Lent 5: Justice and Peace and Dignity

 In Lent we are looking at the many ways the Baptismal Covenant calls us to serve Christ in each other. Fellowship, prayer, repentance, evangelism, and service are all ways to show and share the love of God. Jesus told his disciples, A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)

The final question in the Baptismal Covenant asks, “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” Striving is a word that we don’t hear much now. In fact, it often has the negative connotation of causing fights. The root of the word is from the French estriver and estri, meaning to quarrel. However, it also means endeavor or try really hard.

We are called to work for justice and peace. Sometimes that can seem like an overwhelming task. There seems to be so much injustice and violence in the world. Certainly, we are confronted by it daily in the news and social media. We know about the least little disturbing event in the farthest corner of the world almost immediately. Probably there aren’t more awful things happening than years and centuries ago, we just know about all of them. And we are bombarded by the various ‘spins’ that politicians and social media impose in an attempt to influence our minds. We have to be careful what we believe and who we follow.

When we are rooted in the promises of the Baptismal Covenant, we have a roadmap for Who to trust and how to respond and act. O Zion Haste (#539 in the Episcopal Hymnal) gathers much of the Baptismal Covenant into beautiful word. As the hymn suggests, when we are engaged in our mission of sharing the story of peace, redemption, release, and love we are in fact our “mission high fulfilling.” 

O [Christians], haste, your mission high fulfilling,
to tell to all the world that God is light,
that he who made all nations is not willing
one soul should perish, lost in shades of night.

The hymn ends with the stanza that calls us to Proclaim to ev'ry people, tongue, and nation/ that God, in whom they live and move, is love;/ tell how he stooped to save his lost creation/ and died on earth that they might live above. The refrain tells us how to do this proclaiming Publish glad tidings, tidings of peace,/ tidings of Jesus, redemption and release. We are to tell the Good News of God’s hope and love even, and especially, in the face of injustice, war, and dehumanization.

You can hear the words on YouTube, along with some lovely images:

The Christian church has not always done a good job of proclaiming glad tidings without driving rough-shod over those we are sharing the Good News with. Much evil has been done in the name of religion and continues to be done. We can repent that history and strive (that word again) to do better in our lives and work.

In the Gospel this Sunday (John 12:20-33) we hear of some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” These Gentile (non-Jews) want to know more about Jesus, just like much of our hurting world does. Jesus responds that the disciples must lose their life in order to live fully dedicated lives. He says, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Too often we don’t want to lose our life—to give up control of the result—in our work for and in God’s Beloved Community. We forget we are seeds being planted and may never see the fruit. The seed is changed and dies so that a new crop can sprout. It’s human to want to make the outcome the one we want, even in our work for justice and peace. However, not everyone has the same definition of justice or even of peace. My way may not be the best way to accomplish a birth of justice or peace. I may think I am respecting someone’s dignity, but due to cultural differences, I may accidentally be insulting them. All we do must be done in and for Love, nor for recognition or gain.

As Philip does in the Gospel, all we need to do is introduce people to the true loving God who, as we heard last week “so loved the world” that Jesus became incarnate and lived a human life. Next week is Palm Sunday, then Holy Week, when we hear of the triumph and tragedy of Jesus’ final days on earth. He kept love as the hallmark. We would do well to do the same.

Where am I being asked to die to control so that something new might be able to sprout?

How might I live so that God’s love is seen in my life as an invitation to see Jesus?

Words to Create Beloved Community

 Thanks to those who have been on this Pentecost journey with me. I’ve been exploring how Words affect the Story we build about ourselves, about our culture, about our own lives, and about others. I’ve considered ways that we use the Story we were taught by education or by observation to categorize one another as ‘other’ and how our cultural and personal Story impacts our response to the events of life. 

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been pondering how to start reframing the Story of relationships with those who are ‘not the same’. We are, as this pandemic has highlighted, really closely interrelated. We are more alike than we are different. That’s true on a genetic level and it’s true on an inter-personal level. When we can pause and set aside our preconceptions, we may just learn that our neighbor or the stranger on the corner have very similar wants, fears, hopes, and desires. I think that deeply listening is the way to start finding those similarities.  

This graphic from Facebook attributed to Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove notes that the true miracle of Pentecost is to learn to ‘understand languages that aren’t our own—the joy and struggle of Beloved Community.’ Last week I shared some ways to listen to one another with focus and compassion.

But, what next? What action are we then called to in order to more fully bring to fruition the Beloved Community, the Kingdom of God, that we pray for every time we say the Lord’s Prayer. How do we ‘Love our Neighbor’ as we are commanded in the Golden Rule? What steps can help us see past the differences to the similarities. Eberhard Arnold notes, "It is increditble dishonesty in the human heart to pray daily that this kingdom come, that God's will be done on earth as in heaven, and at the same time to deny that Jesus wants this kingdom to be put into practice on earth. Whoever asks for the rulership of God to come down on earth must believe in it and be wholeheartedly resolved to carry it out." (Salt and Light: Living the Sermon on the Mount)

I don’t have any answers as to how to live this way. I’m groping my way toward understanding with one step forward and two steps back sometimes. One day I may smile at the homeless man on the corner and even give him the donut I bought for myself, or a couple dollars. The next day I may roll up my window and pretend I don’t see the sad woman and her dog at the intersection hoping for a handout. I can be enraged by stories of Indigenous children buried in unnamed graves at boarding schools, but I cannot bring myself to travel to stand in solidarity. I may believe that ‘Black Lives Matter’, and wonder what that means to me as a white woman, while at the same time not wanting to lose the ‘privilege’ that comes with being a white woman.

We are probably all struggling similarly. In Boundless Compassion Joyce Rupp quotes Christina Feldman’s book Compassion. Feldman states, “Our capacity to be a cause for suffering and our capacity to end suffering live side by side within us.” Rupp also refers to Marianne Williamson who says “A little cancer, unchecked, turns into a monstrous killer. So do small, insidious, seemingly harmless judgmental thought forms become the pervasive cancers that threaten to destroy a society.” (Illuminata)

I think, I hope, that the effort to see another person, to hear their story, to relate to the pain and struggle on any level is a start. It’s a step toward understanding, a step toward fully loving our neighbor, a step toward Beloved Community.

We all need to drawn near the One who, through Paul, said clothe yourselves with compassion. (Colossians 3:12). It is true that when we put away all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with malice, and [are] kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven (Ephesians 4:31-32) we begin to create Beloved Community.

What can I do today, tomorrow, this week, to act out of compassion, to listen, to meet, to be a piece of Beloved Community?

Next week, I’ll offer one last reflection on this theme by looking to where we need to all start: The Word made Flesh.