Invocation from Community Forum with LAPD-June 18, 2015

Last week, VBS held a community forum with the Command Staff of the LAPD. It was one night after the fatal shooting at Mother Emmanuel. Here is the invocation I gave:

Today is an auspicious day. We gather tonight in a house of God, with many faiths to speak about safety and security. There’s probably no safer place in LA tonight than right here with fifty cops in the room. What is true for us tonight certainly wasn’t true for community last night in Charleston South Carolina. Last night at a Bible Study and prayer service nine people lost their lives to gun violence. Two of them pastors of the congregation, one of which is was the senior pastor and State Senator, The Reverend Clementa C. Pinckey, who spoke of his wonderful church’s founding in moral terms saying, “it is upon the universal vision of all people being treated fairly under the law, as God sees us in [God’s] sight.”

Vision. Fairness. Justice. These are the tenants of universal religion. We know that each of us are loved by God, says our sacred writings, for we are created in God’s image. Each one of us has been given a glimmer of God’s vision, a sense fairness, and a yearning for justice. That is why when those who stand in love are felled by the bullets of hatred, God cries with us, for God’s own image has been marred by the flare of violence and hatred.

Enduring religion is always concerned with safety, but enduring religion is also willing to take the risk to meet and sing together when its not safe to. When the ancient states forbid the practice of study or the activities of faith, religious communities have taken that risk and still gathered and sang their sweet songs. When violence fills the streets, we too still gather together, we still sing. When fear grips our hearts, we still gather, and we still sing. When it’s not socially acceptable to be black, when its not socially acceptable to be Jewish, When it’s not socially acceptable to be Muslim, Latino, Armenian, Korean, Buddhist, or any other ethnicity, who are communities of faith take that political risk, because Godliness cannot be murdered and the Spirit is cannot be killed. And so we gather together here and everywhere that religion finds its enduring footholds and we still sing.

Because if it is not safe to come to God’s house, than it’s not safe in any house. If it is not safe

For Jews, It’s not safe for anyone. If it’s not safe Muslims, it’s not safe for anyone.

If it’s not safe for Blacks, or Latinos, or Koreans, than it’s not safe for anyone. So we take the risk, for if we don’t there is not much left worth risking anything for.

We build our houses on faith and justice because we must set the example that all houses, capital buildings and courtrooms, schools and boardrooms, need to be built on faith and justice.

Let us gather together as one community, one Los Angeles, and let the shouts for justice sing louder than shouts for violence. Let the voices of our collective love be louder than the voice of hate, let our voices sing higher than cracking of bullets. Let us build a community that brings the police and the parishioner together, that unites Jew and Muslim, Black and White, and overcomes veils of separation that keep me from loving you and you loving me you loving each other.

And so let us pray,

God of our ancestors, author of life, love and justice, take into your holy arms the souls of the departed in Mother Emanuel, and may their light shine as brightly as the stars of the firmament. May they look down upon us this evening and be proud of us, for we continue the enduring holy of work of gathering together to build a world of safety and security, a world of loving kindness, and a world of justice. May their memories be a blessing for us, and together we say amen.