Gracious and loving God,

In the beginning you created humanity and declared us very good.

Our beginnings, all of our beginnings are rooted in you.

We are all siblings, we are all related, we re all your children.

C: We are all siblings, we are all related, e are all your children

Violence entered creation through Cain and Abel.

Born of jealousy, rooted in fear of scarcity, Brother turned against brother.

The soil soaked with blood, Cain asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

C: We are all siblings, we are all related, We are our brother’s keeper.

When your people cried out in slavery, You heard them. You did not ignore their suffering.

You raised up leaders who would speak truth to power and lead your people into freedom.

Let us hear your voice; grant us the courage to answer your call.

Guide us toward justice and freedom for all people.

C: We are all siblings, we are all related, we all deserve to be free.

Through the prophets you told us the worship you want for us,

To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke,

To let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke;

Yet we continue to serve our own interests, to crush our siblings because we are afraid, because they don’t look like us, act like us, talk like us.

Yet they are us. And we are them.

C: We are all siblings, we are all related, we are not free unless all are free.

In great love you sent to us Jesus, your Son. Brown skinned, dark-haired, Middle-Eastern. They called him Yeshua, your Son,

Who welcomed the unwelcome, accepted the unacceptable — the foreigners, the radicals, the illiterate, the poor, The agents of the empire and the ones who sought to overthrow it,

The men and the women who were deemed unclean because of their maladies.

C: We are all siblings, we are all related, We are all disciples.

The faith of Christ spread from region to region, culture to culture.

You delight in the many voices, many languages, raised to you.

You teach us that in Christ, “there is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free,

There is no male or female.” In Christ we are all one.

Not in spite of our differences, but in them. Black, brown and white, female and male.

Citizen and immigrant. In Christ we are all one.

C: We are all siblings, we are all related, we are all one in Christ.

Each week we confess our sin to you and to one another.

We know that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.

We are captive to the sin of white supremacy,

Which values some lives more than others,

Which believes some skin tones are more perfect than others,

Which commits violence again those who are different.

We confess our complicity in this sin. We humbly repent.

We ask for strength to face our sin, to dismantle it and to be made anew.

We trust in your compassion and rely on your mercy.

Praying that you will give us your wisdom and guide us in your way of peace,

That you will renew us as you renew all of creation in accordance with your will.

C: We ask this, we pray this as your children, all siblings, all related, all beloved children.

Written by Pastors Jennifer Chrien of Simi Valley, Calif., and Elizabeth Rawlings of Washington State, in response to violence at alt-right rallies Aug. 11 and 12 in Charlottesville, Va.