I greet you tonight on behalf of Episcopalians throughout the Indianapolis region and beyond.

One of the privileges and opportunities human beings receive when each of us is created is to participate in the divine task of growing day by day in our awareness of how interconnected we all are. We all, every one of us, are created in the divine image, and given the holy task of loving each other, both people seemingly different from ourselves and those apparently more similar.

Yet too often people resist this awareness through various means, such as labeling and persecution. In those moments human desires for superiority over others try to overwhelm the divine truth of the wholeness of creation and the oneness of all people. These types of behaviors seek to divide us, to deny the holy bonds that exist among us all. As a Christian, I have a responsibility to especially respond to attitudes, actions, and words of Anti Semitism, since too often Christian texts and institutions have been used to justify the creation and propagation of Anti-Semitism. Millions have died as a result, and so I must explicitly say, and pray for “no more.”

No more hatred. No more destruction. No more violence.

But to simply say and pray it is not enough.

So

I offer to you all the promise that I, and so many others, will hold and uphold the divine truth that we all, all people, are one, equally loved and cared for by God. And we all stand in solidarity tonight, and will continue to do so, facing together the people in this world who desire our division from one another and want to hear fear in our voices. Instead, we vocalize holy solidarity, divine courage, and blessed joy.