Watch Your Words!

 

The presidential debate last Tuesday night was 90-minutes of back and forth that was a lot of what we have already heard...except for one very disturbing comment from the former president. 

The question asked was one of his favorite talking points...the people entering the USA from the southern border. But instead of answering that question, Donald Trump launched into a rant about how big his rallies are... how people want to go to his rallies... because they want to take their country back. And then he repeated a claim that in Springfield, Ohio, migrants were "eating the dogs, eating the cats, they're eating pets!" 

Even by Trump standards....this was truly wild. 

And then I looked again at our Scriptures for this week. And while the Gospel lesson from Mark, which is Jesus asking "Who do you say that I am" is often a compelling passage for preaching, given the fallout from Trump's baseless attack on the Haitian migrant population in this country...the lesson assigned from the Letter of James was far more important.

See what you think.

Text: James 3:1-12

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Stick and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.

We’re all familiar with that saying, right?

It was a great defense mechanism we could use on the playground when some bully was taunting us.

But I know…if I am being honest about it… the names hurt.

A lot.

When I broke my nose in a softball game…and sprained my knee playing soccer… those things certainly hurt.

But they were physical wounds that healed.

Words…on the other hand… have a way of getting trapped in the brain.

And hurtful words that enter the brain often will manifest as a pain in the body.

Take it from me: as a licensed massage therapist… I have worked with clients whose aching neck and shoulders are often connected to something said to them at their office earlier in the day!

Words… and the way we speak to one another… can have a tremendous impact.

I think that’s why our letter writer James takes the time to talk about the ‘unbridled tongue.”

James recognizes the real harm that words pose to our relationships to God and to each other.

Even though this is called “The Letter of James”…scholars have reached the conclusion that this more like our First Reading… in that it is Christian wisdom literature… giving us moral guidance and spiritual direction.

James is one of those books in the Bible that’s short and to the point and easy enough to read that it’s worth spending the time with it.

And not to rush through it… but to read it slowly and carefully.

For those of you who struggle with Paul… James gives you an equally faithful presentation and one which gives special care and attention to those who are the underdogs…and the pushed aside…. with words that should make us all stop and think.

Words…such as this passage about being careful about words.

And our tongues with the ability to praise God on the one hand…and then denigrate God when we curse those made in the likeness of God.

Oof!

These words are wise words.

They are tough words.

And they are words we must hear and consider…especially during an election year.

I’m sure many of you watched the Presidential Debate last Tuesday.

And if you didn’t… you likely heard about it from friends… or family.

Or maybe you opened Facebook the next morning and got hit with countless memes of cats and dogs in military fatigues.

For those who didn’t hear it… a rumor was repeated on the debate stage alleging that Haitian immigrants in Springfield Ohio are stealing people’s pets and cooking them for dinner.

It was an odd thing to come up in the debate.

And it has been debunked… repeatedly… by the city manager of Springfield as well as the police department.

And because it was so strange… it has become the big joke out of that debate.

I admit… even I shared a meme of a Gadsden flag with the silhouette of a black cat and “Don’t Feed on Me.”

But the suggestion that Haitians in a small Ohio city are stealing pets and eating them is not a laughing matter.

Since the debate…twice this past week… public schools in Springfield had to close because of bomb threats.

This is type of insinuation that’s not only hurtful to the Haitian population in Ohio…but all the Haitians who have fled the violence and lawlessness that has overrun their country.

Haitian migrants live and work in communities all over the United States.

Even Georgia has a long history with Haiti.

There’s a monument in Savannah…remembering the 500 Haitian recruits who fought alongside American colonial troops against the British during the siege of Savannah during the Revolutionary War. 

Business owners in Springfield have come to the defense of their Haitian neighbors.

They praise them for their friendliness and work ethic.

Dehumanizing people is not the way…the truth…or the life of Christ.  

And this sort of thing has been used before in human history with horrific consequences.

I studied German as my foreign language in high school and college. And when you study a foreign language…it’s typical you also learn something about the history and the culture of the country.

In my college class… I remember that one of the art history professor at the university…Edzard Baumann… shared with us his experience of growing up as a child in Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler.

His parents were not Nazis and his mother would eventually take him and flee the country.

But his older sister had become enthralled with the Hitler Youth program.

He described the weekly instruction that went on in his German school.

Every week… they made sure to show him and his classmates the picture of the stereotypical Jew on one side…and a rat on the other.

They’d make much of the elongated and prominent nose on the Jew…how much it looked like the snout of a rat.

The purpose of this…of course…was to dehumanize Jews.

If they weren’t really human… then they weren’t really kin…or in this case kinder… to the non-Jewish Germans.

How much easier it is to convince people to hate what they don’t see as one of them.

The same dehumanization led to the slaughter of Tutsis by the Hutu-government in Rwanda.

The government propaganda machine called the Tutsis “cockroaches.” It was repeated early and often… as a way of reducing the Tutsis to annoy insects that deserved to be exterminated.

This same toxicity has been infecting our politics for decades in this country.

Politicians use fear of the “other” to rally their voters and depress opponents from going to the polls.

Willie Horton.

Drag Queens.

Fill-in-the-blank of whatever “other” this side or that side wants to portray as “scary.”

As our writer James says…”How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is fire…itself is set on fire by hell.”

So where is the hope…the good news in this message from James?

We can hear it in our collect this morning: that prayer where we seek the Holy Spirit to be the guide of our hearts.

The Holy Spirit…that type of fiery tongue that lit up the apostles in the Upper Room and sent them out to do the work of Jesus.

That Spirit of a burning bush that is ablaze but is not consumed…and gave Moses the words to speak up on behalf of his people.

When we stop…and listen…and seek the Holy Spirit to be the one who leads us and gives us the words to speak…we are empowered to emissaries of goodness…especially in times when we feel anxious or angry.

The Spirit can help to calm and cool off the fire that we’re ready to spit out of our mouths at each other.

The Spirit within us leads us to use our words that can build people up.

It’s that very Spirit that will call us back into remembering what we say when pray the Baptismal Covenant…when we renew the promises that we make to each other every time we repeat it.

And so I invite you to open your prayer books to page 304…we will skip the Creed for now. But let’s remember what we promise to do for God and for each other…

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?

A: I will, with God’s help

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?

A: I will, with God’s help.

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? 

A: I will, with God’s help.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? 

A: I will, with God’s help. 

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? 

A: I will, with God’s help.

“With God’s help”…with our willingness to listen…and to resist the temptation to demonize others and tamp down our fiery tongues…we can be the models of Christ that speaks words of encouragement…hope and love that so many people are waiting to hear from Christians today.

May the Lord meet us in this moment…and give us the grace and power to fulfill our promises to God and each other.

In the name of our one holy and undivided Trinity.

 

 

 

The Sassy Syrophoenician Woman

 

I don't often get to highlight the powerful women in Scripture and the way that they get God's attention. So when one of their stories pops up in the lectionary...well, I have to talk about it. And the Syrophoenician woman (Canaanite woman in Matthew's Gospel) is one of my faves. 

Text: Mark 7:24-37

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Back when I was in massage school in Gainesville… I had what might best be described as a misunderstanding with one of my teachers.

He’d said something in class that felt like a personal insult to me.

I was upset and hurt by it.

So I asked to meet with him to talk.

I was scared.

I didn’t like confronting him or anyone for that matter.

And past experiences in life had taught me that speaking truth to power would more often than not result in a boomerang effect…where the powerful would exact some kind of retaliation against me.

So…I was nervous having this meeting.

But Frank…the teacher… like all of my instructors at Florida School of Massage… showed enormous patience… kindness… and thoughtfulness in listening to me.

Even as my voice shook… and I was holding back tears… he wasn’t cruel.

He wasn’t dismissive.

He wasn’t even defensive.

And he told me he was sorry and he had not intended to be hurtful.

After about a half hour…Frank and I left on much better terms… having taken that time together to talk and to listen.

A few days later…and after reflecting on our meeting… I approached him after class and thanked him again for how he treated me.

I wasn’t used to a man being willing to listen to me that way.

And I shared that at other times in my life…especially working in the very male-dominated field of broadcast journalism… any complaint I raised automatically made me….

The “B” word….the word for female dogs.

Now I would describe Frank as a happy and even gentle man.

But when I used that term in reference to myself… this jovial kind soul… frowned and looked me straight in the eye:

“Don’t you ever use that word about yourself! You are not that and I would never call you that. Don’t you ever think of yourself that way!”

That brief exchange…was an even more powerful teaching moment.

I share that story because in our Gospel today…we hear Jesus call this Syrophoenician woman the “B” word. 

No…the word itself isn’t in our translation of Mark’s Gospel…but that is essentially what’s been said.

To call this woman… and by extension her demon-possessed daughter…“a dog” was deeply offensive, hurtful and rude.

Some biblical scholars try to downplay this scene and pass it off as Jesus not really being this mean. They try to say that he used a word that means “puppies” and…y’know… puppies are cute and cuddly so he wasn’t really being THAT bad…and he was just testing this woman’s faith.

I’m not buying any of that.

He called her a dog.

And such an insult flies in the face of everything we’ve come to think about and believe about Jesus.

So why would Jesus be this aggressively nasty to her?

Well… to borrow a term often used in social media to describe a relationship status…

It’s complicated.

It’s a mix of so many “things” …. Gender… religion….and class differences going on in this story with Jesus and this unnamed woman.

Let’s do some unraveling.

First of all… this scene takes place in Tyre… which is a seaport city on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north just below Syria…part of what is now modern-day Lebanon.

This is a Gentile area of the Roman Empire.

And it was a city that dominated all of the surrounding rural areas.

Tyre and its city-dweller population gobbled up food…supplies…and labor to enrich themselves at the expense of those around them….particularly their poorer…more rural and oppressed Jewish neighbors in Galilee.

As you might imagine…this behavior and the wealth gap it created didn’t make the people of Tyre all that popular with Galileans.

And Jesus was from Galilee.

One biblical commentator rephrased Jesus’ contemptuous reply to the woman this way:

“First let the poor people in the Jewish rural areas be satisfied. For it is not good to take the poor people’s food and throw it to the rich Gentiles in the cities.”

There’s also the religious differences between these two.

This woman is not Jewish. She’s a Gentile.

And not just a Gentile but a “Syrophoenician”…a Greek…which scholars say means she’s a pagan.

She has no interest in becoming a follower of Jesus…or worshipping the God Jesus talks about.

There’s no desire on the part of either Jesus or this woman to have some sort of conversion experience.

So this ISN’T a “faith-based” discussion.

Finally… there’s the gender difference.

Jesus… as a Jewish man… would have been and could have been offended at a woman crashing his attempt to get away for awhile by showing up at this house…and asking for a remote healing for her daughter.

Women… especially Gentile women… weren’t supposed to be so forward and pushy especially toward men who weren’t part of their own kind.

So…there are a myriad of issues going on in the background of this passage that could be at play for why Jesus behaves in a very un-Jesus way.

And yet… he did respond.

He did the healing.

He returns to being the Jesus we know and love.

So what happened?

My favorite way of reading this story is from the perspective of what happens when women overcome whatever societal norms get in their way…and show persistence in fighting for their cause…in this case a daughter who’s in trouble.

This Syrophoenician woman is that single mother fighting for life-saving healing from the one doctor who she’s heard has the medicine that can do it.

As a mother…living in a system that is heavily ranked… with rules about who can speak and when… she’s beyond caring about the social mores and is willing to risk everything approaching “the man” to ask for his help.

And when he calls her a derogatory name…she doesn’t flinch.

In fact…in the words of the womanist biblical scholar Mitzi Smith… she gets “sassy.”

She employs the rhetorical technique of the oppressed to take that insult… turn it on its head…and spin it back at Jesus.

Jesus hears it.

Jesus gets it.

And Jesus grants this queen her fervent wish.

Not because she’s promised to follow him.

Again…this has nothing to do with her faith.

Jesus responds because her words… the words of someone who acknowledged her own powerlessness in this situation turns to his power to make something happen.

By being bested by this woman’s words….Jesus changed his mind.

And in changing his mind…our Savior is demonstrating to us another valuable lesson.

Jesus shows us…through his own humility…his own humanity…the importance of listening…and what happens when we set aside ideas of status and difference to listen…even to one who isn’t one of our own kind.

And he does it without any expectation of “getting anything” back.

Think of what happens when we take a moment to really listen to another person’s story…particularly when we listen to the complaint of someone who is not like us.

We learn something. Not just about the other person but it can challenge us to learn some more things about ourselves.

Sarah mentioned it recently…that Johari window… where we uncover things in ourselves that maybe we were not aware of.

And once we’re made aware of it… we have an opportunity to take this new information… and change.

It’s through a process like this that we start to free ourselves from the shackles of fear and prejudice that keep us from becoming a more cohesive member in that bigger body of Christ.

It helps us to become better friends and neighbors to each other and our wider community. 

Thanks be to God for the Syrophoenician woman for her bravery and her sass.

And thanks be to God for the humility of Jesus to demonstrate that it is OK to listen and change.

In the name of our one holy and undivided Trinity.

 

 

One Nation Under Guns

After yet another mass shooting incident at a school...this time in Winder, Georgia, a rural community between Atlanta and Athens...I found it hard to concentrate on the upcoming lessons for Sunday. 

And so instead...I wrote this. The beginnings of what maybe will be a song. Or a rap. Or just an expression of the rage I feel every time I hear of people getting slaughtered in this country because Congress refuses to crackdown on gun manufacturers. 

One Nation Under Guns
Susan Gage
  
We are
What we believe.
A nation in bereavement
An ineffectual response from government
to the slaughter
of our daughters,
fathers, mothers, lovers,
colleagues,  
sons and friends.
Somebody tell me:
When will this end?
When will this end?!
 
Columbine, Virginia Tech,
Sandy Hook, Connecticut,
Vegas, Parkland, Winder,
Dayton, Stockton,
Pittsburgh, Charleston, Buffalo
Lewiston to Orlando
Nashville, Dallas, and El Paso
Baton Rouge and Atlanta
Aurora,
Thousand Oaks, California:
 
Do we hear ya?
Do we know ya?
Do we even give a damn?
 
At a concert, in a movie,
In a school, or buying groceries
There is no place we are free
From this sick mentality
That puts guns over people
Shooters’ rights as a staple
of the freedoms
we were promised with that life and liberty
Pledge allegiance to this land
With an AR-15 in your hand
 
Thoughts and prayers
Lifted high
But no action in reply:
 
Faith without works
is more death.
 
We are
What we believe
One Nation Under Guns.
 
We are
What we believe
One Nation Under Guns.
 
Bang.

True Religion

We had a snafu on Sunday. At the passing of the peace, I noticed that our service, normally livestreamed to Facebook, had not been started for the online community (we do have people show up at 11am on Sunday, or sometimes, later in the week). 

Anyway, I went ahead and recorded my sermon for our YouTube Channel. If you are so moved, dear reader, you can skip the narrative below...and follow THIS LINK to actually see and hear me preach this word.

Or...if you prefer...here it is.

Texts: James 1: 17-27, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, Collect for Proper 17 (Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, 233). 

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“God of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things; Graft in our hearts the love of your Name, increase in us true religion….”

It’s always about this time every year that we hear the words of this particular collect…and that prayer…asking for God to increase in us “true religion.”

For me…that phrase “true religion” always makes me stop and take a moment to think.

What does it mean to increase in us “true religion”?

Well…let’s start with understanding the words.

The definition of “true”…according to Merriam-Webster…when used as an adjective means “being in accordance with actual state of affairs…the essential reality…properly called…rather than what is assumed or manifest.”

That sounds about right.

The word “Religion” comes from the Latin “religio” which means “obligation, bond or reverence.”

So…putting these two words together…we can think of this “true religion” as “a bond or an obligation that is real.”

Great!

But that still doesn’t get us very far on finding a meaning of “true religion.”

When we look at what the letter writer James is talking about…we get an idea of what we might understand as “true religion.”

James doesn’t talk about “true” religion per se.

Instead… he says that for a religion to be “pure” or “undefiled” it has to show compassion for orphans and widows.

Taking care of those in need is one of the very basic tenets of the Torah in Judaism.

It’s also an oft-repeated message of Jesus to his `followers…both those with him in the First Century…and us today in the 21^st century.

Think about the famous parable of the Good Samaritan.

When we say we “love our neighbor” that means we need to follow up that statement with action…with an actual practice of showing love of neighbor.

The Letter of James is where we get the phrase “faith without works is dead.”

Now…some have thought that meant that we must do a bunch of good deeds in order to earn our way into God’s graces.

But that’s not at all what it means.

What the letter writer of James focuses on is the human heart…the core of our being.

The heart is the place of our motivation and actions.

It’s from our heart that comes the potential to do good or do evil.

And we are all capable of both.

If we live into the path of goodness…which is the path of love…life…and liberty….and do those things to grow that part of our heart muscle…we are capable of extending happiness into the world.

It’s like the story of the Grinch at Christmas…whose heart grows three-sizes when he hears the Who’s of Whoville singing and the joy of the season touches him.

We can also get this from Jesus in our Gospel this morning.

While the Pharisees are complaining that Jesus’ followers have failed to follow the ritual handwashing one does before eating…Jesus is quick to point out that it’s not the things going in the mouth that do harm to the body but what comes out of the mouth that’s the real problem.

Because what comes out of the mouth is a reflection of the truth that’s happening in our hearts.

Think about that for a moment.

The things we say…or in the thinking of James…the acts that we do…speak volumes about who we are…and the faith we hold dear.

They reveal what is in our hearts…and which impulse of the heart is stronger:

A faith that is about love…and compassion…will show loving-kindness to friends and strangers.

A faith that is about fear…looks inward…withdraws from community…and shuts out those who we don’t see as “kin.”

These are some of the important things for us to consider living in our time.

I remember attending a public forum once with my congressman in Florida.

This was back when there was all the debate about whether Congress was going to approve the Affordable Care Act…and Representative Allen Boyd was touring the district to hear from his constituents.

This meeting that I went to was done in Wakulla County…just south of Tallahassee.

It was standing room only.

And boy was he getting an earful at that forum!

At one point…Congressman Boyd put a scenario to the crowd to gauge their reaction.

He talked about a hypothetical situation of a young man…twenty years old…taking a job with an employer who didn’t offer him health insurance.

The young guy didn’t think anything of it.

He was fit and healthy and young.

No need for any special medications or care.

Then one day…he’s on his way to work.

Somebody runs a red light and plows into him.

He’s rushed to the hospital and has broken bones and internal bleeding that requires surgery.

He’s going to be laid up for weeks unable to work.

Congressman Boyd reminded them this young man had no health insurance coverage because he couldn’t afford to buy his own and the employer didn’t have a health insurance plan to offer.

The Congressman looked around the room and asked this crowd, “What should happen to this young man? What should we do?”

A woman…her arms crossed over her chest… sitting very close to where I was standing, grumbled out loud:

“Send him a bill!”

As I left that meeting…I couldn’t help but contemplate the billboard that greets visitors to that part of Florida.

It reads: “Wakulla loves Jesus.”

In such situations…Jesus’s quoting of Isaiah has a very real meaning:

“This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are from me.”

People talk about Christianity…but the reality is that many don’t actually live Christianity.

When we think about “true religion” and those things which create “real bonds” ….with God…with the planet…and with each other…I would hope that our goal is to make our words match our actions.

I would love to see those who profess a belief in Christ and his teachings…live more closely to following the seeds of love planted in our hearts as baptized members of the body of Christ.

I would hope that we would understand that this is a love that transcends the small boundaries that we put in place to separate and divide us into camps and tribes.

I would want us to see that “true religion” binds us to a God who empowers and encourages us to work together and love our neighbors…building up people instead of tearing them down.

What a different and joyous world it would be if we did increase true religion in our hearts.

In the name of our one holy and undivided Trinity.

 

 

  

This Teaching is Difficult

 

Welcome back to me! 

I was away for ten wonderful days...driving from Florida to a workshop in Byfield, MA, at Adelynrood. This retreat center is run by the Society of Companions of the Holy Cross, an order if women that has prayer and social justice at its core. 

It was next door to my prep school. That was...how you say...interesting. 

More interesting was the topic of "Into the Blackness of God" with the Rev. Dr. Carter Heyward, one of the first women who was ordained as an Episcopal priest in Philadelphia in 1974. What a treat it was to be with her and to take up the question of how can I, as a white person, enter into a relationship with God not as the "light" and "bright" and very white depiction of God, but as one who sits at the gate with those who have been--as Howard Thurman describes it--the disinherited. 

Am I able to do it? Not completely. 

Can I make an intention of working into that experience? Yes, absolutely. 

Will that come across in my preaching? 

That, dear reader, is for you to see if you sense any shift in what I am saying, and how I am saying it. 

Text: John 6:56-69

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I saw a meme the other day that made me laugh out loud.

It was one appropriate for this time…when so many are just starting another school year.

A teacher asks a student: what book made you cry?

Now…we can probably think of stories that we read in school that made us cry.

The Diary of Anne Frank. Maybe even Animal Farm by George Orwell.  A well-written novel can really tug on the heart strings…

But in this meme…the answer the student gives is not a title. It’s a meme after all…so instead it’s a picture.

And the book that makes this particular student cry?

An Algebra textbook.

And I thought, “Oh, yes! That one made ME cry. A. Lot!”

To this day…I can feel the pain in my head when I see a formula of One over X.

Maybe this was your experience as well.

Algebra…especially with Trigonometry…this teaching was difficult.

Hard to wrap my mind around it.

We hear that in our Gospel lesson that there were those who were followers of Jesus who also found his teachings about bread “difficult.”

These weren’t the usual critics and naysayers…the ones who felt threatened by this rabble-rousing rabbi of Love.

These were the ones who were ready to follow him…wanted to hear him in the synagogue in Capernaum.

But this talk…this eating his flesh and drinking his blood…talk?

No, no. This sounds like cannibalism.

It’s way too much.

It’s as if the deeper we go into this teaching that takes up chapter six in John’s Gospel…the less and less popular Jesus becomes.

Instead of gaining great crowds…people are shaking their heads and walking away.

The five thousand who ate bread and fish…and thought Jesus was such an awesome miracle worker that they wanted to make him a king….now can’t stomach his message.

We might understand that, right?

It does sound a little creepy to talk about eating flesh and drinking blood.

His Jewish followers did find this too much to take…especially since their rules of kashrut prohibited them from ingesting anything with blood.

But any of the Gentiles in the crowd would have been Greco-Roman…and they would’ve been used to the cult of Dionysus…which included a belief that eating raw meat of bulls  and drinking copious amounts of wine brought one closer to God.

For them…this suggestion of eating flesh and drinking blood would have been more normal devotional practice.

But we also need to remember that Jesus is a master of the metaphor.

The Jesus of John’s Gospel is the one who challenges us to not get so caught up in the literal and the physical and pushes us to see those things as more symbolic of something that is in us and around us and moving with us at all times.

That thing is the Spirit…the Wisdom of God…the Sophia that exists and links us to God and each other.

The flesh and blood of Jesus….the living bread….is the Spirit.

That Spirit which feeds us on a steady diet of compassionate love.

And that compassionate love is that taste of God that we get when we spend time with a friend…a loved one….or even a stranger…and listen to their story.

Find out what experience they’ve had that brings them joy.

Sit with them and be with them in moments when they’re in sorrow and pain.

By interacting and participating in each other’s lives in this way…it helps us to not only be better family members in this body of Christ…it aids in our own growth in Christ.

The more we get to know each other…and appreciate each other… the better equipped we are to hold off those cosmic powers of division we heard described in the Letter to the Ephesians this morning.

For many years…both in Tallahassee and Thomasville…I served as a mentor in the Education for Ministry program.

EfM…as it’s known in the church…is a chance for lay people to dig deeper into the Scriptures as well as learning church history and connecting their faith and the teachings of Christianity to their every day lives. As a mentor…it was my role to walk alongside these learners and provide the space for some theological conversations to happen. It was great fun…and a good lead up for me at least before I went to seminary…particularly as people wrestled with scriptures that they found confusing…or uncomfortable.

But even more than doing the type of reflection work we always did in an EfM session…my absolute favorite time in the course is at the beginning when each person gets about ten to 15 minutes to share their spiritual autobiography.

This is their story that goes beyond the vital statistics of when and where they were born…graduated from whatever school…got married or not. This was a chance for each person to share the times when they either felt God very absent…or extremely present in their lives.

And without fail…this room of six to eight people who might have only known each other’s names…and where they typically sat on Sunday morning in church…now was hearing an echo of something in the other’s story….a phrase…or an event…some experience…that would sound like a piece of their own spiritual autobiography.

It was like watching the assembly of a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. Slowly…over the course sometimes of two or three weeks…these stories would help forge the bonds of the group as the members moved from being casually acquainted to finding their true relationship as spiritual siblings in Christ.

Now it didn’t mean that everyone in the room necessarily “liked” each other. It did mean that they learned how to love each other enough…and be honest with each other enough…that when we times got tough and feelings got raw…they were able to work through their disagreements and remain one body…in that one Spirit.

Through building relationships…across racial…sexual…language…ethnic…ability…age…any kind of differences really…we build up trust.

We remove fear and anxiety.

And we make a way for each person to enjoy the loving…liberating…and life-affirming gift of what it is to experience the freedom that comes from God.

That’s what Jesus was offering as the flesh and blood that would enliven everyone’s flesh and blood if they accept it.

So many would not or could not.

Then…and even today.

The reality on the ground…both then and now of what it can feel like living under empirical forces…and mean-spirited politics…we might find this teaching of trusting in Love too difficult.

But I am often reminded of the words that get repeated so often in Scripture…both in the Old Testament and the New: do not be afraid.

In the words of the psalmist:

No good thing will the Lord withhold *
from those who walk with integrity.

O Lord of hosts, *
happy are they who put their trust in you!

In the name of our one holy and undivided Trinity.