I think I’ve told you that Amy’s and my sons, Walker and Arthur, both have attended a Jewish preschool, in Baltimore and in Kensington, because in those places we felt confident that there they were safe, nurtured, and challenged to become who they are meant to be. Oftentimes, I found that I would worry for their safety after I dropped them off in the morning. There are  security officers and double layers of locked doors, but there’s no way to ensure the safety of everyone, as we are too often reminded. In this culture and climate, antisemitic sentiment and violence are prevalent and unsurprising.

As a pastor, I’ve felt an awareness of the discomfort that my choice of vocation may have caused in other people. Atheist neighbors, or liberal agnostics, or Jewish friends whose children are friends with mine have had plenty of experiences with well-meaning Christians in this country and abroad. But in seminary, I was trained by Rabbis, and I count Rabbis among my friends and colleagues in ministry and community work. Moreover, I have been blessed to see the gifts of Judaism in the lives of my close friends and their children.

Still, I have had to confront my own misconceptions about the differences between Christianity and other religions, differences which were highlighted and taught to me by well-meaning youth leaders who sought primarily to grow my faith in Jesus Christ, even at the cost of my regard for my Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, and Atheist friends. Growing up in Atlanta, in the Bible Belt, meant that to be Christian was to vote only as a Republican, no matter what.

Beginning in 2004, Congressman Tom Price, whose son Robbie was in my Boy Scout troop, could count on my church friends to volunteer as interns for his House campaigns. The drive to promote one way of looking at the world was so strong that my school system had stickers affixed to all of its biology textbooks which read: Evolution is just a theory, “only” a theory – nothing more. It wasn’t taught in my AP Biology class. The teachers never assigned the reading for that chapter. In health class, no one mentioned AIDS or homosexuality. This was public school where I grew up. There was no alternative. Private schools were even more conservative, more uniform in their view of the world.

Looking back at my childhood, I am disappointed that I was misinformed by people I trusted. And I regret the awkwardness I exhibited trying to understand people of different faiths, only doing so through the lens of my own beliefs. In my teens, I remember, I reduced people, from their marvelous complexity and sacred worth, to a simple status as non-Christian, non-clean living, and even non-straight. I have a lot I regret.

I mention this to you because the world is filled with people who are well-meaning but who leave little room for conversation, little room for connection and learning – instead opting to control the narrative, to drown out other voices, and to have us each live in an echo chamber of the views we want to hear. We lose sight of each other.

In our country, this partisanship only drives us apart, one person after another, until we’re attempting and succeeding at bullying and killing each other because of the color of our skin,[i] or the language we speak in a grocery store,[ii] or the country we were born in,[iii] or the political party we affiliate with.[iv]

In our denomination of The United Methodist Church, the partisanship has recently centered on a flashpoint of human sexuality, with proponents of traditional understandings of marriage pointing the blame at liberals for the current difficulties facing the Church. All the while, affirming and reconciling United Methodists believe that a welcoming culture would revitalize the Church once more, attracting younger members who hold different views from their grandparents.

While we have spent time and resources fighting over a vision for the denomination, we lost precious time in reaching out to those who need to discover God’s love for them, now, and its power for their lives, now.

Now in this church, like every other church in the world, I have met with people who still carry – even unbeknownst to them – old wounds from disagreements, perceived slights, and disappointments. I remember a parishioner thought that someone had torn down her poster she had handmade and displayed in the Sunday school room. But it was just that the moisture in the cinderblock walls undermined the glue. We carry wounds. Others carry wounds of misunderstandings, so they make little attempt to address their blind spots and biases.

The wounds need healing. They can’t be covered over without first being brought into the light. Without that, we just continue to wince when someone mentions a name or brings up an idea that was divisive before. So, I want to be transparent with my own dreams for my life, my hopes for this church, and I want you to have the chance to meet me with your own anxieties.

I say all this to you because you are wonderful, and I trust you. That’s what I’ve learned over the past while getting to serve God alongside you. You are a gifted, capable, interested, and caring community with so much to offer. You demonstrate your commitment to this church through your service, creativity, organization, attendance, ideas, voices, and leadership. I thank God for your faithfulness, your discipleship, and your dedication.

I also thank God for you – just you as you are. God made you and in grace brought you to be. And I get to continue to get to know you even more. That joy has brightened my days these winter months.

And while I give thanks for you, I want to call your attention to something I think you may need to hear: Whatever your background, and whatever you’ve gone through, you are still not perfect today, and you are asked to grow more into God’s likeness.

Because in this world, there is disregard for the lives of others displayed on a massive scale. “February 24 marks the third anniversary of Russia’s all-out assault on Ukraine.”[v] Around 200,000 people have lost their lives in a senseless act of unabated, ongoing aggression. So love your enemies. There is strife between people groups who differ from each other on the basis of their skin color, leading to violence and hate crimes and lynching. So love your enemies. There is misunderstanding and isolation because of conspiracy theories and falsehoods told about the people we rarely see or meet. So love your enemies. Or, as it was famously penned:

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;

Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;

Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;

Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;

Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;

It was never between you and them anyway.

― Mother Teresa

Because God is more than our dilemmas and disappointments. God is more than our trauma and terror. God is more than our deepest grief or our most persistent longing. God is more than our depression and our cynicism. God is more than our exhaustion and our exasperation.

God breaks into the world’s inertia like a storm breaking through a winter’s cold. God’s light breaks into the depths of our world’s most well-worn patterns and habits, the things we are most certain of, the things we think we know best – like how to suspect the stranger, hate the competition, hold a grudge, dehumanize the enemy, plot evil under the cover of night, and murder the threat before we are threatened. Those are the things we know best because they have been imposed on us, and we have hurled them at others.

But the Spirit breaks into the depths of our world’s most well-worn patterns and habits, the things we are most certain of, the things we think we know best, and we are shown a different way, a more excellent way. God sends us where God chooses, and this time, it’s to somewhere new, and we are surprised, because we did not predict, did not anticipate, could not grasp and could not bear what the Spirit does, what God does, what the mystery of the Divine does, and will always do, from one day to the next, and on and on, for all time and for all eternity, in every corner of the world, in every corner of creation – even here, even now and with you.

The Spirit of God is guiding you. From everything that’s familiar and normal. God is guiding you, to an unknown place with unknown risks and unknown people – which is just another way of saying that God is guiding you into one great, exciting, and unimaginable future.

Will you work toward a future which is unimaginable and unreasonable? Will you take Jesus at his word when he commands all who would follow him? Will you “Love your enemies” and everyone who has treated you wrong? Will you forgive them, bear no grudges, and open yourself to what wisdom others might have to share? Will you live as God made you to live? I pray you will. Amen.

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[i] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alleged-kroger-gunman-uttered-whites-don-t-kill-whites-witness-n924641

[ii] http://time.com/5416077/colorado-grocery-store-viral-video-harassment/

[iii] https://video.foxnews.com/v/5854350558001/

[iv] http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-rochelle-ritchie-tweet-20181026-story.html

[v] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/russia-ukraine-after-three-years-of-large-scale-war/