I want to open today with a reflection on two books. Many of us read the first in high school, The Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The story teaches something simple and sobering about children, namely that they are not yet structured as civilized humans, and, left to themselves, might become something quite fearsome. The second is “The Children of Men,” by P.D. James. . .
Whoever means to be serious about the possibility that there is a God somewhere needs to be serious about the possibility that the way we worship is no good. By “we” I don’t mean just Riverside. No, this word is for all churches everywhere. It is a waking word, a buzzing, persistent word come down from the prophets like locusts on the field at harvest.
The apostle Paul was a good fund-raiser. In this part of his letter to the Corinthians, he was encouraging them to take part in a campaign underway in all the new churches of the Mediterranean . . .
Forty years ago, in the wake of the rebellion at Attica Prison, Rev. Robert Polk of the Riverside clergy founded the Riverside Prison Ministry. Throughout this past weekend, the Prison Ministry has been celebrating this anniversary . . .
Late this month, we will celebrate Thanksgiving. In 1863, just one week after his speech at Gettysburg, Pres. Lincoln made the proclamation that sets this holiday. It read, in part:
“It has seemed to me fit and proper that . . . the gracious gifts of the Most High God . . . should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. . .
In the first pages of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, the reader confronts a Columbus quite different from the one we learned in school. Soon after his ship arrived, Columbus wrote of the Arawak Indians who swam out to meet it: “They are well-built . . . and so naïve and free with their possessions. They never say No. . . They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… They would make fine servants… With fifty men, we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want . . .”
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