Responsive Reading, James Dunn Memorial Service
(Compiled by Bill J. Leonard)
Reader: “Yea, though I walk through valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4)
Congregation: In the Psalms, all views of death had to reflect its closeness. . . . The writers of the psalms confronted death but saw through it to life because in death they saw God.” (Martin E. Marty)
Reader: “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)
Congregation: “Enforced uniformity confounds civil and religious and denies the principles of Christianity and Civility. . . . A national church was not constituted by Christ Jesus. That cannot be a true religion which needs carnal weapons to uphold it. . . . No [persons] shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against [their] will.” (Roger Williams)
Reader: “Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an overflowing stream.” (Amos 5: 23-24)
Congregation: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
Reader: “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14: 12-14)
Congregation: “What we would like to do is change the world— make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute—the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words—we can, to a certain extent, change the world. . . .” (Dorothy Day)
Reader: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal.3: 28)
Congregation: “Anything that is as old as racism is in the blood line of the nation; it’s not any superficial thing—that attitude is in the blood and we have to educate about it.” (Nannie Helen Burroughs)
Reader: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” (2 Tim. 4:7-8)
Congregation: “What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it – as if the cause depends on you, because it does.” (Bill Moyers)
Reader: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9)
Congregation: “No aspect of our lives remains untouched by the conversion that is God’s call and God’s gift to us. Biblically, conversion means to surrender ourselves to God in every sphere of human existence; the personal and social, the spiritual and economic, the psychological and political.” (James Dunn)
Reader: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39) Congregation: “Something fine, something of essence, hopeful and elegant, gauge of civility and a more excellent way, something of us at our best was gone. . . . Then when I had cried enough, I got up, blew my nose, and went to the house. . . . ‘In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me!’” (Will Campbell)
All: Amen, and Amen!
