Protestants for the Common Good
1/17/12
Unedited!

I watched the Republican +Candidate debate last evening and wanted in the worst way for someone to stand up and read a Bible passage

Something like Micah 6:6
He has told you, O Mortal, what is good:
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, and to live
kindness and to walk humbly with your God

or Isaiah 65

a new heaven and a new earth – about a new city, a new
social order
a joy and a delight
in which there is no more sound
of weeping
no more infants and children
dying unnecessarily
no more elderly deprived
of the ingredients of a long and full life

-houses built and buried in
vineyards cultivated
and the fruit eaten and enjoyed

Religious values have been hijacked and in the process biblical religion, Christian religion has been hijacked and forced into the ideological mold of the far right.

What is missing is any notion of Common good, any notion of the community, the “we” in “we the people”

And it is not just the Republicans. Democrats are not exactly outdoing themselves on behalf of those who are outside looking in at our affluent society.

There is a strange and thunderous silence in the body politic about what kind of nation/state/city we are – and what we aspire to become.

So – please, Protestants for the Common Good –

Continue –

-remind us of the most basic truth, that we are a community, that there is such a thing as Common Good

- Continue to do the basic, hard word of translating biblical values into community realities – fair and just
policies and laws and school and economic opportunity.

Lord of all, your creation is so beautiful, so diverse, so fertile, so capable of support, life. We thank and praise you. And we confess that it is we who have become a problem in your creation; our greed, our selfishness, our violence, so forgive us. And bless and empower those who, with courage and persistence and patience, remind us and prod us to ___________ and organize and write letters and talk to politicians – to make your creation what you had in mind, a life in your creation, kinder, fairer, healthier, happier.

Bless this enterprise: its leader, and its Board and supporters.

Give them patience and determination on their work.

Bless them with a sense of good work well done. And, may they know that when outsiders are invited in, and the fallen are lifted up, when the hungry are fed and the naked clothed and the homeless housed – you are then – in the midst of it all, in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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