Justice and Spirituality
"And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" Micah 6:8
St. Anne's Peace Pole displays the message "May Peace Prevail on Earth" in 17 languages.
St. Anne's parishioners are committed to working for justice and peace both locally and globally. Whether we are celebrating the International Day of Peace, discovering ways to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals, signing our Parish Pledge of Nonviolence, serving dinner at a homeless shelter, making telephone calls encouraging people to vote, writing letters to our elected officials, or collecting money for persons in need, our spiritual call is to be guided by the power of God's spirit to take risks for justice and the common good. With creative, Spirit-led leadership, we act with the expectation that we can, and will, help advance humankind's deepest hope of justice and peace for all people.
Peace Lamp made by Palestinian Christians in the West Bank village of Taybeh
The following excerpt from the investiture sermon of Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori reflects our mission.
"Some people who engage this journey we call Christianity discover that home is found on the road, whether literally the restless travel that occupies some of us, or the hodos that is the Way of following the one we call the Christ. The home we ultimately seek is found in relationship with creator, with redeemer, with spirit. When Augustine says "our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee, O Lord" he means that our natural home is in God.
In Death of the Hired Man, Robert Frost said that "home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in." We all ache for a community that will take us in, with all our warts and quirks and petty meannesses – and yet they still celebrate when they see us coming! That vision of homegoing and homecoming that underlies our deepest spiritual yearnings is also the job assignment each one of us gets in baptism – go home, and while you're at it, help to build a home for everyone else on earth. For none of us can truly find our rest in God until all of our brothers and sisters have also been welcomed home like the prodigal.
There's a wonderful Hebrew word for that vision and work – shalom. It doesn't just mean the sort of peace that comes when we're no longer at war... Shalom means that all human beings live together as siblings, at peace with one another and with God, and in right relationship with all of the rest of creation. It is that vision of the lion lying down with the lamb and the small child playing over the den of the adder, where the specter of death no longer holds sway. It is that vision to which Jesus points when he says, "today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." To say "shalom" is to know our own place and to invite and affirm the place of all of the rest of creation, once more at home in God.
That homecoming of shalom is both destination and journey... We are really charged with seeing everyplace and all places as home, and living in a way that makes that true for every other creature on the planet. None of us can be fully at home, at rest, enjoying shalom, unless all the world is as well."
