FEBRUARY 2026

“God has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Holy require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

Dear UCCMA members,

We have just entered the season of Lent – a time of reflection, repentance, fasting, and meditating on our mortality from a place of humility, all in the spirit of following Jesus toward the cross.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, no stranger to the cross, wrote about “cheap grace” in his book The Cost of Discipleship (1937). Bonhoeffer defined cheap grace as “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession.” Christianity without the cross, he said.

And cheap grace is what we are after if we want peace without justice, comfort without struggle, and “equality” without DEI. Diversity, equity, and inclusion requires making people in power uncomfortable. It requires people with privilege (such as white privilege) to acknowledge their privilege and how it benefits them, and then to use that privilege on behalf of justice. It requires people to face difficult realities about how society works in order to change society so that “justice [might] run down like waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream (Amos 5:24).

When people oppose DEI, whatever their stated reason, they are sending one of two messages.

They think society works differently from the way it actually works, believing that things are already fair and just in the US. Certainly, it’s understandable that many people don’t understand how systemic inequality works; it’s not exactly taught accurately in our educational system. Those of us who benefit from inequality may not be forced to learn about its realities.

But such people may care more about their own comfort and well-being (and that of people like them) than they do about the well-being of the devalued even if they do know how inequality works.

And this is where Jesus makes some major asks of us. Grace may be free, but it isn’t cheap – not if it’s real. We have to repent, disciple ourselves to justice, confess, and take up our daily cross.

Embedding justice in our worship music is one way to take up our cross. More on that next time.

All peace, Amanda

amanda@amandaudiskessler.com