reconciled us with your self and in doing so you call us to be reconciled with one another.

Through the Holy Spirit, you continue to tear down the dividing walls of hostility and inequality that separate us from each other and distort your gospel.

We add our voices to the generations that have gone before us in giving thanks for the freedom you brought in the United States when legal slavery ended.

Over two hundred years of European-Americans shipping and trading African peoples as if they were disposable goods distorted our experience of your image, both in those enslaved and in those who enslaved others.

Yet you have a history of overcoming our most dehumanizing abuses of each other, even when we normalize our abuses through words of law and government-sanctioned violence. Thank you for raising up faithful servants who declare and fight for abolition of injustice. Thank you for not abandoning our foreparents. Thank you for releasing us from the legalized injustices we have suffered.

Thank you for your mercy and compassion, Lord. Remind us that we must remember and can never retreat. While we have made slavery illegal, too much of society continues to participate in systems, structures, and cultural patterns that diminish, distort, and destroy the lives of persons of color. Too many are still too enslaved to racism to the goals of voter separation to efforts to block living wages and health care.

By your Spirit set us free.

Use our remembrance to cause us to never retreat from working to see this nation and world released from the deceptive corruption that is in the hearts and patterns and practices that continue to be passed along from generation to generation.

In remembering the day in which the slaves in Texas finally heard of their emancipation, we still cry out to you and are open to be used by you to end all slavery, racism, voter suppression, greed, hate, violence, poverty, denial of health care, environmental injustice, war and the false religion of white supremacy and white nationalism.

Lord, when we get tired, free us from apathy and inaction. Open our eyes. Search us, O Lord, and call us into action to bring an end to the injustices that are contrary to your way. Help us to never leave undone the weightier matters of your law—justice, faithfulness, and love.

May you make us into one people. Grant us the strength in your name to spend ourselves on behalf of those who are still entangled in slavery so that together we might experience the full reconciliation and new life that you desire for all peoples.

We offer this prayer that your glory and honor might be made known through the freedom of all people. Amen.

A Juneteenth Meditation & Poem

by Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aafi3a9-eS8

Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr., who has long been a voice of wisdom for America, has written an original poem for Juneteenth 2021. Repairers of the Breach is honored to share it with the world. Please watch & share!

Grace Note: Article:

How white churches can work for racial justice

Being part of the problem means we can be part of the solution.

https://religionnews.com/2020/06/19/how-white-churches-can-work-for-racial-justice/

ANNOUNCEMENT from Sandy McKeith

Dear Community Members:

We have some very exciting news to share regarding the Rebel Hearts documentary.

There are two upcoming events related to the film. The first event will occur next Friday, June 25th at 4:00 pm. Rebel Hearts will have its big screen premiere at the Glendale Laemmle Theatre. The production team has graciously offered complimentary tickets to Community members and Candidates for this premiere showing. The premiere showing will be immediately followed by a Q & A session.

Laemmle Theatre

207 N. Maryland Ave.

Glendale, CA 91206

Friday, June 25th at 4:00 pm

If you would like to attend the premiere showing of the film at the Glendale Laemmle Theatre, please contact Mary Kirchen via phone (323) 497-4353 or email mkirchen@earthlink.net no later than Tuesday, June 22st so your name may be added to the list of invited guests. If you are in need of transportation to the theatre for the premiere, please let Mary know when you contact her. Tickets for the premiere showing are complements of the Rebel Hearts team. If you are unable to make the premiere date, the showing continues at this location for 7 days – check the Laemmle schedule for times and ticket prices.

The second event is a virtual one. Rebel Hearts will have its worldwide premiere on the Discovery+ channel on Saturday, June 26th. Discovery+ channel is available by subscription. It is not free but they do offer a 7 day free-trial to the subscription. You may explore this option on your own by going to www.discoveryplus.com.

The release of Rebel Hearts, both on the big screen and worldwide via Discovery+, is a testimony to our charism of

“being hearts untarnished by fear, broken open through Mystery”.

We stand on the shoulders of the many IHMs who willingly participated in the interviews for the film over its 20 plus year development. Each shared both the personal and collective story of the Community’s fidelity to the call of ongoing transformation. As is stated in the Spirit That Calls Us:

“Our call remains: to offer love and compassion, help reduce pain and human suffering, build bridges of connectivity, stand with the disenfranchised, resist injustice, support those who are

impoverished, and protect the planet”.

Let us the fidelity to this call which Rebel Hearts so beautifully captures on film.

Caritas Nos Alliget!

On behalf of the Board,

celebrate

Ray