Over this past year, UUCF has undertaken an amazing effort, led by so many committed members of this congregation, to raise money for the care and sustenance of our future. We also have continued to be of the world as much as possible in these times that call us, perhaps now more than ever, to our congregational mission: “To transform ourselves, our community, and the world through acts of love and justice.”
This year, we again will gather to open a new congregational year with our Ingathering Service on Sunday, September 13. Our theme for this year calls us back to one of the oldest and most urgent verses in the prophetic tradition: Amos Chapter 5:
10 They hate the one who reproves in the gate,
and they abhor the one who speaks the truth.
11 Therefore because you trample on the poor
and take from them levies of grain,
you have built houses of hewn stone,
but you shall not live in them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards,
but you shall not drink their wine.
12 For I know how many are your transgressions
and how great are your sins –
you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe
and push aside the needy in the gate.
13 Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time,
for it is an evil time.
And
21 I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them,
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
24 But let justice roll down like water
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
“But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Nearly 3,000 years old, Amos condemned a society that performed piety while tolerating injustice, insisting that religion without justice is empty. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., returned to this verse throughout his ministry. In his 1963 “I Have a Dream” address he declared that the nation would not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” He warned that a nation that fails to make justice and righteousness real will face a reckoning it cannot avoid. In a year when so many of us feel the presence of polarization, cruelty, and fear in our public life, Amos’s ancient indictment feels uncomfortably current.
Theologian Walter Brueggemann gives us a way to understand why this text still has such meaning. In The Prophetic Imagination, he argues that prophetic ministry works in two ways: first naming and dismantling the unjust structures of the dominant culture, then imagining and building something more just in their place. Amos does exactly this – he names the false comfort of barren religious practice so that something more just can be built.
This year, we will gather together to build deeper and stronger connections – not just for the benefit of social connection in difficult times, but as a living statement of this covenantal faith. We need this strongly woven congregational tapestry so that our personal and congregational efforts, grounded in our Seven Unitarian Universalist values of Interdependence, Pluralism, Justice, Transformation, Generosity, Equity – as well as the centering foundational value of Love – is what will flow through and from this congregation like water and continue to support righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
This is our overall theme for this coming congregational year. How can UUCF, based in our Unitarian Universalist values, be even more of a force of transformational justice and love? This is an ancient and yet also an incredibly current challenge.
See you at Ingathering, but hopefully before!
Rev. David A. Miller
Senior Minister