Sunday Service: Environmental Justice - October 19th, 2014

Environmental Justice

By Reverend Tom Capo

10 19 2014

The story of Jonah and the Very Big Fish is memorable.  When I was young all I remember is Jonah getting eaten by the whale and traveling around the sea.  But as you heard there is much more to this story.  Jonah didn’t want to help or warn the people of Nineveh because he didn’t feel they were worthy—they were wicked and an enemy of Israel.  Eventually he gave in and passed on the message and the people changed.  Now I am not Jonah nor are you.  But aren’t there times, when you feel like feel like a Jonah?  You try to tell others about the need to care for mother earth.  You do it over and over and again, until you just get tired.  You don’t think people are hearing you anyway, so why tell them one more time?  Like Jonah, you come to think of those people who refuse to listen as enemies.  People who aren’t helping mother earth, who are denying climate change, who aren’t going to listen to you anyway because they’re just, well, “wicked.”  You find no motivation within yourself to keep speaking truth to power, because power just doesn’t care.  So where can you find the motivation to continue working for environmental justice?

Sunday Service: A Hunger for Justice - October, 5th, 2014

A Hunger For Justice

Reverend Tom Capo

October 5, 2014

We affirm justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.  I’m going to ask you the same question I asked last month when we explored “Beloved Community.”  What does “affirm” really mean to us, individually and as a congregation? What does “affirm” really look like? Many of you do work in the community, or perhaps in your jobs, to help others, to fight injustice, to educate those who are unaware of the some of the human, animal, and ecological crises our world faces.  I know that many of you are yearning, hungry for justice, equity, and compassion in our world.

What does it mean really mean to be “hungry for justice?”  Are these just words we bandy about during coffee hour and snack after the service?  “Here, have some fair trade chocolate.”  “Thanks I am hungry for justice!”  Is it a personal question?  “I got detention because I was sitting next to the person who was disrupting class.  But it wasn’t me!  I was just sitting there!  It’s totally not fair and I’m going to get my parents to file a complaint!  I am hungry for justice!”  Or is it a different kind of personal question?  “I’ve read the Unitarian Universalist Association’s 2013-2014 Common Read Behind the Kitchen Door, about wage inequality and unfair working conditions in the majority of our nation’s restaurants.  I am hungry for justice and I’m going to do something about this.”