Statement of Rev. Lerner's support for Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama, excerpted from her Easter sermon

The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, of current infamy, spoke to the Unitarian Universalist ministers gathered before our General Assembly last summer and I was one of those blessed to have attended. He spoke about making his church one that leaned into the identity of its originally African American membership, creating a congregation that was one of the blackest, largest, and most dynamic in the United Church of Christ – our nearest theological neighbors. Creating also a church with racial diversity – welcoming also people of all colors, classes and backgrounds – successfully. He was one of the most compelling, charismatic, intelligent and engaging preachers I have ever heard. If I lived in Chicago, I think I’d be at his church. If he invited me to come work with him, I would go in an instant. If he needs my support, against the ridiculous and evil mischaracterizations of his work and his church that are being promoted in the public sphere, he has it.

It seems impossible something can simultaneously fester and be frozen. But racial justice in America, in recent years, has been just that – frozen in an inaccessible state that no one has been able to touch or heal – and so it has not only been frozen, it has festered, an infection eating deeper into our national psyche until with the best will in the world, people who care passionately about racial justice and healing and integration did not know what to do or how to speak or how to be together with others who are different from them. Enter, finally, Senator Obama, who days ago delivered the most healing, most forward-thinking public address on the nature and future of race relations, in decades. He went out on a limb, to address the imputations against him as a man who is half black, as a man who is half white, as a congregant of Jeremiah Wright’s, as the most inspiring and gifted orator of his generation, as a person of African heritage. None of this is why he is the front-running democratic candidate but it is part of why he has an extraordinary capacity to address racial divisions and resentments in this country. On the fulcrum of Barack Obama, politics is finally turning again to the issue of race.

I heard his speech and I read it and I found it brilliant and honest and important. I am not endorsing Obama - or Wright for president from this pulpit. I am endorsing Obama for greatness among political liberals for owning those issues of race and class and all that divides us with injustice and misunderstanding and mistrust. I am endorsing Jeremiah Wright for greatness among religious liberals who speak hard truths with love and passion and let no one off the hook, including themselves, including this country with its bloody and dramatic history that must be learned from, and its many seeds and sparks and moments of greatness. I could be more careful, usually I’m very careful, particularly from the pulpit, to parse things out as fully as necessary and be very particular. I actually don’t disagree with anything Wright has said, and I’m not offended by it, though I’m challenged by some of it and I heartily disagree with the timing of what he said after September 11. But I am not concerned to further parse out any of that. I’m not in the mood to be careful. I have met Wright and heard him and I found him a great preacher and religious leader, and I will not stand down while some people cull his material for what will play worst to the country and broadcast it for a 21st century crucifixion.

He is not perfect, neither is Sen. Obama, neither am I. We will never find perfection in our leaders, we are fortunate just to find greatness. And we must remember, when we find it, when we find what is worth our own hopes and dreams and time and work, that these people need us. Without us, such leaders will not survive and their promises will not come to pass – not in their lifetimes, not in our lifetimes, perhaps not for millennia. Of course this is an easy standing up to do, angry as I am, and before all of you, my friends, and from this pulpit. There is no doubt harder standing up before me, and before us all. There is the real work, and not just talk, required to do the healing we can accomplish, regarding race and class and more. This Easter has given me clarity to those next choices simpler, but not easier. Making who I am make a difference will be hard again in such moments, but now I have the clarity I will need about how and why I will stand up.

Easter is ever about the renewal of life and hope. Real hope for living, big hope, deep hope, takes courage. May this Easter be one of big hope, deep hope and courage, the kind of courage that helps us to speak and live our sacred truths and hopes better, deeper, more courageously than ever before. Stand up. Stand up. Stand up for what you believe. Make sure that who you are makes a difference. Change the story. Amen.