Mary Did You Know?

There is a beautiful Christmas song that captures the wonder of holding an infant and looking into the eyes of infinite possibilities. It’s called “Mary, Did You Know?” In that song, the bold expectations that we have in Advent are sung because we know that this is not just a season of expectancy for an infant but for a savior. We have the vantage point of history whereby we can beg the question, “Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy would one day walk on water?” But what does Advent offer us who cannot feel such hope or are trapped in oppression such that hope is a luxury we cannot afford? 

No one would listen to a song that cried out, “Mary, did you know that your child would languish in depression such that death was hoped for?” A song that proclaimed, “Mary, did you know that your baby boy would be shot by police because he was too afraid to ask for help and too proud to act vulnerable?” would never receive any attention. So what does Advent have for those of us who are so pained by life that it’s hard to believe that a savior will be born? 

I’m not writing this so that you will engage me on the fine points of theology. I have answers to that question that satisfy both my faith and my longing on the dark nights of my soul. But I’m asking that question because I know that joy does not come easily for many and hope feels too dangerous for some. I’m asking that question because we should pause to hear the cries of those for whom expectant hope is too much to ask. Please don’t tell me how your Savior has walked you through the darkness. Instead, look around for those who need your love to hold them through the pain. Please be hope in the darkness for others. That’s the Christmas miracle I'm praying for tonight. 

Too many people die from deadly illnesses like depression, bipolar, & schizophrenia. Think suicide is a choice? Think again. That's just one of the many mechanisms these deadly diseases use to destroy. But we can not take seriously just how deadly these illnesses are if people have to hide because of stigma. Educate yourself and others so that those who suffer in the darkness of isolation can receive help in the light.

I am absolutely convicted by the reality that we have to acknowledge mental illnesses as the deadly diseases they are in order to take seriously just how dangerous it is to live with them. Calling them anything less is a disservice to treatment and a dismissal to those who suffer.

Mother’s Day Angst

I never feel happy about Mother's Day. It always leaves me feeling burdened with ghosts of the past. But this year is way worse than usual. I recognize that it is in part to do with my mom's recent death but I can't find the words to explain or safe harbor to explore how bad it feels. Maybe it's because it snuck up on me. I've been so busy. Maybe there just aren't good opportunities to explore this on other days. Regardless, I'm making my situation worse and I don't know what proactive steps I need to take to move forward in healthy ways.

I'm also realizing as I sit with this that my extra pain is also about my brother. In many ways, I've had a mother role with him and I'm in the God forsaken place of watching him languish in depression, anxiety, and addiction. Worst if all, I'm powerless to do much to help. So I definitely don't feel like celebrating my role as a mother to him because I'm too busy trying to hold my fears of his down slide at bay. There are other layers of sorrow for him as well that I can’t begin to write out at this time but they are profound and deeply burdening.

Do you know the poem “The Invitation” by Oriah? She goes through this litany where she says she doesn't care about what position you hold or how much money you make or the like. What she wants to know is about your inner integrity, passion, and trust. I sort of feel that way about Mother's Day. I don't want to know how many children you have and what you do to celebrate on this one day. I want to know if you wake up and do what needs to be done as a parent day in and day out. I want to know if you can look your mom in the eye and risk disappointment for the sake of becoming the creation God called you to be. I don't want to be celebrated on this one day as a mother. I want to witness the fruits of your blossoming as my child and dance gratitude, sorrow, hope, pain and love every day and not feel alone in that dance.

I acknowledge I'm cynical about holidays in general because they often reflect consumerism and idolatry more than true celebration. Yet, I am not feeling cynical today. I'm sad and hurting.

You’d be so pretty if…

I grew up hearing the phrase “You’d be so pretty if…” followed by a myriad of pointers on how I should look, act, think, and be.  My mother and grandmother were the primary users of this expression but I occasionally heard it from others too.  They truly believed themselves to be offering loving advice that would make me happy and better liked by others.  But in reality, this utterance deepened existing wounds and reinforced a message that I was not okay as is.

 

Later, I would spend years of my adulthood working through the wake of sorrow caused by repeatedly hearing “you’d be so pretty if… you weren’t so fat… you walked like a lady… you didn’t play in the dirt… you weren’t so heavy… you’re smile wasn’t crooked… you wore makeup… you wore more flattering clothes… you didn’t look so manish…”.  My family didn’t realize that I was at times barely hanging onto life because of depression and shame that dogged me so badly that suicidal thoughts were the norm for me.  Even if they had of realized what I was going through, there still is not a world in which saying “you’d be so pretty if…” is a healthy way to raise a child.

 

Lest you misunderstand my point, I’m not launching into this to rail against my family.  I deeply loved my grandmother and still miss her even though she died almost 12 years ago.  And my mom is currently dying which has led to a very interesting path for her and me to feel reconciled in a positive way to the legacy of our complicated relationship.  When it comes down to it, I believe my family did the best they could to love me and I harbor no resentment over the things that damaged me as I believe it revealed deeper wounds within my family for which we all needed healing.

 

Nevertheless, I was dismayed to have this phrase rehashed this past year as I was helping my mom with some things around her house.  I was immediately transplanted to my childhood and all the shame and pain rushed back to me when my mom looked at me with all sincerity and said, “you’d be so pretty if you just weren’t so fat.”  I managed to cope with that moment in relatively good fashion by telling my mom “the only people I care about think I’m beautiful.”  Later in the evening I turned to my wife and social media for support to process it.

 

The outcome of processing it is what I am primarily interested in writing about today.  I have spent time thinking about who I would be if I had taken all those pieces of advice.  I’ve considered what my life would be like if I had looked, acted, and thought the way they believed would make me pretty.

 

What I’ve decided is that I would not be me.  I would not even be real.  I’d be a shadow of an image that bears no resemblance to the gifts I’ve been given or the experiences I’ve had.  In fact, part of me believes that following that advice would have led to my eventual suicide because the things that have kept me alive in the darkest times are my abilities to eat pain, dress and appear in ways that kept me out of competition within the social conventions of women, and use my strong, broad, “manish” body to hold the weight of crushing sorrow.

 

When I look at who that person would be, I don’t see pretty.  I see sad, empty, and lonely because I would not have known how to be that person.  I am exactly who I was created to be.  I may never be able to see myself as pretty but I know that I am strong, intelligent, resilient, charming, cute, playful, and much more.  When I hold all that I am, what I’ve been able to survive and accomplish, and who encircles me with love, I figure I’m about as beautiful as I’ll ever be.

A Body Of...

A quote from Margaret Cho:

“If you are a woman, if you're a person of colour, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are a person od intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world.

 

...And it's going to be really hard to find messages of self-love and support anywhere. Especially women's and gay men's culture. It's all about how you have to look a certain way or else you're worthless. You know when you look in the mirror and you think 'oh, I'm so fat, I'm so old, I'm so ugly', don't you know, that's not your authentic self? But that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising, magazines, movies, billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself so that you will take your hard earned money and spend it at the mall on some turn-around creme that doesn't turn around shit.

 

When you don't have self-esteem you will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for the job you really wanna go for, you will hesitate to ask for a raise, you will hesitate to call yourself an American, you will hesitate to report a rape, you will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote, you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution and our revolution is long overdue.”

I’ve been trying to write about the complicated relationship I (and many people) have with body image, self-love, healing, and transformation.  You see, if there is anything I profess as a Christian, it is that Christ offers deliverance from bondage and transformation into new life.  Yet this is something I have struggled to embrace all my life.

 

My awareness of this has never waned but it has been heightened in the past few years because I’ve watched my wife lose about 100 pounds and experience a transformation from carrying body fat as a shield to loving every ounce of herself as an expression of her life.  I envy her experience.  I wish I too could experience that. (I do not want to oversimplify her experience as I know she still struggles every day.  Nevertheless, she has accomplished a great deal of growth and transformation.)

 

Another reason my struggle to embrace my body and experience healing has been especially obvious as of late is that I’ve grown increasingly defensive for my wife.  As she lost weight, people would walk up to her and in all good nature tell her, “you look so good” and “you look beautiful.”  While I recognize that they mean to be encouraging and supportive, the unspoken message of “you weren’t beautiful of good enough before” remains. 

 

My blood boils for her, me, and all who struggle with body image when this happens.  The common experience that my wife and I share is that of using our bodies as a shield of protection.  In similar ways, we have dieted for acceptance, eaten to push away pain, and loathed our bodies for all they pain and struggle they represent.  I still do. 

 

But she doesn’t.  She has finally found the combination of space, support, and love to look at her body one ounce at a time and love the way it has been a protector for her, grieve the past, and transform it into a new creation.  It’s been so beautiful to watch.  Truly, there aren’t words for how life filled and hope giving her journey has been and it’s not over yet.  I am grateful and honored to be a witness and sharer in this journey.

 

But where does all this leave me?  I still find myself in the despair of pain from a childhood that should have destroyed me, depression that won’t stop haunting me, and a body so full of scars seen and unseen that I can barely stand to look at it on most days.  I want what my wife has.  I want that deliverance and transformation that I so deeply believe Christ offers.  Yet, I’ve never experienced that combination of emotional space, physical energy, and external support that it takes to sustain such a life changing, transformation.  Will I ever?  I don’t know but I hope so.

Tears of Hope

I’ve spent most of today crying.  This isn’t really surprising if you look at the current circumstances of my life.  My mother has terminal cancer, my work has some difficult pieces of conflict that will not have resolution for some time, and I have other family circumstances that I’m not free to discuss publically but worry me to literal sickness and fill me with dread.  But it’s not those things per se that have left me crying today.

Today, I’m crying because of a wonderfully whole yet complicated sense of vulnerability.  Last night at work, I sat with a family who discussed their child’s illness and I was struck in a different way by their experience of fear and dread.  I heard it in a way I had never fully understood emotionally even though I did intellectually and academically.  I heard their fear of death and it struck me in a deeply personal way. 

See, I’ve spent most of my life outrunning a legacy of abuse, crushing depression, and illness that have left me feeling as though my death would be a welcome thing.  In spite of my desire for my suffering in this world to end, I’ve pushed forward and lived what others would consider a full life.  I’ve cultivated a family, friendships, and pastoral relationships in a way that reflect my faith that every moment matters in spite of my desire for my suffering to end.

But a funny thing has happened over the past few years.  I’ve experienced healing in ways I didn’t imagine and I hope isn’t done yet.  I’ve moved into and through the suffering to a place of peace with most of it.  Some of it will always be there but I have a growing sense that I am not just my suffering.  Maybe a better way to say it is that I am now living more and more because I love life and not in spite of suffering.

Oh sure, I still have bad days and I suspect my predilection toward suicidal thoughts will always be there but it isn’t all I am.  Yet I’ve had to ask the question “who am I if I’m not suffering?” because so much of my identity has been built around my deep understanding of that experience.  Some would tell you that one of the reasons I’m such a good friend and chaplain is that people sense I truly understand their sorrow and I’m not afraid to go to the dark places with them.  In part, I believe that’s true. Nevertheless, I have a growing suspicion that it’s not the whole story.

All of this brings me to my tears of today.  Since listening last night to that family’s fears of their child dying, I keep flashing on my own precious life and all the things I don’t want to lose or leave behind.  I keep thinking of my wife, daughter, brother, and others who I love so deeply that their loss would break my heart into a thousand pieces.  I keep thinking about my own tenuous health and how desperately I don’t want to leave those things behind.

For the first time in my life, I love more than I hurt and so I want to cling to every precious second I have with those people.  Before, their loss would have been more shattering to an already pulverized soul.  Now, love lives so much larger that the thought of losing them or leaving them fills me with vulnerability and brings tears to my eyes in an ironically hopeful way.  I say ironically hopeful because it has taken finally outrunning my longing for death to realize that my new fear of death reflects healing and restoration.

I don’t know what all this will mean for my work as a chaplain.  I can’t imagine that it’ll have a negative impact.  But that’s not really today’s concern.  For now, I’m crying.  I’m crying for fear, for hope, for love.  And these tears are sacred.  Amen.

Onward In Faith

Advent 1B - Sermon based upon Psalm 42 & Matthew 1:18-2:12

Good morning and welcome to Advent.  This is a season of expectancy and preparation. A season of joy, hope, and promise.  And given the themes of our advent devotional and sermon series, it is also a season of faith, peace, new life, and love.

You’re going to notice a pattern in the coming weeks that lead us all the way through Christmas.  Each week’s theme that goes with the devotional is going to be lifted up in worship in multiple ways.  The devotional theme is The True Gifts of Christmas: The Journey to Bethlehem. The music, prayers, liturgy, and even scriptures will go along with the weekly theme.  Each week we'll have a Psalm that captures the emotional experience of the theme and a Gospel passage that tells the story.

But for now, we’re here on the first week of Advent.  We enter with the theme of faith and the story told in Matthew about Jesus's conception and birth.  If ever there was a story of faith in God, this is it.

Here we have a young unmarried woman who finds out she's going to have a very special baby.  The scripture tells us that her fience doesn't want to disgrace her but he's still going to “quietly dismiss her.”  After transformative encounters, they both believe in God’s will for this child move forward to have the baby. 

From the Luke story of Jesus’ birth we also know that they had to make a journey to Bethlehem for census and taxation.  That must have been horrible.  Can you imagine setting out on a donkey, a man and a 9 month pregnant woman, in a time when life was so much more treacherous than it is now?

And even after Jesus is born, King Herod sends spies so that he can plot against the young Messiah, Emmanuel, God with us.  But they too had a transformative experience rooted in joy and did the right thing to protect this child.

And our Psalm this morning is also a true story of faith.  It is about the fear and anxiety we experience when we can’t quite feel God’s closeness to us.  We want to lash out as the Psalmist does with “Why have you forgotten me?  Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?”  But just as with Mary and Joseph, the Psalmist remembers “hope in God.”
These are some pretty powerful scriptures if we pause to let them capture our feelings and imagination.  So, what do they have to tell us on this first Sunday of Advent?

Well, I think one of the messages is that just because we’re journeying faithfully doesn’t mean that it’s smooth sailing.  It’s often an anxiety and fear filled path.  Even Joseph was going to leave Mary because he couldn’t understand how God’s plan for Mary included him and I imagine he felt a lot of social pressure as well.

How often are our lives like that?  Maybe it’s that we know what the right thing is to do but we feel the pressure and embarrassment of what others are saying around us.  Or sometimes it’s that we are not sure how we fit into God’s plan.  Or sometimes it’s more a feeling like the Psalmist had of wondering where God is in all this and how to remain faithful while it feels so dark.  When faced with loss, uncertainty, and other things that raise our fear level, our lives, just like Mary and Joseph’s are filled with moments that make our faithful walk forward feel more like a burdensome trudge. 

Whether it’s the journey of the PNC in search of a pastor or the daily work it takes to make relationships last, we are ALL journeying… and sometimes it’s a tough one.  But here’s where the story turns. 

God reassures Joseph of his part in all this.  Then God protects Jesus from Herod.  God even touches the wise men and they go on a different path.  Hope and joy healed them from their worries, doubt, and uncertainty.  In the case of the wise men, quite literally, the story tells us that they were overwhelmed by joy. 

I think this is the real heart of our scripture lesson for today.  We worry and struggle in uncertainty quite often. And it becomes a cycle that just gets worse if left to our own devices.  The more we worry, the more we drag ourselves down.  The more we drag ourselves down, the more we fret about digging back out of the hole of fear, grief, and depression.  The more we fret about those things, the more ashamed we feel.  And the more ashamed we feel… well, that’s just a terrible spiral downward. 

But God’s support and love for us is never wrapped up in fear or shame or overly burdensome toil.  God reaches out to us with hope and joy offering us help to put one foot in front of the other and continue our faithful journey.  That support comes in all kinds of forms.  In the case of Joseph, it came in the form of messenger from God and I imagine it also came in the form of support from people around him and most especially from Mary.  For the wise men, they found support from God to do the right thing through an intense sense of joy at the witness of a phenomenon in nature right before meeting Jesus.  And while most of us don’t have an experience of meeting and angel, I know that all of us have met messengers from God or had experiences that coincided with special event that invigorated our faith. 

See, this is what faith is about, whether it’s during the season of Advent or any other time.  We are on a journey and each and every day is another opportunity to keep moving forward toward the hope and promise of God while being open to the nurturing support God gives us.

Now, I’m not trying to make this sound easy.  I’ll give you a deeply personal example.  All my life, even as a little child, I’ve struggled with depression.  It seems to be genetic because most of my family struggles with it.  Depression has gripped me in ways that I’ve often felt forgotten by God.  The way depression chokes off the light is painful.  And after feeling the emptiness and darkness months on end, I’ve even thought that it wasn’t that God had forgotten me.  I’ve felt that God must be punishing or cursing me.  Now logically, I know that isn’t the case.  But depression is an illness that tells us lies about ourselves, others, and God.

Having struggled with this illness for most of my 37 years, I can tell you quite a few things about finding God in the darkness and what faith looks like when you barely have the energy to get out of bed.  But I can also tell you that faith cannot be stifled or destroyed by darkness, fear, worry, doubt, and uncertainty. 

Just like Mary and Joseph, I have found God’s support every step of the way.  Just when I thought I couldn’t bear the isolation any longer, God has sent messengers that reminded me who and who’s I am.  God has placed people in my life to help me when I couldn’t help myself.  When I needed a jolt to point me in the right direction, God has shown me great joy through phenomenon in nature.  God has called me forward in love all along the way. 

God’s nurturing love and my faith in that love have helped me journey forward every step of the way.  In fact, you’ve even been part of God’s work in my life.  As you know, I’m a chaplain and I work night shift at Children’s Memorial Hospital.  Working night shift is more than a choice.  It’s a metaphor for my experience with God.  Because I’ve had to work so hard to find God in the long nights of depression, I want to be part of God’s light to others in the night.  I never thought I’d work in a church because I thought my place was in the darkness.

But being here with you has shown me that God calls me into the light as well.  The way you’ve encouraged me and the relationships I’ve built here have shown me new paths in my own faith journey.  My faithful journey is not only that of holding people in the night but also that of proclaiming God’s radiance in the light and you’ve been the ones who’ve helped cultivate that in me and show me God’s way for which I’ll always be grateful.

Now I didn’t tell you all that to spew out my own story.  I told you about my journey because I believe it speaks to the struggles we’ve all had.  Advent, holidays, faith, journeys, family, church… all of these things are precious but they also stir in us anxiety and fear about the unknown.  But God is with us, each and every one of us.  God is speaking and leading and calling us every step of the way.

Sisters and brothers, as we move forward in Advent, may we have faith that God is alive and well in all areas of our lives.  Even when it feels scary or burdensome, God is with us, offering us support wrapped in love rather than fear.  Our job is to keep putting one foot in front of the other on this journey taking the next step in faith and being open to all the ways God is supporting us.  Emmanuel, God with us… We welcome you!  Amen

Peace for What?

Peace for What? <–- audio file of sermon. A sermon based upon John 20:19-31

Good morning. First off, let me go ahead and acknowledge that you might have noticed something different about me today. Is it new glasses? No. Perhaps a new outfit? No. The answer is I shaved my head 2 days ago at a charity event raising money for and awareness of childhood cancers. Some of you know that I do this every year and it’s always a wonderful event. Actually, the child we honored at the event was in the hospital and unable to attend. But like I said, it was still a wonderful occasion and such a great cause.

And just so you know, it is okay to ask me questions about it. It is okay to stare. And if you ask, I’ll even let you rub my head. But when you look at my head, please remember all those who struggle with cancer and need our support and then say a prayer for them.

Okay, now back to the task at hand. What do we make of these disciples and of good ole doubting Thomas? This is a story that a week and a half ago, I was going to preach pretty much the same thing we usually do. I thought we were going to look at the struggle between intuition and fact and of the different ways of knowing. I thought we might focus on how Christ comes to us no matter what our needs are so we need not vilify Thomas for being slow to believe.

But then Sunday night our televisions, radios, Facebook pages, and text messages starting buzzing with news that the President would speak. Soon the word came out that Osama Bin Laden was dead. And from that point forward broke a frenzy of praise, sorrow, questions, debate, and doubt. And somewhere in all this, a few people paused to ask, “what should the Christian response be?”

What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who apparently has masterminded the deaths of thousands of innocent lives? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who struck fear in the hearts of so many? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who was also a husband, father, grandfather, brother, and someone’s child? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who had become so consumed by hate and fear that he could not see the humanity in others?

Sisters and brothers, I’m not going down a road toward telling you what you should believe politically or think about Osama Bin Laden. But I am going down a road that points to what happens when we live behind locked doors.

Let’s take another look at this passage. The passage begins, “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’”

See, when we think about this passage in time, Jesus had just been crucified and died. That very morning Mary and Mary had discovered the empty tomb. Jesus had appeared to some of them on the road and they were sharing the news. But the general feeling amongst all of them was fear. They were afraid for their lives and afraid for their futures. They closed themselves off and locked the door. But Christ comes through the barriers and says, “Peace be with you.”

Later in the passage, we have the same disciples only this time Thomas is also there and he has not believed that Jesus was truly resurrected. The passage reads, “A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

Here again we have the closed doors that are presumably locked. Even a week later, the disciples are hiding out rather than being out and about. And Jesus comes through the barriers to once again pronounce, “Peace be with you.”

So, what do we make of this? It would be easy to speed on past these verses and get to the story of Thomas’ disbelief. But I don’t think these verses are here by accident and I don’t think John went to the trouble of noting the closed doors if it weren’t an issue for us to learn from.

First of all I think we need to have grace and compassion in our hearts just as Christ did when we look at this story otherwise we get caught up in judgment. These people were scared. Jesus had been their companion and champion. They believed he was going to restore justice in the land. They hadn’t yet realized his justice would be of a more far reaching kind. So in their fear, they retreated to a home and hid out.

But Jesus came in and didn’t speak harsh words or judgment. He wanted them to be at ease and to release their fear. He greeted them with a wish and hope for peace in their lives. Christ wants them to not fear or to feel worse for their struggle. He wanted them to heal. His words were about understanding their experience and knowing that more than anything, they needed to let go of the fear and receive peace and the hope that springs from it.

This is truly an amazing model for our lives. It is an orientation toward people that begins with saying, “I want to know and understand you and your needs.” To have a starting place of grace and compassion in our hearts is a starting point of love rather than assessing, judging, categorizing, or any of the other countless ways we sum people up without first seeking to understand them and their experience.

When we are scared and either literally or metaphorically close ourselves off, what would it be like if someone who loves us came on in and spoke love and peace into our hearts, minds, and spirits? How would we react if that person looked at us with eyes of compassion that told us that our experiences and feelings are safe with them?

And looking outside of ourselves, what if we were the person who could be that voice of peace, love, and healing for the one who has walled themselves off? When we’re dealing with the person who lashes out at us, what if our starting place was that of looking into how someone got so overrun by fear rather than lashing back at them? What if our priority was to truly know and understand people and their experiences instead of quickly assessing what category they fit into?

Now coming back to where I started with the death of Bin Laden, I’m not saying that there isn’t a time to make people stand accountable for their crimes or that understanding why someone is fearful is an excuse for the way they may have hurt others. There is a time for that accountable justice. There is even a time and a place for those categories like liar, cheater, greedy, selfish, terrorist, and murderer. Those classifications can help us as a society understand who has been hurt and how to exact justice. But those categories should never be a substitute for seeking to know and understand one another. That’s just not what the Christian life is about.

The Christian life is found in our second point today. Christ’s peace and calling are to fling open the doors and live out in the world as agents of love and healing. Jesus said, “Peace be with you” not only as a way to still their anxious spirits but to clear the path to move beyond the fear and anxiety. Next, he breathed the Holy Spirit upon them and told them to go out and spread the Good News and extend the gift of the forgiveness of sins to all. Their job, their calling was to be out in the world. They had received the Spirit and the Spirit should not and cannot be contained behind closed doors.

So what does this mean to us? Well, more often than not, our fears come out in more subtle ways that are not directly damaging to others but cause harm we will never see. We wall ourselves off from certain “kinds” of people or places thereby cutting of relationship after relationship after relationship. We convince ourselves that our fears are actually wise judgments or well thought out beliefs so we don’t need to bother with this person or that group. We tell ourselves that “they” are sinners or liars or too uneducated to understand or too far beyond help. We convince ourselves that we need not worry about them because they don’t want our help anyway. We use words terms like “crazy liberal” and “snooty” to feel better about not looking at them as a whole person.

But maybe that’s just the problem. The message of Christ doesn’t start with figuring out what category someone fits in to or how to fix them. It starts with understanding. Instead of seeing “they” and “them” we need to see a person struggling or striving or searching and look more deeply into how that journey has shaped their life. When our starting point is that of trying to understand someone, the issue of helping will then naturally into place. And you know what else? We often find that we were helped in some way too.

Now, I’m not saying living the Christian life means to blindly walk up to a person who’s fear may have built to the point of violence. But I am saying that it means unlocking the doors of fear we’ve constructed for ourselves. It means gently challenging the fears of others by seeking to understand them and being open so that they can understand us. It means challenging our own fears by trusting in the peace of Christ to overcome all.

Does all this sound too big? Well, it starts here. The church is the proving grounds for how we’ll live in the world. We start with the people around us and let go of seeing the labels and the judgments and the walls that keep us from seeing the whole person.

With Christ’s peace, we can let go of seeing the person who snubbed us when we needed a friend or the person who complains instead of helping or the person who boasts instead of listening. And when we let go of the categories of judgment we might understand that we weren’t actually snubbed because the other person was deeply depressed at the time. And those complaints are just a mask for loneliness. And the boasting was just a mask for fear. If we can let the walls we have between us down long enough to understand one another, we’ll cultivate such a deep community we’ll have the strength to go out into the world and do this with others.

And we already do. Look at the Kairos ministry. That’s an amazing example of understanding that leads to healing. And I could stand here and name ministries and individual actions in this congrigation that over and over reflect the triumph of Christ’s peace and the healing of understanding. But today’s passage reminds us that there’s always more to be done.

The Christian response to Bid Laden’s death is not as simple as cheering or grieving. We must seek to be thoughtful and compassionate, appreciating justice yet seeking greater reconciliation. Christ’s call in the world always begins with peace that breaks down fear. That peace leads to understanding. And understanding leads to healing.

Sisters and brothers, whatever fears we are hiding behind or keep locked away, Christ breaks in past them and says, “Peace be with you.” As we leave here today, let us be bold to hear and receive that peace. Let us be brave to understand and be understood. Let us be trusting in Christ’s calling and be agents of healing and reconciliation in the world. Amen.