Last weekend, wanting to linger with John Lewis for a bit after his death, I watched an old interview of him by Jon Batiste, the bandleader of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Batiste asked him for his best pearls of wisdom. Lewis answered simply, according to the same religion he has followed since he was a child, “Sometimes someone says something hostile to me and I say ‘You don’t believe that. Your mother didn’t teach you that.’” He told a story about a Klan member who visited his office at the Capitol with his son, 50 years after beating Lewis bloody during the Freedom Rides, to apologize. The Klan member wept, his son wept, and Lewis forgave him, hugged him and started crying himself. “Hate is too heavy a burden to bear. Love is a better way,” he told Batiste. 

This Sunday, we are once again blessed by guest preacher, Rev. Lynice Pinkard,  who will continue to bring us wisdom from Jesus’  parables about the power of believing and acting in faith, that there is enough for us all, in the face of overwhelming need. 

Rev. Lynice Pinkard  Rev. Lynice is a writer, speaker, UCC minister, chaplain and public intellectual operating at the intersection of Christianity, economics, and social change. She is a graduate of Pacific School of Religion with both an MA and MDiv and is the former pastor at First Congregational Church of Oakland.

As a result of her rich heritage growing up in the African Methodist Episcopal church and the witness of her parents’ commitment to social justice, Rev. Lynice developed an early and keen sensitivity to the ways in which disparities of power and forms of oppression affect the quality of the lives of people around the world.

In recent years, Rev. Pinkard has co-founded several ministry-focused, community-based non-profits: Share First Oakland (addressing issues of hunger and structural food insecurity); Urban Sanctuary (building therapeutic collaborations between West Oakland activists and neighborhood residents, e.g., community gardeners and recyclers, artists and restorative justice advocates, marriage equality advocates and formerly incarcerated African American men in West Oakland neighborhoods); and Seminary of the Street (forming and training West Oakland neighborhood residents for faith-based critical justice work).  Read more about Rev. Lynice HERE. 
 
Rev. Lynice will preach from the lectionary;  from Matthew’s gospel about the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven in contrast to the Kingdom of Ceaser and the Empire, then and now.
 
August 2 Bible verses.   
 
We look forward to sharing this experience together.