Last Sunday we published our first Assembly of PIGS homily/sermon/thought for the week…
Last week I mentioned a Presbyterian Peace Conference and I will again this week.
One of the keynote speakers was Dr. Rev. Will Campbell, a civil rights activist, Southern Baptist minister and so, so much more. He related a story between his daughter and him regarding seeing a bumper sticker that said, “Honk if you love Jesus”. His daughter said something like, “It should be ‘Honk if you love Hitler’ because everyone loves Jesus. He is easy to love.” It was a shocking statement, but it is true. Jesus is easy to love especially the Jesus that is recounted in documents 2,000 years or so ago. The hard love is one’s enemies or the despicable. Those who have hurt so many.
Will went on to talk about the easy love we have for Jesus, but the question needed to be not “do we love Jesus?” but rather “do we TRUST Jesus?”
Who or what do we trust?
The United States currency says “In God We Trust”, but do we? Really?
Where do we spend our money as a nation? Who do we give the most support to? What economic system reigns? Why do so many of us keep guns to protect ourselves? Who do we trust? Or where do we place our trust?
We have insurance policies for everything…cars, homes, houses, apartments, health, death, hands, feet, careers, etc. Is it here that we think we'll be kept safe from the climate, pandemics, fire, storms, and accidents?
Is the enormous military budget going to keep us safe from war, nuclear bombs, or foreign attacks?
And I can hear most of you saying, “Well, will Jesus? If we trust him? Will God keep us safe?”
And my answer is I don’t think so. Trust is deeper than keeping one safe and well-fed. “Trust starts with truth and ends with truth,” wrote Santosh Kalwar, a Nepalese author. And in the gospels, we learn that “the truth will set you free.”
On my better days, I hold close Martin Luther King, Jr.’s comment, “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” I believe that is true. I trust in that moral arc and that someday we will arrive at justice.
Mike and I had a seminary professor and dear friend, Don Coffey, who told me once, “God will accomplish what he intends. If he says, ‘I will break that boulder’, then the way he may choose to do it is not by an earthquake but a slow drip, drip, drip of single drops of water. In time, the boulder WILL break.”
I trust in the drip, drip, drip of water… on my better days.
I’m not the kind of believer who thinks that the Divine extends a special hand to shelter from harm only those who trust in the Divine, because who do I see that truly put their trust in the Divine more than any other? Poor people. They HAVE to trust in something that is not human because humans abuse them, keep them oppressed and hidden. Who is more at risk from wars, storms, fires, pandemics, and all the horrors of life than any other population? Poor people.
There is a reason Jesus said “that is where you will find me.” With the hungry, the naked, the imprisoned, the sick, the poor. That is where we find Jesus for those of us who are Christians. In the broken, in the hopeless, in the dumps looking for food, in the alley ways shot up on heroine…we, Christians, find our Lord there. And as we work for those suffering…as we trust in the Divine to reside in these people…we can see Jesus and we can trust that the poor will be lifted up, the imprisoned will be set free, songs will be sung in the houses of death, and we can love…
As we trust in the moral arc of the universe and the drip, drip, drip of water…we can love and act, because without trust we cannot truly love.
-Kathleen
