“We will honor your life by taking up the work of public theology you showed us.”

Our Moral Moment, by Rev. William J. Barber II, Mar 7, 2026

I am in Chicago today at the Rainbow Push Headquarters, where Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson gathered the Chicago community on Saturday mornings for decades, to pay my last respects at his final funeral service.

What do you do when a mighty servant of God has fallen? You say, “Thank you,” and you keep the work going.

Thank you, God, for creating, saving, growing, using, and lifting Rev. Jackson to be the servant he was.

Thank you, Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson, for showing us what it looks like for a moral and compassionate leader to know that power should only be used to lift people up, and never to push and shoot people down.

Thank you for teaching us over and over again that the power of life and death is in the tongue.

Thank you for showing us how to take the complex policies in the political suites and make them plain for the people in the streets.

Thank you because when you saw poverty in the fields of the Midwestern farmer or the shacks of the Southern sharecropper or the slums of the city, you didn’t run a regular campaign, but dared to rally a movement vote and said boldly:

“My constituency is the damned, disinherited, disrespected, despised. They are restless and seek relief.”

Thank you, Rev. Jackson, for not only restating their discontent to let them know that someone see them, but registering their votes so they could see their own power.

Thank you, Rev. Jackson, for challenging both parties when you could have gone along to get along.

Thank you for telling the entire society that everybody is somebody because they are a child of God.

Thank you, Rev. Jackson, for telling and showing us then what we need to hear now – that the untapped power of this nation is in the Black, white, brown, Asian, and Native communities that are trampled on. The stones that the builders reject are the only hope for a cornerstone upon which we can rebuild a broken society.

They hold the key to our way out of this mess we’re in.

Thank you for being unapologetically Black but having love and grace and enough sense to always demand a rainbow.

Thank you for teaching us that when Black people and white people and brown people and Asian people are so broke they can’t pay their light bill, we are all Black in the dark. So together we must fight for the light of justice.

Thank you, Rev. Jackson, for teaching us how to…

Love anyhow

Keep on anyhow

“Run, Jesse run” anyhow

Believe in a better America anyhow

Keep hope alive anyhow.

And now, with Yusef, Jesse Jr., Jonathan, Sangrita, Ashley, and your beloved Jackie, we will pick up the baton and will run on anyhow…

Build hope anyhow

Build new rainbow coalitions anyhow

Repair breaches anyhow

Build political power anyhow

Build the beloved community anyhow.

Because we trust God anyhow

The Lord is our light anyhow.

We know that all that matters is that we please and serve God anyhow.

Thank you, Rev Jackson, for letting the Lord use you.

You fought the good fight. You have finished your race. Sleep now, mighty lion. We will see you in the morning.

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William J. Barber, II
President, Repairers of the Breach, & Founding Director & Professor, Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy. Author, WHITE POVERTY, WE ARE CALLED TO BE A MOVEMENT, THE THIRD RECONSTRUCTION, REVIVE US AGAIN, & FORWARD TOGETHER.

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