Justice
Seeing Through the Filter
Mar. 13, 2026 10:27 Filed in: Commentaries
Beloved in Christ,One delusion of modern life is the assumption that it is possible to see the world objectively, and without bias. Our brains take in about eleven million bits of information per second, and our conscious minds can only process about fifty bits. That’s an enormous gap, and our minds close that gap by using unconscious filters to select what to see and predict what is likely to happen. Those filters are made of what we believe or value most. So, it turns out, it’s not so much that seeing is believing, but rather we have to believe in order to see.
Following Jesus is about learning to see through the filter of God’s sacrificial, neighborly love. In this Sunday’s dense and complex gospel reading, Jesus is helping us to understand that true, healing vision is only found when we let go of faith in ourselves, and practice clinging entirely to God’s power.
Learning to see through the eyes of Jesus will give us a bias for love. It will develop a filter for generosity in a world of rancor and scorn, shine a warm and healing light on the poor and those pushed aside in a world where might makes right. Our spiritual work in every moment is to ask Jesus to touch the scales of hard-hearted selfishness, bitterness, and fear that ever blind us, and put on the lens of love, and the filter of justice. Through daily prayer, sharing life with each other, drinking deeply from the scriptures, and encountering Jesus in sacrament, God’s vision for a world healed by love comes into sharper focus, and we are set free to extend that healing in every moment of our living, in a world imprisoned by its destructive blindness.
Grace and Peace,
The Right Reverend Craig Loya
Bishop X
Episcopal Church in Minnesota
[ photo credit ]
The Sound of Winter Ice Cracking
Feb. 02, 2026 14:06 Filed in: Commentaries
What does the Lord require of you
but to do justice
and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:8
Friends, Yesterday the Rev. Anna Broadbent-Evelyn preached a powerful sermon on the text from Micah above, connecting us with the season of winter, the healing power of the jingle dress as the sound of winter's ice cracking, insight into the Hebrew word for 'humble' and the Greek word for 'meek.' You can listen to her sermon here.
Below, I'm sharing with you two resources as you navigate the coming week.
First, a video letter from more than 150 Episcopal bishops addressing the crisis of constitutionality and violence happening in Minnesota and across the country. Thanks to Karen Murdock for sharing this link!
Second, a list of readings compiled by Sky Woodhull that help put the government's actions today in historical context.
Oh Jesus, have mercy.
With love,
Susan+
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1) A Video Letter to our Fellow Americans
2) ICE Tactics in Historical Context
The tactics employed by ICE and the Border Patrol on display in the Twin Cities are by no means unique. They are all too reminiscent of tactics employed by the Nazis in Germany with the rise of Adolf Hitler. Following is a list of books that provide historical perspective for what we see today.
In The Garden of Beasts: Erik Larson, 2011
Berlin, 1933, as Hitler consolidated power, as documented by U.S. Ambassador William Dodd and his daughter Martha Dodd.
Hitler’s Banker: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht: John Weitz, 1997
Hjalmar Schacht, anti-Nazi, was chief architect of the Nazi economy.
Strongmen: Mussolini to The Present: Ruth Ben-Ghiat, 2021
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor of History at New York University, explores the use of propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power.
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century: Timothy Snyder, 2017
Historical perspective and a guide to resistance with ideas for how to preserve our freedoms.
Winter of The World: Ken Follet, 2012
This work of fiction is book 2 of Follet’s Century Trilogy. He places the reader in the midst of the rise of the Third Reich through the experience of families in the U.S., Germany , the Soviet Union, England and Wales.
[ Photo credit: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/06/15/jingle-dress-tradition-native-american-dance ]
Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly
Jan. 28, 2026 09:19 Filed in: Commentaries
Friends, On Sunday, I preached about Jesus's response to John the Baptist being arrested. You can listen to the sermon here.
I'm taking some time for retreat today, and I'm excited to share some reflections from the Rev. Kathy Monson Lutes about last weekend's events. Read on below!
With love,
Susan+
From the Rev. Kathy Monson Lutes
The reality is that we in Minnesota are living under occupation. We have witnessed Immigration and Customs Enforcement removing people from homes, work, and school based on door-knocking in random neighborhoods and swarming schools, health care facilities, Mexican restaurants, child care centers or gas station parking lots all in hopes of finding someone, anyone, to detain. And murdering protectors in the midst of it. Again, this is the reality.
As people of faith, we must step into the breach with faith, love, and most of all hope, to do what the gospel compels us to do - welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, protect those who are at risk. I don’t have to convince any of you of that. Sunday’s (Feb 1) Old Testament reading is from Micah, a passage with which you are so very familiar. “What the Lord really needs of us is to do justice, and to love kindness and mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.” In the midst of the chaos I am observing, I have also witnessed incredible acts of justice, kindness and mercy, walking humbly with God.
Friday morning Susan and I, with a wonderful handful of people from Grace, were at the airport to raise our voices demanding that Delta (and others) stop being complicit in removing people from our state to detention centers God knows where. That action was about disrupting the flow of money and commerce. It was about disrupting the flow of money into for profit detention facilities. We cheered, and we prayed, and sang as 100 of our colleagues were bused off to jail after kneeling in the cold for at least an hour.
Then, with at least 50,000 of our closest friends, many of you among them, we gathered downtown, we watched out for each other, we shared hand and foot warmers, we sang, and were kind to one another as we became Minnesota fierce. Susan and her partner Brian went to US Bank downtown, one of the leading financial institutions in Minnesota, to ask that they lead the way in standing up to injustice.
You have been delivering food from Casa Maria and Minnehaha Food Shelf, you have been bringing food to your neighbors, who are afraid to leave their homes for work and for school. You have been the hands and feet of Jesus in the way of embodied, fierce love.
And then, Saturday, another of our neighbors was killed by ICE. The grief was palpable. And what did we see? You, gathering together in neighborhoods and breweries and being community, increasing the light, rising up, with hope. This occupation is not over, and we will continue to love fiercely, and walk the way of Jesus, together.
Kathy+
[ photo credit ]
Press on with Yet More Courage
Jun. 18, 2025 13:33 Filed in: Commentaries
Friends,
Here is the prayer we opened our worship service with on Sunday.
God of shalom, we lift up this city and state and country.
We are awash in fear and hatred and violence, and we long for the healing and hope and justice only you can offer.
We pray for Melissa and Mark Hortman; receive them into the arms of your mercy.
We pray for John and Yvette Hoffman and their daughter, that they will be filled with the healing power of the Holy Spirit, that they may be able to recover and be raised up as signs of your love for the world.
We pray for the person who did these acts of violence, that he too will know the healing power of your justice.
We pray for all those tempted to violence, and for those who stoke the flames of hatred, that their hearts will be turned to your way of love.
And we pray for those who serve in positions of public trust in our legislature and everywhere, that in the midst of such fear, your love will give them the courage to continue in their duties with integrity and to press on with yet more courage toward your dream of love for this hurting world.
We ask all this in the name of the One whose way calls us to resilient, defiant, embodied, joyful love, even and especially in the midst of grief and destruction, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
I hope to see you this coming Sunday, June 22, when we celebrate Campus Ministry Sunday. With a sermon from Steve Mullaney (Chaplain and Executive Director of the University Episcopal Community), we'll wonder together how our baptismal promises call us to support young adults in all kinds of life transitions.
See you in church!
Susan+
Here is the prayer we opened our worship service with on Sunday.
God of shalom, we lift up this city and state and country.
We are awash in fear and hatred and violence, and we long for the healing and hope and justice only you can offer.
We pray for Melissa and Mark Hortman; receive them into the arms of your mercy.
We pray for John and Yvette Hoffman and their daughter, that they will be filled with the healing power of the Holy Spirit, that they may be able to recover and be raised up as signs of your love for the world.
We pray for the person who did these acts of violence, that he too will know the healing power of your justice.
We pray for all those tempted to violence, and for those who stoke the flames of hatred, that their hearts will be turned to your way of love.
And we pray for those who serve in positions of public trust in our legislature and everywhere, that in the midst of such fear, your love will give them the courage to continue in their duties with integrity and to press on with yet more courage toward your dream of love for this hurting world.
We ask all this in the name of the One whose way calls us to resilient, defiant, embodied, joyful love, even and especially in the midst of grief and destruction, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
I hope to see you this coming Sunday, June 22, when we celebrate Campus Ministry Sunday. With a sermon from Steve Mullaney (Chaplain and Executive Director of the University Episcopal Community), we'll wonder together how our baptismal promises call us to support young adults in all kinds of life transitions.
See you in church!
Susan+
Reflections on the Racial Justice and Healing Retreat
May. 20, 2025 10:16 Filed in: Commentaries
By Meghan and Vicky
Vicky and Meghan are members of Grace Episcopal Church, Minneapolis, close friends, as well as mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Together they attended the racial justice and healing retreat at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, St. Paul on March 22, 2025
Vicky: For 35 years, I was an educator in the K-12 world and an adjunct professor of education at a local university. The last 12 years, as a teacher, professor, school district administrator, and education consultant, the collective focus was on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for all students. Witnessing what continues to unfold since the presidential executive orders around DEI has been devastating for all who believe the strength of our society lies in our diversity. When I read in our Sunday church bulletin about the opportunity to attend the Racial Justice and Healing Retreat, my heart leapt. "Maybe," I hoped, "I will find a source of balm for my heartbroken soul."
Meghan: In our beautifully diverse world, I've developed a deep understanding of racial and identity development and transformative justice practices through my work as an academic advisor in a college setting. I was drawn to this retreat to experience racial healing and justice from a Christian perspective and to answer the questions, "How does God view justice?" and "How are we called to respond to God's call to justice?" I also wanted to be in community with other believers who were focused on a shared mission and vision of seeking to take action to make a more equitable, inclusive world.
Vicky: What I saw and experienced at the retreat was far more than a "balm" for my troubled heart. Every moment from when I walked through the doors of Holy Trinity Church that morning to the closing eucharist at the end of the day was an immersion into the "beloved community." This phrase, "beloved community," gets a lot of use and attention, particularly in spaces focused on racial justice and immigration. But what does "beloved community" really mean?
The beloved community is a place without physical walls. Instead, it is defined by the people who gather there. It is a spiritual place where differences in theology and individual experiences fade, while at the same time, a binding together by God through the Holy Spirit resides. It is a relational space where culture and color are no longer barriers, and it's replaced by a sincere desire to know and understand each other. Finally, it is a place that stirs the individual to action, to bring this deepened awareness to our broken world, and being open to the Holy Spirit for direction and courage. That is what I experienced at the Racial Justice and Healing Retreat.
Meghan: What was most striking and profoundly meaningful to me were the experiences of encountering the Holy Spirit and using a justice-focused lens.
Through one particular Bible reading from the Book of Isaiah, I encountered the spirit in two unique ways: In connection of the spirit through the retreat group, and a personal calling to the diaconate made clear through the reading. At the beginning of the retreat, we read as a group the reading aloud. It was already clear that the spirit was "moving and shaking" by connecting us. We were asked to share a word or phrase that resonated strongly with us. Vicky and I uttered the same phrase one after the other of "your light shall rise in the darkness." At the end two people vocalized at the same time, "Then your light shall break forth like the dawn." The church space audibly reacted. As I read through this reading again later, I felt the Holy Spirit "hitting me" with a message to pursue a calling to be a deacon, which I am actively pursuing with my rector and the diocese.
Experiencing a justice-focused church service and reading Bible verses from this perspective was profoundly meaningful to me. It was the most incredible church service I had ever been a part of and using this perspective to interpret scripture "broke open" the Bible for me in a way that I had never thirsted for before. I am not a person who usually wants to "crack open" my Bible, yet this retreat left me with an electrifying need to know and encounter God more, and an escalating desire to take personal and collective action towards justice (even more than before).
Vicky: Have the politics around DEI changed? No, they have intensified. However, nothing, including the powers that be, can diminish the "beloved community." Bishop Loya said it best, through his most recent weekly letter:
"What Jesus both promises and expects of us is not to escape from it, but to keep casting into new places, in new ways, so that we can join God in drawing the whole world into the net of God's liberating life, shouting our joyful and defiant alleluia to all the forces that break down the children God so cherishes, and longs to hold."
Vicky and Meghan are members of Grace Episcopal Church, Minneapolis, close friends, as well as mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Together they attended the racial justice and healing retreat at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, St. Paul on March 22, 2025
Vicky: For 35 years, I was an educator in the K-12 world and an adjunct professor of education at a local university. The last 12 years, as a teacher, professor, school district administrator, and education consultant, the collective focus was on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for all students. Witnessing what continues to unfold since the presidential executive orders around DEI has been devastating for all who believe the strength of our society lies in our diversity. When I read in our Sunday church bulletin about the opportunity to attend the Racial Justice and Healing Retreat, my heart leapt. "Maybe," I hoped, "I will find a source of balm for my heartbroken soul."
Meghan: In our beautifully diverse world, I've developed a deep understanding of racial and identity development and transformative justice practices through my work as an academic advisor in a college setting. I was drawn to this retreat to experience racial healing and justice from a Christian perspective and to answer the questions, "How does God view justice?" and "How are we called to respond to God's call to justice?" I also wanted to be in community with other believers who were focused on a shared mission and vision of seeking to take action to make a more equitable, inclusive world.
Vicky: What I saw and experienced at the retreat was far more than a "balm" for my troubled heart. Every moment from when I walked through the doors of Holy Trinity Church that morning to the closing eucharist at the end of the day was an immersion into the "beloved community." This phrase, "beloved community," gets a lot of use and attention, particularly in spaces focused on racial justice and immigration. But what does "beloved community" really mean?
The beloved community is a place without physical walls. Instead, it is defined by the people who gather there. It is a spiritual place where differences in theology and individual experiences fade, while at the same time, a binding together by God through the Holy Spirit resides. It is a relational space where culture and color are no longer barriers, and it's replaced by a sincere desire to know and understand each other. Finally, it is a place that stirs the individual to action, to bring this deepened awareness to our broken world, and being open to the Holy Spirit for direction and courage. That is what I experienced at the Racial Justice and Healing Retreat.
Meghan: What was most striking and profoundly meaningful to me were the experiences of encountering the Holy Spirit and using a justice-focused lens.
Through one particular Bible reading from the Book of Isaiah, I encountered the spirit in two unique ways: In connection of the spirit through the retreat group, and a personal calling to the diaconate made clear through the reading. At the beginning of the retreat, we read as a group the reading aloud. It was already clear that the spirit was "moving and shaking" by connecting us. We were asked to share a word or phrase that resonated strongly with us. Vicky and I uttered the same phrase one after the other of "your light shall rise in the darkness." At the end two people vocalized at the same time, "Then your light shall break forth like the dawn." The church space audibly reacted. As I read through this reading again later, I felt the Holy Spirit "hitting me" with a message to pursue a calling to be a deacon, which I am actively pursuing with my rector and the diocese.
Experiencing a justice-focused church service and reading Bible verses from this perspective was profoundly meaningful to me. It was the most incredible church service I had ever been a part of and using this perspective to interpret scripture "broke open" the Bible for me in a way that I had never thirsted for before. I am not a person who usually wants to "crack open" my Bible, yet this retreat left me with an electrifying need to know and encounter God more, and an escalating desire to take personal and collective action towards justice (even more than before).
Vicky: Have the politics around DEI changed? No, they have intensified. However, nothing, including the powers that be, can diminish the "beloved community." Bishop Loya said it best, through his most recent weekly letter:
"What Jesus both promises and expects of us is not to escape from it, but to keep casting into new places, in new ways, so that we can join God in drawing the whole world into the net of God's liberating life, shouting our joyful and defiant alleluia to all the forces that break down the children God so cherishes, and longs to hold."