February 22, 2016

Thank you to Paul Keener for filling the pulpit at LABC yesterday. I was honored to fill in for him at FBC Alameda and get a sense of the good work he is doing there as their Interim Pastor. And now Hat Sunday and Soul Food Dinner Sunday await!
This coming Sunday my sermon will be “The Liberation of Letting Go,” taken from Hebrews 1-2. Central to my proclamation will be the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel as he introduced Dr. King as a prophet to a gathering of rabbis in 1963:
The prophets great contribution to humanity was the discovery of evil indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful… Mere knowledge or belief is too feeble to be a cure of man’s hostility to man, man’s tendency to fratricide. The only remedy is personal sacrifice, to abandon, to eject what seems dear, even plausible, like prejudice for the sake of a greater truth, to do more than I am ready to understand for the sake of God. Required is a breakthrough, a leap of action.
I look forward to being together in worship and at the table.
Jim H.

Prayers of the Congregation

• Thanksgiving with Spencer and Eva Hadley (parents) and Barbara Bowman (grandmother) on the birth of Amani Spencer Hadley on February 21
• All our shut-ins
• All who are grieving
• A just end to the Civil War in Syria
• The effort to build a coal-free terminal for the transport of agricultural products at the Port of Oakland
• The homeless residents of the Lakeshore neighborhood and the efforts to address their needs
• All the participants in last Thursday’s Ceasefire Call-In
• Bjoe Morris
• Cordia Lee for her workplace and for her family
• Marie Johnson for colleagues and their families
• Kay Baxter for Stacey, Jamie and herself
• The Meads and Nelson families for John Beck and family (John has been missing for two weeks)
• Paul Keener and the congregation of FBC Alameda
• Jesse Lucas and members of the Evergreen Baptist Association churches as they prepare to depart for Haiti
• Brenda Mabry and family
• John and Carol Townsend as they grieve the death of Carol’s brother, Chris
• Nedra Hathaway, as her chemotherapy continues