At Your Service (Reflections on Pentecost 4, Year c 2022)

 

“Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10:20) 

Yipee! 

I rejoice and give praise to God for the NBC streaming service Peacock. Why? Because it has allowed me to binge watch all fifty marvelous, beautifully shot, elegantly acted, and sumptuously costumed hours of Downton Abby. I missed most of Downton when it was on PBS, so now I get to see the whole series from the beginning. I am, perhaps, betraying both my American democratic patriotism as well as my ancestral Welsh sensibilities when I derive so much pleasure from watching the fictional goings-on of an English earl’s palatial estate, but this sojourn into a genteel past offers me a bit of respite from the lousy present we’re all enduring. Can you blame me?

 As much as I enjoy Downton’s aristocratic family drama, I’m equally fascinated by the stories of the “below stairs” staff—the butler, housekeeper, maids, footmen, and valets who so precisely keep the house running. As a class, the servants take their work extremely seriously, and they find “service” to be a noble and honorable profession. They are loyal and dedicated, and often provide a quiet but comforting presence to the lord and ladies they serve. We may look down our noses today at the kid who asks us, “Do you want fries with that?” but, if COVID has taught us anything, we should consider that those who do the “menial” tasks might not be as menial as we previously thought. There’s something to be said for those who take service seriously. Take Jesus, for example, who said, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.”[i] He didn’t have any issues with getting down on all fours to do the servant’s job of washing the feet of the disciples. 

There is a heroic humility in the alternate First Lesson assigned for Pentecost 4, Year C (2 Kings 5:1-14). In this taie, the servants are the heroes. The Bible always seems to favor the underdogs. Naaman, the great general and leader of Aram’s armed forces, has no power over the disease which afflicts him, and no notion of how to get relief. It’s his wife’s slave who comes up with the solution. To me, it speaks powerfully that this young girl, captured in a raid and forced into servitude, has so much compassion for the suffering of her captor that she directs him to a cure. She’d be perfectly within her rights—don’t you think?—to let her oppressor suffer, but the oppression of her servitude to Mrs. Naaman doesn’t outweigh her servitude to God. Even as a slave she is an instrument of healing. 

So Naaman has his king write a letter to the king of Israel, which, as happens at top bureaucratic levels, screws things up and almost starts a war. The prophet Elisha is certainly willing to do some healing of Naaman’s skin disease, but even he messes up by showing an indifference to protocol. The prophet, who you would think knew better, rather rudely fails to meet the foreign dignitary himself. Instead, he sends a lackey out to give the Aramean general the prescription for a cure, which, as you can imagine, incenses Naaman who rides off in a fury. 

Fortunately, Naaman has some servants who have cooler heads than he. They reason with their boss and get him to calm down and try the cure. It works, and Naaman rides back, meets Elisha, and offers thanks. In this tale, the ones who take servanthood seriously expand its definition to include speaking truth to those they serve—even when this means risking the master’s wrath. 

In our gospel lesson (Luke 10:1-11, 16-20), Jesus instructs 70 of his followers in the right way to be servants of the gospel. They’re asked to go out into the world and be a healing presence, proclaiming the nearness of God to those who need to feel that nearness. They are told to be present with people, stay in their homes, and eat of their food. Essentially, Jesus is teaching them to get to know the people so the people can feel that they’ve been seen and acknowledged. The 70 are instructed to be bringers of peace and healers of the sick. If they are treated rudely, they are not to respond in kind, but simply to move on, trusting that their peace will be restored to them—just as any good waiter or store clerk who valued professionalism would do. 

Christianity is a service industry. We are called to be here for one another, to be a healing presence in the world. In his 1520 treatise The Freedom of a Christian, Martin Luther wrote, “A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” He taught that any good work we do must be a work of service for our neighbor. We don’t do anything for God. After all, God doesn’t need our help. We are called, rather, to be in community and to consider how our work or our daily actions bring the Kingdom of God closer to those around us. As a church, we should always be asking how our neighborhood benefits from our presence. As individuals, we should always consider how our labor, words, or presence has been a form of service. Whether you work behind a wheel or behind a computer terminal, in a convenience store or a machine shop, doing what you do enables someone else to keep doing what they do.

We don’t get to wear the fancy livery, the white tie and tails of a butler in Downton Abby, when we perform our duties; nevertheless, a humble, loving attitude about what we do clothes us in righteousness. Our challenge is to see ourselves as if we were among the 70 Jesus sent out. How have we been a healing presence? How have we born the burden of others? How have we brought the Kingdom near? 

God’s peace, my friend.

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[i] See Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45, and John 13:1-17

These Are the Days of Elijah (Reflections on Pentecost 3, Year C 2022)

 

But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:60) 

A tune that always ranks at the top of the Faith Lutheran Praise Team’s Hit Parade is Robin Mark’s Days of Elijah. We really rock out on that one—or at least we did in the pre-COVID days when we had a full team and a Music Director. I wonder, however, if any of us know that much about the prophet Elijah. He doesn’t come up too often in the RCL readings, and I’m not sure he gets covered much in Sunday School. When I was a kid we’d get plenty of Elijah stories in our Sunday School lessons, complete with lurid and nightmare-inducing illustrations showing the prophet calling fire down from heaven to consume his sacrifice in a winner-take-all contest between the followers of Yahweh and the prophets of the Phoenician thunder god, Baal. 

The above-referenced contest comes right before the events in our First Lesson for Pentecost 3, Year C (1Kings 19: 15-16, 19-21). The backstory goes like this: The northern kingdom of Israel has a pretty crappy king named Ahab. He’s consolidated his power in the region by marrying a princess from near-by Phoenicia named Jezebel. Jezebel is sort of a Lady Macbeth. She goads her wimpy husband into all kinds of corruption, but chiefly she gets him to abandon Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, and promotes the worship of her gods Baal and Asherah. This doesn’t sit well with God (Yahweh), so God sends the prophet Elijah to denounce the royal couple and proclaim God’s punishment on Israel for the apostasy. 

So what’s wrong with a little apostasy? Can’t we be tolerant? Basically, what these rulers did was destroy the thing which made Israel unique—her faith in the God who delivered and provided and her faithfulness to God’s just and merciful Law. They replaced it with self-reliant, god-appeasing superstition. It was an attack on the very identity of the people—rather like if someone tried to remove democracy and the orderly transition of power from America. 

The whole business culminates in a contest between Elijah and 400 prophets of Baal to see whose sacrifice will be consumed. The prophets of Baal wail, shout, and self-mutilate to appease their god while Elijah trash-talks them. Elijah prays to God, who promptly sends a bolt of fire to incinerate his sacrifice and the stone altar it rests upon. One might wish Elijah to be a bit more of a magnanimous winner, but, in true Old Testament fashion, his prize is he gets to have the losing team—all 400 prophets of Baal—massacred. 

Jezebel, like every childish, power-hungry, and corrupt ruler, can’t accept the fact that she lost the contest. She puts a hit out on Elijah. The prophet high-tails it for the safety of the wilderness and gets pretty discouraged, but God gives him the instructions about anointing we read in our First Lesson. These instructions—again in true Old Testament fashion—promise the extermination of any in Israel who still worship Baal.[i] 

Elijah doesn’t actually get the chance to do all the anointing God asks him to do. Instead, God decides to carry the old boy up to Heaven in a fiery chariot[ii] (which seems a bit excessive to me, but who am I to judge?). Elisha, his protégé and successor, takes up the slack, anoints the fellows Elijah was to anoint, and carries on Elijah’s work. You may wonder why God would give Elijah a task God knew the prophet wouldn’t be around to fulfil. Personally, I think it just shows God cares less about success than God cares about faithfulness.

 (By the way, if any of the fantastic stories in 1 and 2 Kings bother you, you should remember these books were probably composed about 200 years after the events they describe. Historians believe there really was an Ahab and a Jezebel, and Elijah is probably a real historic figure, too. By the time these books get written, however, the character has been mythologized. The author(s) weren’t trying to write a history. It’s more like historical fiction with a real bias against the northern kingdom and its rulers and religious practices. You shouldn’t take it literally. There’s a lot of stuff like that in the Bible.) 

I’m thinking the theme that marries the story in 1 Kings with the gospel lesson (Luke 9:51-62) is discipleship. Elijah calls Elisha to be his follower, and Elisha complies after he’s said his good-byes to the folks at home. What’s interesting here is that he doesn’t just kiss his mom and dad good-bye. He kisses his whole former life good-bye. This guy won’t be able to go back to ox herding again even if he wants to. He slaughters his oxen and burns the equipment, gives away all the beef he could’ve sold, and follows Elijah. That’s commitment if you ask me. It’s kind of like the call to discipleship Jesus issues to a man who seeks eternal life: “Sell all you have, give the money to the poor, and follow me.”[iii] Sometimes, God calls us to blow up our lives if we want to find purpose and meaning. 

Speaking of blowing things up, another parallel between these two passages is the reference to calling down fire from heaven. Elijah was pretty quick to do this. Not only did he call down fire to consume his sacrifice, but in 2 Kings chapter 1 he nukes two companies of fifty soldiers each with fiery blasts from out of the blue—just because he can (Hey. It’s the Old Testament). In the gospel story James and John are anxious to see if they can try the same punishment on some Samaritans who’ve just insulted Jesus for stupid, archaic, cultic reasons.[iv] Jesus, however, has a better temper than Elijah and these two hot-headed disciples (who aren’t called the “Sons of Thunder” for nothing!). He knows God doesn’t give a rip about where anyone worships, and he even explains this to a Samaritan lady in John 4:19-24. He’s content to let the matter slide and move on. 

Luke glues this story of Jesus’ forbearance to the Samaritans to a tale of three nameless would-be disciples. The first guy is as anxious as a squirrel on Red Bull to join Jesus. Jesus reminds him he’d better think it over first. A religious life can mean homelessness, and I think it’s not just a lack of living accommodations. A righteous devotion to Jesus can mean an inability to feel at home in a sinful world. Virtue may be its own reward, but it’s also its own punishment, and standing up for principle can be a real kick in the groin at times.[v] 

Jesus tries to recruit two others to be followers, but they’re not ready. One guy has to bury his father (who may not even be dead yet as far as we know), and the other wants to say good-bye to his folks before he sets off with Jesus. In the second instance, Jesus seems a little less understanding than was Elijah in our first lesson. At least Elijah gave Elisha a chance to settle things with his family. But Jesus seems to be saying, “If you’re going to do it, do it now and don’t look back.” 

My problem is I don’t think anyone sitting in the pews Sunday is considering drastic life changes for the sake of the gospel. Seriously. Is anyone contemplating selling their homes and becoming a missionary to Uganda or Bangladesh? So maybe these stories aren’t meant for us individually but corporately. You think? Perhaps this is a call for God’s church to take some chances. If we look back to the good old days or wait until everything is stable and perfect, we’ll probably be waiting forever. 

Bottom line? Discipleship is doing, and the thing which is done is not as important as the doing of it. Perhaps God is smiling on the attempt as much as God smiles upon the achievement. 

May God’s peace be in your hearts this week. Thanks again for reading.

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[i] See 1 Kings 9:17-18. These verses were edited out of our lectionary, possibly because the compilers of the Revised Common Lectionary feel massacring people because of religious differences is no longer considered kosher.

[ii] See 2 Kings 2:1-14

[iii] See Mark 10:21ff

[iv] This goes way back to the days of the divided kingdom. Samaritans, influenced by Assyrian religion, made a sacred space on Mt. Gerizim. Judeans claimed the holiest place on earth was the temple mount (Zion) in Jerusalem.

[v] If you’ve been watching the Select Committee hearings on the January 6 insurrection, you’ll see some good illustrations of this point.

No Intervention without Dead Pigs (Reflections on Pentecost 2,Year C 2022)

 

“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me!” (Luke 8:28) 

One of the coolest, funkiest places in America is Madison, Wisconsin. I love the Mad Town. It’s where I did my post-graduate studies. The charming isthmus is home to the University of Wisconsin and is also the state capital so, as you can imagine, there’s always something interesting going on or about to go on. There are bars and music clubs and young people on the street at all hours in all weathers (which is pretty impressive when you consider Wisconsin winters are colder than a break-up text!) 

Of course, even when I was there in the early ‘80’s, Madison was home to the homeless. If you walked down State Street or University Avenue, you’d certainly encounter some eccentric characters asking you for spare change or the price of a Big Mac. Occasionally, some of these individuals appeared to be both un-housed and un-hinged. I recall one very unkempt fellow in a dirty parka and a beard the guys in ZZ Top would envy bellowing “God is dead!” at the top of his voice one Sunday morning. There was also a bag lady who’d regularly be seen wheeling a shopping cart full of her possessions down University Ave. while viciously excoriating some ne’er-do-well who wasn’t actually there. Yup. Some of these folks were pretty scary. 

But Jesus likes to go to the scary places, doesn’t he? Personally, I’m never comfortable around the deranged, but Jesus, in the gospel reading assigned in the RCL for Pentecost 2 (Luke 8:26-39), heads into foreign territory to do an intervention on a guy who’s got more evil spirits than a Stephen King novel. He’s naked and crazy and hangs out in the graveyard. What’s worse, his evil spirits have given him super-human strength, so there’s no way he can be controlled. I’d be scared of him—wouldn’t you? And yet there doesn’t seem to be anyone whom Jesus does not see as human. There’s no one beyond the Lord’s compassion. 

What always strikes me about this story is the way the demon-possessed guy reacts when he encounters the man who can free him from his devils. He actually sees Jesus’ desire to heal him as a torment (v.28). This poor guy has become so used to be being crazy that he’s afraid to live sane. In a way, he’s just like all the rest of us with our demons. I recently heard a radio interview with a psychologist who noted the more severe the consequences of our bad choices, the more likely we are to double down on them. We hate being wrong so much we’re willing to be worse off rather than admit our screw-up. 

Just for example: my wife often donates to a local shelter for homeless veterans. Most of the vets it serves prefer to bed down inside the building. There are a few, however, who, like the demoniac in our gospel lesson, just can’t manage to stay in the company of other human beings. Their demons—PTSD from witnessing the living nightmares of combat—chase them outdoors into unknown, solitary spots in the urban wilderness. Nothing can convince them this is a bad idea. Their past never dies, and they are living among the dead. 

Clinging to our demons is like living among the tombs. Something that is either dead or leads to death possesses us—guilt, resentment, drug addiction, alcoholism, toxic relationships—you name it. Even our country’s infatuation with firearms is a sort of death grip on death itself, a grip we irrationally refuse to loosen lest we somehow lose a part of our identity.

And what happens when someone tries an intervention? We’ll scream like the Gerasene, “Do not torment me!” We’ll push back that we have chosen our demons and we’re fully capable of handling them. We can quit at any time, we say. We’ll rail against those who try to chain us up with logic or concern for our own safety. We’ll see their actions as a threat to our self-image and prefer our self-destruction to their compassion. How dare they try to control us?!!

 Demons just don’t like to go quietly. There’s always a lot of begging, bargaining, and pain on the way to getting back to our right mind. There will always be a lot of dead pigs. 

For some, there will also be disappointment. When the crazy dude starts acting sane and responsible, we won’t be able to point at him and tell everyone he’s crazy anymore. Some folks don’t like to lose the person they so enjoyed looking down on. They’ll be watching closely, hoping to catch the former demoniac doing or saying something to validate the smug, arrogant opinions they held so comfortably in the past. Others will bemoan the economic cost of the healing. They’d rather let the possessed live in anguish than spare the cost of redemption. 

One thing’s clear in this tale: Jesus’ work isn’t always welcomed or appreciated. 

But the tale has a reasonably happy ending. The man who is now in his right mind is a living witness to God’s power to heal, comfort, and restore our crazy selves. Jesus sees a future for him. “Return to your home,” he tells the man, “and declare how much God has done for you.” (v.39) One witness is better than none at all. And who can tell the power this one’s testimony will have? 

If you’ve ever come back from the land of the crazy, this story will mean a lot to you. If you’re still living among the tombs, someone wants to intervene. Let them. 

God’s peace be with you.

No Explanation Necessary (Reflections on Holy Trinity, Year C, 2022)

 

The Council of Nicaea, 325 CE

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” (John 16:12) 

The problem with the Feast of the Holy Trinity is it’s just not sexy enough. After the excitement of Pentecost, Holy Trinity seems as dry as a wino’s tongue after a three-day bender. At least with Pentecost we get some passion and excitement. There’s a rushing wind and tongues of flame and the once wimpy disciples suddenly busting out of the upper room and proclaiming the mighty deeds of God in strange languages. The Holy Spirit is spectacular. She makes us think of miraculous healing or unexpected flashes of insight or some kind of religious ecstasy.[i] It’s all pretty awesome. 

Trinity, in contrast, is kind of a let-down. Although it’s supposed to be one of the six major festivals of the Christian Church, it’s the only one that doesn’t have a cool story to go with it. No Virgin birth, no Wise Men, no Resurrection from the dead, no speaking in tongues, no Savior ascending into the clouds. Nothing. Just a weird and confusing piece of Church dogma. 

I wonder if the Church made this a major festival because it was such a goat rodeo getting this three-in-one idea of the divine to be our doctrine. We actually went three hundred years before we all agreed on the nature of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We argued and fought and disagreed and sometimes got pretty nasty with each other. If you put yourself in the shoes (or sandals—I guess they didn’t wear shoes back then) of those early Christians, it’s not hard to see why they had such a hard time. 

The first Christians were Jews who believed there is only one God. So what do you do with Jesus? Some started saying Jesus was divine, but then you get two gods when you’re only supposed to have one. And just how was Jesus divine? Was he a man who became God or was he God who became man? Even Saint Paul can’t agree with himself on this. In Romans 1:4 he declares Jesus Son of God because of his resurrection. In Philippians 2:6-11, Paul quotes an old hymn which says Jesus was God who humbled himself and took human form[ii]. There were even conflicting ideas in the ancient Near East about what “Son of God” was supposed to mean. If you were a pagan, it meant some divine being knocked up a mortal chick and produced a hybrid god-man. If you were Jewish, it could mean someone was really, really righteous, and God favored them like you would treat your own flesh and blood. 

Personally, I think the greatest miracle is that Christianity managed to survive for over three hundred years with all these confusing interpretations and opinions. Finally, when the Roman emperor Constantine decided Christianity could be legal and accepted (and it also become rather fashionable, too, because chic Roman citizens wanted to embrace whatever the emperor was into), he needed to get everyone on the same page for political reasons. Hence, the Council of Nicaea was convened in 325 and we ended up with the Nicene Creed.[iii]

Personally, however  politically motivated the Council of Nicaea may have been, I think they somehow managed to give us a pretty good doctrine—even if most of us don’t ever stop to think about it or really give a rip about it. Is it confusing? You bet. But that’s okay. I don’t think anyone can really grasp the nature of God. We can only experience the things God has done and continues to do. I like the doctrine of the Holy Trinity because I can contemplate the vastness of the universe and the beauty of creation and experience God. I can listen to the words of Jesus and remember the love manifest in his sacrifice and experience God. And I can know that I’m alive—that the breath of God and life flow through me, that I have thoughts and feelings and memories—and I can think of all these things and say, “Dang! God is really wonderful. And terrifying. And mysterious. And pretty darn good. And I can feel, somehow, the connection. 

I always try to remind my Confirmands that the Spirit of God is in them and in everyone else, too. If they sin against anyone, they’ve sinned against God and against themselves. If they sin against themselves—by neglecting their own gifts, by being too hard on themselves, by feeling unworthy or inadequate or by letting others oppress them—God and all the rest of us will feel it. We are all connected. 

What I can’t and won’t believe is that the God who is so vast, mysterious, and inscrutable would ever hold it against us if we didn’t confess a man-made doctrine.[iv] The God who flung the stars into orbit and who died on the cross can’t be that weenie. 

Our creeds and confessions are our sorry, lame-assed attempt to define that which is undefinable. We’ll never understand God. This is the best we can do. And it’s okay. I don’t think I ever understood my parents, but I was still their kid. Love can work independently of comprehension. Right now, our pea-brains can’t bear God’s mystery. Thank God we don’t have to. 

God bless, and thanks for reading.

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[i] Which, by the way, we Lutherans really don’t like. We prefer worship to be as composed and un-ecstatic as possible, thank you.

[ii] This controversy is known as “Adoption versus Incarnation” in case you’re interested.

[iii] This is a much nicer Trinitarian creed than the later and much longer Athanasian Creed, which warned you you’d fry in Hell if you didn’t believe every word of it. The Athanasian Creed was included in the old green Lutheran Book of Worship, but didn’t make it into Evangelical Lutheran Worship. It ends with a real “works righteous” warning which Luther probably didn’t agree with. It’s also long, redundant, and boring and adds another five minutes onto your Sunday morning worship.

[iv] Normally I wouldn’t use the sexist term “man-made,” but face it: all the participants at the Council of Nicaea were guys.

A Word to the Confirmands of 2022 (Reflections on the Day of Pentecost)

 

The following post was composed as a sermon for the Day of Pentecost, 2022 and the Rite of Confirmation at Faith Lutheran Church of Philadelphia, PA. It is addressed to those who will affirm their baptisms on this festival Sunday. The appointed gospel lesson in the Revised Common Lectionary is John 14:8-17, 25-27.

 

“Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14:27b) 

People always remember where they were and what they were doing when horrific, paradigm-shifting events take place. There are still a few folks around who remember Pearl Harbor. Many more could tell you about the day President Kennedy was killed, the Challenger disaster, and 9/11. 

For me? A day that lives scalded in my memory is April 20, 1999. I was downstairs in the church’s lower auditorium. It was early evening. I forget what event we were having, but I vividly recall Laura Duffield coming downstairs asking if anybody had heard the news about a shooting at a high school in Littleton, Colorado. A school called Columbine. 

The world changed for me that day. As a kid in school and even in my years as a middle school teacher in Los Angeles I could never imagine such a ghastly thing—two students armed with powerful firearms strolling through a public school wantonly murdering their classmates. But you, my young friends, have never known a time before the term “active shooter” could apply to a place where you are supposed to be educated and kept safe. 

I worry about you. I pray for you. Jesus warns us in this gospel reading that the world does not give what he wants us to have—peace. I wish I could give you this peace. I wish I could give you faith. But I can’t. I can only give you information. 

I sometimes wonder if the rite you are about to receive, the promises you are about to make, or the sacrament you are about to affirm has any impact on you. We go through the motions, of course. You took the classes and now you put on the white robes and invite family and friends to hear your affirmation of faith, but so often this affirmation has become “graduation from church.” In my years at Faith I can name any number of families which have vanished like a bowl of Oreos in a room full of fourth-graders just as soon as the youngest child made Confirmation. It’s as if they feel they’ve paid their debt to God and are now free to sleep in on Sunday mornings. It’s like they’re saying, “The kids are confirmed, so now they won’t go to Hell.” That’s not religion. That’s superstition. 

I want more for you than that. 

Our time together has been complicated. COVID and the distance some of you live from church has caused us to rely on Zoom for our classes. You haven’t gotten to know each other. We haven’t had the time to go over all the things I wish we could’ve covered—things I think every Christian should know. Your religious studies are compartmentalized with schoolwork and sports and all the other stuff kids your age do. And, of course, you are the age you are. You’ve reached the stage where you are now capable of abstract thought, but you’re also at the stage of sullen indifference to anything your parents or teachers—including your pastor—might want to tell you. 

So I’m going to make one last attempt before you race away from these sacred walls to review the faith you are about to affirm. When you were baptized your parents promised to teach you the 10 Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. Here’s the summary: 

God gave us the Law to protect us from lawlessness. It’s a good thing. It also shows us we’re not perfect. But when you know when you’re wrong, you’ll also know when you’re right. 

The Creed is just a summary of today’s gospel reading. God made the world, and it’s good. You need to respect it. God is present in Jesus who is love personified—selfless, a teacher, and a healer. In his compassion he came to share in all of our suffering, just as you’ll share in the suffering of those whom you love, and they will share with you. But as heirs of the resurrection, you’ll know this suffering has an end, and it is not the final word.

God’s spirit, the spirit of life, breath, inspiration, and creativity—the same spirt which was in Jesus and which burst forth from the disciples on that first Pentecost—is also in you. She will give you the talent to do the works Jesus did. You will heal others. You will forgive sins. You will feed the hungry. You will cast out demons—demons of racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and so many others. 

I’ve heard young people say they are “spiritual, but not religious.” I’m skeptical of this. It’s certainly possible to be religious without ever feeling the spirit of God. But I strongly doubt anyone has ever been spiritual without first experiencing the spiritual discipline of religion. To know the spirit is to seek her through the practice of prayer, worship, community, generosity, and living in a constant dialogue with Jesus, always asking that simple but poignant question: What would Jesus do?

I grieve that you must live in a world which has become so dangerous. I pray you will continue to embrace the faith you affirm today, a faith that will give you the peace the world cannot give. God is with you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.