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
God knocked tyrants off their high horses,
pulled victims out of the mud.
The starving poor sat down to a banquet;
the callous rich were left out in the cold.
~ From Mary’s MAGNIFICAT, Luke 1:52-53
Motive is love and instrument is justice.
~ Reinhold Niebuhr
Our Outward Journey is to build the just world our faith tells us is possible and necessary. We have a faith that together we can with God’s grace and power to move the needle of progress forward.
We believe we are Christ’s representatives and the church is Christ’s presence in the world. God created us for love and freedom. God’s deepest desire is for us to live a life of love and freedom. Human history is a history of struggle for freedom from domination and oppression, whether it be from a person, group, institution, government or nation. Therefore, sacred activism is actively and intentionally participating in God’s passionate desire for realizing love and freedom of all people. This sacred work will include advocating for human rights, dismantling the legacy of systemic racism, gender inequality and economic injustice. There can be no peace without justice. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
Ethics is behaving in a way that is for the common good, not just for humans but all of God’s creation. Today we are facing existential threat to the very survival of the human race and animal species from unprecedented acceleration of global warming and climate change. The consequence will be catastrophic. There is an urgency to combat our exploitative relationship with God’s planet to prevent further destruction to our environment. The health of our planet (the body of God) is inextricably linked with the wellbeing of all life forms, including our own and future generations.
We are involved in various outreach missions and ministries to make the lives of people and the health of the planet better. You will have an opportunity to engage in social service and social justice work on behalf of Christ at Watsonville First United Methodist Church.
St. Theresa’s Prayer: Christ Has No Body
Christ has no body now but yours
no hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world
Yours are the feet, with which he walks to do good
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes
You are his body
Christ has no body now on earth
but yours
