(Sermon only) LETTING IN THE LIGHT AS IT COMES UU Church of Berkeley January 11, 2026

How do you do the dishes in a week like

this is the question I asked God.

How do you do the dishes while your

country seems to be plunging into the

next stage, a deeper grip of strongman

fascist rule? How do you do the dishes

while the rule of law is assailed at

home and abroad and there seems to be no

way in sight to hold the powerful to

account?

Yes. On Wednesday, Renee Nicole Mling

Good was murdered

by an agent of our government of the

ICE.

Unfortunately, it's not uh terribly

uncommon for law enforcement agents to

kill citizens in this country. Police

violence is the leading cause of death

among black men ages 20 to 35.

Since 2020, over a thousand people have

been shot to death each year by police.

Yes, tragically deaths like this occur

way too often. But like the murder of

George Floyd just George Floyd just one

and a half miles away from the scene

that unfolded on Wednesday,

Renee Nicole Mlin Good's death will be

marked

by national outcry.

Because even amidst the sea of violence

pervading our society, this death was

different. She was not killed by the

police. The police, still in need of

tremendous reform, are at least

sometimes prepared with rigorous

training and held accountable to

standards of conduct.

But the ICE personnel who've been

deployed as agents of chaos and fear

have not been trained to any standards

and are not being held to even a

pretense of accountability.

This woman, this mother who showed up to

blow whistles in the face of cruelty

directed at her neighbors, who showed up

to bear witness as the untrained agents

of chaos and fear kidnapped her

neighbor. Another mom who had just

dropped off her child at school, who

showed up with her dog and her wife and

her six-year-old stuffed animals in her

back seat, who was afraid of the

untrained agents with guns yelling at

her,

was murdered as she tried to drive away

from them.

The propaganda of the deed

is what the anarchists of the 19th

century called assassinations or other

moments of violence perpetrated to

galvanize feelings among the public.

We call it terrorism

in our modern parliament.

While the president and his surrogates

try to bestow Renee Nicole Mlin good

with that title,

it is quickly apparent to those willing

to examine the widely available evidence

that the ICE agents involved are in fact

the domestic terrorists.

As the regime running our country is

making clear, this murder was not an

accident or an overreach, but an

expression of the true nature and

purpose of its approach to governance.

In October, when we heard the news that

ICE and Customs and Border Patrol were

amassing at the Coast Guard Island, many

of us headed to the scene like Renee

Nicole Mlin Good did on Wednesday.

I remember one moment, one moment

singing and marching alongside Reverend

Jorge Batista along with many other

colleagues and activists and then the

next moment watching as SUVs full of

paramilitary agents heavily armed and

masked, recklessly barreled toward the

protesters. And without warning, a man

jumped out of an SUV and shot Reverend

Jorge Bautista in the face with a pepper

ammunition.

I remember the terror of the moment, the

shrieks of the gathered crowd, the fear

pounding in my own heart.

I can't put myself in harm's way today,

I said. Not as a father to a a two-week

old.

Shooting American citizens in the face

without repercussion is domestic

terrorism

with the purpose of subduing and

silencing us.

And it is effective because it is scary.

So, I've been thinking about fear. We're

going to be thinking about these

interior states, this range of who we

are and what we are over the next

several weeks of worship. Fear, that hot

white flash,

blinding

to the moment

or in its dark, crumbling, hollow place

that leaves us slacked and unnerved.

Fear the tight heavy contraction, the

jaw clenched gray.

Fear the heart pounding red, bubbling

over, anxious

religious community,

spiritual practice.

They are about banding together with one

another and our ancestors and those yet

to come so that we don't have to hold

something like this fear alone.

It's about knowing that we belong to

that great circle of people of faith who

have confronted fear and held on to the

conviction that we are held in a

persistent and pervasive love. love far

more powerful than any agent of chaos or

wouldbe tyrant.

It is a love that has been preached from

time immemorial. A love that holds us

still.

It's a love that showed up in one of the

greatest teachers of love ever to live.

Roomie Jalaludin

Muhammad Roomie known by his followers

as melana teacher master.

He lived in a childhood of a whirlwind

of migration.

When the Mongolian army invaded his

hometown of Balk in present day

Afghanistan, his parents began this long

westward trek through Baghdad, Damascus,

Malatia, Ersina, Civas, Caseri, Nigda.

They eventually settled in Caraman for

seven years before Roomie eventually

made his home in Coa in modern day

Turkey. Imagine

he learned something about what it means

to be passing through a place,

what it means to be the other,

a stranger.

And I know he also learned something

about what it means to be a welcomed

guest.

This being human is a guest house. He

preached

every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some

momentary awareness comes as an

unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all.

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows

who violently sweep your house empty of

its furniture, still

treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some

new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.

Meet them at the door laughing.

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes because

each has been sent as a guide from the

beyond.

Meet them at the door laughing.

to welcome fear, welcome anger, welcome

outrage, and and welcome disgust,

welcome horror,

and welcome conviction.

The invitation to complicity with the

new American fascism is an invitation to

distraction and numbness.

It's an invitation to turn a blind eye,

to meet scarcity with protectionism, to

resign ourselves to a hopeless lethargy.

Love says not so fast.

Love says rest when you need to rest.

Collapse when you need to collapse. But

love says that's not the end of the

story. Love brings another guest and

another. Disgust, outrage, conviction,

renewal.

Love fills your home with every shade.

Casts deep shadows with the low winter

sun in the corner.

Invites you into them

and rises again and beckons you back

into the bright morning light. No, they

don't give you any clear answers. these

guests of our inner lives

and it's hard to even know the next

right thing.

Yes, all these guests leave a mess.

Yes,

even in a week like this, even in a week

like this, we must live our little lives

with all our shifting states inside and

the dishes.

They must be done.

young man who grew up in our church

told me this week about his grandfather

in Karakas

living just a few blocks from the

Capitol, listening as the bombs began to

drop as the noises of something

momentous happening just nearby began.

But he had just begun to take his

sleeping medication

and threw up his hands and said, "I'm

going to bed."

We must

keep on living our small lives in the

midst of it all. How do you do the

dishes in a week like this? The answer

that came, of course, is that you do

them as you always have with soap and

warm water,

with a cloth and and or a sponge,

occasionally some metal kind of rough

scrubber

as you always have, but but this week

perhaps with whatever extra tenderness

you can muster for this world,

give the care you wish for Renee's

children to each weathered plate, each

fragile glass, to the scorched baking

sheet, the heavy black cast iron.

Show up for the vigil or rant about it

on the phone with a friend, sign the

petition or call a representative. We

will keep showing up. And we will also

live our small human lives in the

slanting winter light of a civilization

collapsing

in the long shadow of those who would

take advantage of this moment of falling

apart to assert again the ancient lie

that might makes right.

Our

president has professed to believe God

has put him in this place

to use him as a vehicle for some great

and holy purpose.

When he declared unabashedly this week

that only his own morality, his own mind

should could constrain him.

He again revealed the fundamental

poverty of his worldview.

The Christian nationalists and the

America first true believers. The hawks

who see our role as police force of the

world. The billionaires and titans of

industry who see their own unchecked

power as the key to human progress. They

suffer from a profound poverty of the

spirit,

a faithlessness in something bigger than

themselves and their small story. An

inability to perceive that the sacred

light they see glowing around themselves

is cast on every living being.

Pervades every atom of the cosmos was

not a private blessing of a god who

plays favorites,

but the birthright of us all.

If the holy is at work in our public

life, and I believe it is, it is not

showing up to choose sides and anoint

rulers. It does not trade in the divine

right of kings. Rather, it is there at

the kitchen sink, there weeping at the

vigil, there in the halls of power,

tugging, no matter how often it is

dismissed and rejected on the souls of

every leader.

[sighs]

It is in the grieving widow.

This week, it's it's living. It's

speaking through the body of Becca Good,

who wrote a letter reminding us what it

means to root our lives, our faith, our

fight in something bigger than

ourselves. A widow who grieving an

atrocity still holds faith in something

bigger. First, she wrote, "I want to

extend my gratitude to all the people

who have reached out from across the

country and around the world to support

my family."

The kindness,

this kindness of strangers is the most

fitting tribute because if you ever

encountered my wife Renee Nicole Mlin

good,

you know that above all else, she was

kind.

In fact, kindness radiated out of her.

Renee sparkled, she wrote. She literally

sparkled. I mean, she didn't wear

glitter, but I swear she had sparkles

coming out of her pores

all the time.

You might think it was just my love

talking, but her family said the same

thing. Renee was made of sunshine.

Renee lived by an overarching belief

there is kindness in the world, and we

need to do everything we can to find it

where it resides. and nurture it where

it needs to grow. Renee was a Christian

who knew that all religions teach the

same essential truth. We are here to

love each other, care for each other,

and keep each other safe and whole.

Like people have done across place and

time, she wrote, "We moved to make a

better life for ourselves.

We chose Minnesota to make our home. Our

whole extended road trip here, we held

hands in the car while our son drew all

over the windows to pass the time and

the miles. And what we found when we got

here was a vibrant and welcoming

community. We made friends and spread

joy.

And while any place we were together was

home, there was a strong shared sense

here in Minneapolis that we were looking

out for each other.

Here I had finally found peace and safe

harbor.

That has been taken from me forever.

We were raising our son to believe that

no matter where you come from or what

you look like, all of us deserve

compassion and kindness. Renee lived

this belief every day. She is pure love.

She is pure joy. She is pure sunshine.

On Wednesday, January 7th, we stopped to

support our neighbors. We had whistles.

They had guns.

Renee, she says, leaves behind three

extraordinary children. The youngest is

just six years old and already lost his

father. I'm now left to raise our son

and continue teaching him as Renee

believed that there are people

there are people building a better world

for him.

The people who did this

had fear and anger in their hearts and

we need to show them a better way.

We thank you, she concluded,

we thank you for ensuring that Rene's

legacy is one of kindness and love.

We honor her memory by living her

values, rejecting hate and choosing

compassion, turning away from fear and

pursuing peace, refusing division and

knowing we must come together to build a

world where we all come home safe to the

people we love.

May it be so.

And amen.

>> Amen.