SERMON

"Can't you just forgive me?" It seems a simple enough request but it isn't so simple, is it? That's why one act of betrayal can haunt someone for years, because that kind of trauma lingers way past whatever action was originally to blame. Forgiveness needs to be granted for the transgression but also for its more damaging and insidious effect - what happens when we break someone's trust in us. As Howard croons, forgive and forget. Re-live and regret. A fancy way of saying, how will I know I can trust you in the future? Even if I could get past what you did, how will I know it won't happen again? Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on me.

Can't you just forgive me? That is a mighty big word and I'm not sure I can. I'm not sure I ever can...

For those of us on either side of this relationship trauma, the first step towards any sort of real forgiveness, lies in taking responsibility for our actions. This dictate includes the wounded as well. I don't mean to imply here that those who are hurt are somehow responsible for the things that have happened to them. Let me be very clear about that. Victims are just that, victims. But it is important, critical actually, that if you are in this circumstance that you consciously recognize that you have been hurt. You too need to take responsibility for acknowledging that those feelings exist. And experience has taught me, this can be a remarkably difficult thing to do.

SERMON

Nelson Mandela was born in 1920. He gave 27 years of his life to prison and that 27 years turned into 19 million votes for freedom and democracy.

7 years of prison and torture, sacrificed by 2 students in Portugal, gave birth to Amnesty International, an organization that receives 100% of the revenue generated by the video stream you just watched.

In 1976 Betty Williams, a receptionist, transformed the death of 3 children in Northern Ireland into 6,000 signatures, and then 35,000 protesters, and then - a Nobel Prize.

And music, the language that transcends all barriers, inspired 100 musicians and 1.5 billion listeners to donate 150 million pounds for famine relief in the course of just one, single day.

Oh, you can be a rock star. You just need to decide what yardstick you're going to use to measure.

Stand up. Rise up. Speak up. Be a rock star. Don't give your world over so complicitly to Lindsay and Paris and the world of celebrity.

Stand up for what you believe in and live as if your beliefs matter.

Rise up against every act of prejudice and injustice you witness. Even when you're tired. Even when it's unpopular. And especially when your silence translates to an implicit approval of acts of hate.

Speak up. Every girl in this room speak up. Every person in this room who has felt invisible or shamed or compromised because of their economic class, or birth order, or sexual orientation, or skin color, or ethnicity, anyone in this room who has felt marginalized - speak up. God is calling you. God is pleading with you. God's work is here on earth waiting for you.

SERMON

Forty years after Dr. King was assassinated, forty years after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, we are still fighting the same battle.

We are at war. We are at war with terrorism, we are at war with racism, but most of all, we are at war with ourselves.

Chain gangs. Shackles. Prisoners marching under a scorching sun in a line to nowhere.

A guard looms over a crucified figure as he stretches his arms to the sky. His plea for mercy is met with the butt of a gun.

Over and over and over again, the pick ax strikes the soil, pushing the red clay aside to build what? There is no plan. There is no design. Just mindless and mind numbing labor - repetition to the pulsating beat.

We are at war, we are at war with ourselves.

Us and them. Klansman, police, guns, power. Hustlers, killers, drug dealers, strippers.

Fearfully and wonderfully made? No. Justice, kindness, humility before our God? No.

And as the girls skip innocently in a game of double dutch, unaware of where their path inevitably will take them, already recognizing the precipice of welfare, in the background is another figure. Chopping down a tree. Dragging it across the high grass to be hewn by a table saw. Sanded to perfection it forms a cross.

Salvation? No.

A promise and sign of resurrection? No.

Just pain and death. We are at war with ourselves.

Show me the way. Don't let my feet fail me now. I'm not here to argue about facial features. I'm not trying to convert atheists into believers. I'm saying that our schools need teachers. Show me the way.

Every action, or lack there of, represents an ethical choice. We decide, every day, the kind of people we are. The wonder of the shining examples of King and Kennedy and (Maya) Angelou and West is their fearlessness about living out their ethical beliefs. There is a price to be paid for fearlessness.

West laments that his music might go unheard if he dare place the word Jesus in the lyrics. Kennedy and King paid the ultimate price for their courage. The question is - what price are you willing to pay to lead a prophetic life?