In October my co-workers and I read thousands of college application essays for our nonprofit, whose mission is to match great students who have triumphed over challenges with great colleges.  All of the essays I read, I believe, were written by remarkable students.  But of the essays I read only a handful have stayed with me:
- A student who analyzed the bullet spray at a shooting site in his neighborhood using the principles of physics
- A student whose prized possession was her earplugs because they allowed her to drown out the other nine people living in her studio apartment
- A student who timed his little sister’s bath to 3.5 minutes – exactly the length of a commercial break from her favorite TV show – after their mother went to rehab

What connects the essays that stick with the hundreds of others I read is that the “stickers” used a single situation as a window into their authors’ whole biography.  Similarly, when asked how many points a sermon should have, a homiletics professor of mine responded, “At least one.”
    Picking one thing, one focus area (at least for a while), is what creates impact not only in college admissions essays or sermons but also in public policy advocacy.  Back when I worked as a lobbyist in Washington, the most emotional part interacting with clients was helping them to set annual priorities:  what one or two things did they really, really, really want to accomplish?  And what would accomplishment look like?  I worked with municipal governments and all of their initiatives were (more or less) worthy.  The difficulty was choosing amongst them:  What was more important to address, HIV or diabetes?  Prevention or treatment?  Transit expansion or affordable housing?  Parks or first-responder equipment?  Choosing one option didn’t mean the others weren’t important and necessary, but it did mean they might not get attention and funding that year.  Once the priorities were set and the measures of success determined, the advocacy roadmap became pretty clear.  Elected officials could help us meet or revise our goals.  But to move ahead at all, everyone first had to agree to what the priorities were.
    A church where I used to work has, of late, gotten religion about climate change.  The senior high youth group (led by clergy trained in community organizing) helped the church to focus on climate change so much that this year the congregation sent representatives to the climate talks in Copenhagen.  Their Sunday School kids got letters back from President Obama on official White House stationary in response to their inquiries about global warming.  They are a medium-sized, middle-class, semi-rural community with equal representation of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.  They never have and never will endorse a candidate.  But they have become one of Connecticut’s foremost religious communities on the issue of climate change, because they chose to focus on it.
    In the tense weeks before war, President Lincoln famously said, “A house divided cannot stand.”  Nor can a priority list divided.  Each president we honor today chose some priorities over others in order to make changes in his day and time.  The process of discerning what policy issue to focus on is wrenching.  Any of the Millennium Development Goals or denomination-specific policy issues are worthy of congregations’ attention.  Any of them will inch our world closer to God’s kingdom of justice.  But to make and see progress, a congregation must choose.  In Matthew 25, Jesus tells his followers they will be judged based on their treatment of others:

“I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

But not all at once.