Rev. Paul Rasmussen, Senior Minister of HPUMC, delivers a strong message speaking out against racism and the white supremacists whose protests lead to violence in Charlottesville, VA over the weekend. One person was killed, others injured, when a car plowed through a crowd of counter-protesters on Saturday. Below is the statement that was read during all services at HPUMC on Sunday.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

Driving a spoke into the wheel of injustice is a challenge. It is slow, it is laborious, it is messy, but I believe with all of my heart that we as a church are doing that. I thank you for demanding that we speak.

As the Senior Minister of this church, I humbly invite you to join me in rebuking and condemning the atrocities that took place in Charlottesville yesterday. I invite you to join me in calling it out for what it is, a grotesque display of racism, evil, and sin.

As people of faith, as people of Scripture, as followers of Jesus, and as a church whose mission it is to help people become deeply devoted followers of Christ, we recognize that any expressions of white supremacy are sinful and wholly antithetical to the Gospel.

Gospel accuracy and responsibility, as threaded through the very words of our baptism, call out “evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they may present themselves.”

Part of yesterday’s violent charade was the carrying of Nazi flags. The carrying of Nazi flags is evil. That flag is nothing more than a symbol of an evil failed state that brutally killed more than six million Jews, countless Romani people, and others judged to be inferior. Those who sacrificed their lives in World War II, many members of this church and your beloved sons, daughters, parents, and grandparents defeated that evil. It is truly un-American and certainly unchristian to carry the flag for an evil dictatorship that our country sacrificially and victoriously opposed.

There is no place for racial supremacy in the Kingdom of God.

Four hundred years ago, as my friend Bill Coffin once reminded me, Galileo looked into the telescope and saw that Copernicus was right. That earth was not the center of the universe, but only a modest planet revolving around its sun. Today, no one country, no one race, no one way of thinking no matter how glorious its past, how brilliant its future, how might its might, or how generous its people, none is the center. God is. When we think otherwise, we descend into the sinful path of idolatry of the worst kind.

So we ask this morning, what is the antidote to what we have witnessed?

I humbly invite you to pray with me that we reclaim our belief and confidence that God is the only thing supreme in our cosmos.

I pray that we start anew today to love what God loves.

I pray for God’s strength in offering respect and justice to those with whom we deeply differ.

I pray that God might fill in the negative space between our differences with the only thing that reflects the Kingdom of God, love.

I pray for a renewal of the spirit of social justice that has permeated our church for more than 100 years.

And I pray that we cling fast to the sacred words of Paul in Colossians 3:11, "in that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all and in all!"

I pray that the only thing holier than the statements we make, will be the lives that we lead, and the influence we wield. I pray to live as God would have us live, to serve as God would have us serve, and love as God would have us love.

Finally Lord, we humbly pray for the victims of the violence and their families. We pray for intentional, loving steps toward healing and reconciliation in our communities and our country.