“Come join us as we repent from the sins of greed, corruption, and apathy,” said Occupy Boston member Joshua Eaton. “Come join us as we wait for the world where every chain is loosed and every yoke is broken. Come join us as we Occupy Lent.”
The group plans to recite prayers of repentance, sing hymns, and read passages from scripture that relate to economic justice. Their event announcement quotes Isaiah 58, verse 6: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?”
WHO: Members of Occupy Boston and the Protest Chaplains
WHAT: A gathering each Friday in Lent—the season of repentance—to publicly ask forgiveness for our society’s economic sins and for our complicity with them
WHEN: Friday, February 24 from 8 AM to 8:30 AM and every Friday in Lent (through April 6)
WHERE:First National Bank Building (home to Bank of America) at 100 Federal Street in Boston’s Financial District. Once the Federal Street Church, it was an incubator for liberal religion and the site where Massachusetts ratified the US Constitution. Now, as home to Bank of America, it stands as a temple to unfettered financial capital.
The Protest Chaplains are a group of lay people and seminarians based in Boston who happened to fall in love with God through the traditions of Christianity. American Christians have been far too polite, too quiet, and too accommodating of leaders who regularly invoke the name of Christ as they wage war, stomp on the poor, and chip away at the freedoms once guaranteed to everyone by the Constitution. The Protest Chaplains seek to join with all those who, like them, know in the deepest places of their souls that another world is indeed possible. For more information, please visit http://ProtestChaplains.blogspot.com.
Occupy Boston has been directly inspired by our sisters and brothers at Occupy Wall St. in New York, and we stand in solidarity with them. The Occupy Boston encampment was started on September 30, 2011 in Dewey Square until December 10, 2011. Occupy Boston invites the 99% to speak out for economic and political systems that work for all people, not just a few. Occupy Boston is just one of more than 125 separate US Occupy movement sites and Occupy Together is the unofficial hub. While these different occupations share many goals and attitudes, they each operate independently, and there is no national organization that can speak for all occupations. For more information about Occupy Boston visit http://www.OccupyBoston.org.
For those who profess the faith, Lent brings with it that bit of unpleasantness that requires we examine our own faults and follies and repent of the same. But that we’re removing the beam from our own eye shouldn’t preclude us from pointing out the often vicious tendencies inherent in the system in which we abide.
Remembering that the folks working in these institutions are our friends and neighbors, just caught up in the same cycles we are.
See you there.
When? 8:00 AM
Where? “In the mouth of Mammon”, 100 Federal Street, in front of the Bank of America Headquarters.
I will not be able to attend every Friday in Lent due to the court appearances on my docket. I truly felt in the presence of the numinous, and a recipient of Grace today participating in, and making a record and witness of the Occupy Lent liturgy with the Protest Chaplains and Occupy Boston.bearing recoredc.
After the Litany of Repentance by the Protest Chaplain Robin Lutjohann
In the form of a poem – as interpreted by Samuel Butler
On those who are burdened by debt,
Who have lost their homes to foreclosure,
Who are already living on the streets,
Who have trouble making ends meet,
Who have to ask for help just to survive,
Who are driven to crime by desperation,
Whose voices are not heard for want of money and influence,
Who are stuck serving evil, but don’t know how to get out,
The weary and the afraid,
The lost and the forsaken,
Have mercy.
Oh God have mercy on us sinners,
For our participation in structures of evil,
For insatiable greed,
For lack of compassion in the face of great need,
For our faith in prosperity without cost,
For our service to the false God of Money instead of the God of life,
For the scandal of billions wasted in politics and war while children go hungry,
For our Caesars and Herods,
For the violence that is rooted in our hearts,
And for the times we turn others into enemies, even the banks and politicians,
Forgive us.
Deliver us, Oh God, guide our feet in the way of peace,
Hear our prayer,
And grant us peace.
From the arrogance of power,
Tyranny of greed,
The ugliness of racism,
The cancer of hatred,
The seduction of wealth,
The addiction of control,
The paralysis of cynicism,
The violence of apathy,
The ghettos of poverty,
The ghettos of wealth,
And from a lack of imagination,
Deliver us.
Deliver us, Oh God,
Guide our feet into the way of peace
For we will not conform to the patterns of this world,
Let us be transformed by the renewing of our minds,
With the help of God’s grace let us resist evil wherever we find it.
With the destruction of community,
The idea that happiness must be purchased,
The ravaging of the Earth,
The Principalities and Powers that oppress,
With the theology of Empire,
With a so-called meritous society,
With the hoarding of riches,
The dissemination of fear,
Corporations, accountable to no one but the bottom line,
Banks who are above the law, and too big to fail,
With a government bought and paid by lobbyists,
We will not comply.
Today we pledge allegiance
To the Kingdom of God
We pledge allegiance to a peace that is not like Rome’s, or Wall Streets’,
We pledge to the gospel of enemy love,
The Kingdom of the Poor and Broken,
The King that love’s his enemies so much he died for them.
We pledge to the least of these, with whom Christ dwells,
The refugee of Nazareth,
The homeless Rabbi who had no place to lay his head,
The Cross rather than the sword,
The banner of love above any flag,
The sign of the Cross above any logo,
The Word of God above any slogan,
The One who rules with a servant’s towel rather than an iron fist,
The One who rides a donkey rather than a war horse,
The revolution that sets both oppressed and oppressors free,
The Way that leads to Life,
To the slaughtered Lamb,
We pledge our allegiance.
Together we proclaim his praises,
From the margins of the Empire to the centers of wealth and power,
Mic check
Long live the slaughtered Lamb!