All the Assembly Kept Silence

Download a PDF of this sermon Amos 7:7-15 • Acts 15:6-12 In 2008, a fragment of a sermon by Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ got clipped into the news cycle for some days. To the shock and awe of millions, that preacher, who was pastor...

Inside Out

Twice a month for ten years, I took part in a conversation with men in the state prison at Attica. The program, run by a Franciscan brother, offered no inducements to come to the group—no awards for attendance, no course credits, no promise of letters to the parole board. A man returned to the group only because he wanted to.

Break Through to Beloved

At two o’clock today, over seven hundred people will gather here at Riverside Church to see the film “The Central Park 5.” This film proclaims release to the captives. It tells the terribly untold story of how in 1989, the City of New York—D.A., police, people, media, mayor, more—convicted five boys of a violent and bloody rape without any evidence except their own deceitfully forced confessions; and how, as grown men, the captives were released and finally exonerated in 2002

What If God Was One of Us?

Don’t you feel the thrill of Ezekiel’s righteous anger, and feel it is as your own! “You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock; you do not bring back the strays.” The translation sounds out as plain politics. “You eat the curds” means you pay poverty wages to the poor and make a million off their backs. “You clothe yourselves with their wool” refers to the fine estates, the sumptuous feasts, the elegant clothes and the secure billions . . .