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If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you continually
and satisfy your needs in parched places
and make your bones strong,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water
whose waters never fail.
Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.
Isaiah 58:9b–12, NRSVUE
Isaiah tells us that God does not ask for shallow piety or polite charity, but for a people who break the yoke of oppression, who spend themselves on behalf of the hungry, who repair ancient ruins and restore streets once abandoned. This is not soft work. It is truth-telling, wall-tearing, life-reorienting work. It is repentance. Not as guilt-nursing, but as returning: turning back toward the heart of God so that justice can take root in us again.
To reckon with our roots means naming the soil we stand in: the legacy of white Christian Nationalism, the deep taproot of white supremacy, the ways our tradition has twisted the story of God to justify power rather than liberation. It means acknowledging how we have benefited from systems that deform God’s creation, harm our neighbors, and fracture our own souls. And it means telling the truth about the world we inhabit now: a nation where the machinery of empire still turns. Where families are separated and exiled, where ICE raids terrorize communities, where borders are weaponized, communities are policed and surveilled, creation exploited, and fear is used as currency.
This reckoning is not about shame, but about truth for the sake of transformation. Christian freedom requires the courage to confront the stories we inherited, the temptations of innocence and exceptionalism, and the false securities that privilege builds. Repentance demands that we tell the truth about what has shaped us so we can step into a future rooted not in fear or dominance, but in love, courage, liberation, and responsibility. If we will turn, if we will return, God will meet us there. Re-centered. Re-rooted. Ready to repair what has been broken.
Repent: turn back to the God of justice and mercy.
Repair: join God in mending what empire has shattered — bodies, land, relationships, memory, hope.
Reclaim: our humanity, our faith’s liberating core, our prophetic imagination and public witness.
Only then, Isaiah promises, will our light break forth like morning. Only then will we become what God has always called us to be — repairers of broken walls, restorers of streets where all may dwell.
Join us for this year’s Annual Gathering as we reckon with our roots so that we might reclaim a better story and a better tomorrow for ourselves and future generations.
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