Fall Jubilee / 2026
Saturday, November 7, 2026
A Keynote:
1.
It’s astounding to me how many of our stories he knows, and how many broken hearts he holds in his own, and how committed he is to this simple, nightly practice of prayer. Every night. Our sanctuary. Which has become his own. His sanctuary. Friends, I don’t know how prayer works, I don’t know the metaphysics of it all, really. But I know this. When we pray for one another like this, like Antony does, it changes us. It transfigures us. Human hearts become instruments of peace. Tiny mustard seeds become sanctuaries of grace.
And the week leading up to Tuesday’s elections, Antony improvised a bit. Instead of sitting in a pew for those 40, 50 minutes, he stepped up onto the chancel, before our communion table, which some of you might call your altar; and Antony fell to his knees and prostrated himself there. Before the table, the altar, the eyes of God. Deep into the dark night. Prostrate in prayer. And Antony prayed for an hour, every night for a week, for our country. Yours and mine. Which has become his own.
Antony, as some of you know, is not only our church’s sexton, and not only my dear colleague in ministry in Durham, but an immigrant, a refugee, a remarkable father, who left his family in Africa 9 years ago. He left because his faith and conscience had implicated him in a daring resistance movement in his native land and his life was in danger there. We’re not using Antony’s given name, or his home country for that matter, because for years now he’s been marked for deportation by an American government that’s branded him and others like him as enemies of the state. And we’ve wondered and watched for years now, as ICE agents terrorize, kidnap and deport immigrant friends across our state and continent. When would they come for Antony? And what would we do when they did?
Six years ago, we committed—as many of your communities have committed—to the centuries-old Sanctuary Tradition. And in that spirit we offered Antony all the protection and love we could muster in our Durham church. Where he now lives and prays. In sanctuary. And where we all watch together for unfamiliar vehicles and unannounced visitors.
That image of Antony prostrate on the chancel late at night, praying for our country on the eve of an election, strikes me as a kind of icon for discipleship in our time. I hope this makes sense to you. Because there has to be a spiritual practice—a robust, disciplined, supported spiritual practice—at the heart of our faith, joining our most vulnerable spirits to our most loving God, calling on God’s grace as we stumble and fumble in the shadows for hope and resilience. It’s this kind of practice that does two paradoxical things. In it, in a sustained practice, God makes our hearts tender and soft and open to newness. But this too: in a sustained practice like Antony’s, God breathes strength and courage and resolve into our bodies, into our souls, and (perhaps most importantly) into our movements. Love does all that. It makes us soft and it makes us strong.
So imagine Antony there, every night, like a priest before the greatest Mystery of All: praying for his wife and their three teenaged children in Africa; praying for a new friend at church who he knows is struggling mightily with a deep depression; praying for other immigrants he’s befriended over the years, and their courage, and their strength, and their families; and praying for all of us, for all of us (!), as we prepared to vote. In an election in which he couldn’t vote. But an election that mattered to him and his friends and his family in ways I could only begin to understand.
2.
In the days since Tuesday’s election, I’ve been thinking a lot about a theological topic, another practice, I’ve neglected far too often over my 40 years in parish ministry. And that topic, that practice is power. My dear friend Antony reminds me—over and over again—that the church can be, that the church should be a powerful community, an empowering community. It’s been all of that for him these past six years. That’s for sure. And he makes us more and more powerful too, by his friendship, by his perseverance, and by his prayerfulness. By virtue of Antony’s presence in my life, and in our church, I am a more powerful Christian today, because I am tethered now, as our church is, to his pain, and to his story, and to his hope.
And Antony reminds me too that prayer itself is a powerful practice: not because it makes us stronger or smarter or better than other believers or non-believers; not because it sets us up for a string of successes or victories denied to those who don’t pray. No, prayer is a powerful practice because prayer embodies in flesh and bone our love for one another, it embodies in flesh and bone our commitments to one another, in a spirit of Love and a community of discipleship and imagination. Churches should be powerful communities, and prayer empowers us. We are made soft and strong—for the good work before us.
And here’s the thing, this first weekend in November: if we’re to hold governments accountable, and newly elected representatives accountable, to our shared values like human rights and democracy and the kind of economic justice that protects our integrity, our children, our planet; if we’re to follow up on whatever it is that happened on Tuesday and make it mean something, we’re going to have to get real and honest, and real honest, about our power. My friends, if we are made in the image of God, if we are stardust and glory and made in the image of God, we are created to be powerfully loving together, to be powerfully collaborative in politics and advocacy, to be powerfully creative in music and the arts. We are created to exercise power in thoroughgoing humility and accountable networks of cooperative care. And daring political imagination.
So hear me now: Powerlessness is not discipleship. Powerlessness is not discipleship.
What Jesus insists on, I think, is the kind of power that is nurtured in deep and committed relationships, in churches like yours and mine. What Jesus insists on is the kind of power that moves us into broad coalitions around core values and prophetic purpose. Like protecting immigrant neighbors from xenophobic agencies. Like healing the earth of exploitation and ecological degradation. Like re-imagining an economy that feeds our children, and honors our labor, and promotes collaboration and creativity instead of militarism and genocide. When Jesus calls disciples to leave behind habits and attachments, he calls on us to embrace a wonderfully beautiful kind of power. Not powerlessness. But power. Relational power. Collaborative power.
3.
And as I think about this now, on the eve of my retirement from parish ministry next summer, I believe that we can be even braver in thinking about our congregations as power-institutions on the American scene. Power institutions drawing power from prayer. Power institutions drawing power from ancient texts. Power institutions drawing power from honest-to-God relationships in our churches. And then, and then, we’ll want to work together – with the NH Council of Churches, with the Granite State Organizing Project, with Voices of Faith, with NH Outright, with all kinds of partner networks – to build the new world we deserve. To give birth to the new world we deserve. To embrace the advent of wholeness and liberation for all. An economy of grace.
To be clear, the NH Council is already doing so much of this work; and GSOP is already doing so much of this work; and God knows, NH Outright is on the front line even now. But these networks need our churches. Those in the room today, and so many others across the state. Do you see that? These wonderful networks need our institutions. These networks need us to step up and embrace the power in our communities. They’re ready for us.
And then, joined in love and purpose, we’ll find ourselves thinking strategically together, building strategic campaigns together, and (perhaps most importantly) holding our churches accountable to the power we’re building within and beyond them. Always honest about the weaknesses of our work. Always humble in the face of mistakes we make. And always joyful and glad when we make progress together. And always, always committed to building accountable power and loving power for the good of our communities. And our children. And our world.
For me, lastly, I want to think, over these next weeks and months, about what Antony’s prayer life means for me. In my relationship with Jesus, this is where the rubber hits the road. Can I begin to understand where Antony’s prayer comes from? It takes a leap of conscience and compassion. Can I begin to feel the urgency of Antony’s prayer, the pain of familial separation he feels every day, the aching for freedom and liberation? I have to listen carefully. To Antony. To his voice. To his story and his yearning. There are no shortcuts. Can I make his urgency something of my own? Can I allow Antony’s faith to shape and inspire my priorities, my ministry, my advocacy, even my retirement? For me to truly and faithfully hear the call to discipleship, Jesus’ call to discipleship, involves a kind of radical vulnerability: to Antony’s prayer life, to Antony’s story, to his hope.
4.
That afternoon, in church, we had rabbis and priests, we had pagan couples jumping brooms and even the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus—about seventy-five of them—singing freedom songs from the chancel steps. And 45 couples. They came forward one at a time, each one celebrating vows, each one receiving a blessing of some kind. And each one basking in the glow of a loving community, in the prayers of grandparents, and children, and neighbors and a wild variety of religious leaders.
I don’t have to tell you that that movement—that marriage equality movement—is ongoing and requires vigilance. The work of liberation and justice continues. But it is always built around the kind of power that takes relationships seriously. It is always built around the kind of power in community that perseveres—from season to season, from generation to generation—because we owe it to one another. Does that make sense to you? We owe it to one another. We are dependent on one another. We are devoted to one another.
That 2004 moment was not magic. It was built powerfully, strategically, faithfully by generations of queer activists and their allies—including churches and synagogues and Quaker meetings like yours and mine.
And so we have learned together—in networks committed to marriage equality, in movements determined to protect immigrants, in campaigns dedicated to ending apartheid and genocide forever. We have learned that we are powerful beyond our fears and doubts. When we listen to one another carefully and receive those testimonies as sacred texts. When we organize. When we pray and then organize. When we pray and organize and then make good, good, good trouble. Again and again. We can build holy power, loving power, in our churches! We can insist on human rights and ecological renewal and justice and peace. We’ve done it before. And we will do it again.
For all of you, for the power in your hearts, for the power in your churches, for the nonviolent power of the nonviolent Christ, I give thanks to God. It’s such a joy to be among you all this morning.
Amen.
