A Matter of Heart...

          What is this?  Is this Church?  Why isn’t everybody in pews?  Where’s the organ, the chancil, and the altar?  What about the sanctuary and all those other hard to remember terms they don’t teach in seminary?  And what about those funny guys in the long dresses?  How can this be worship?  How can this be Church?

                Well, sometimes things are not always what they seem, and just because it isn’t what we are used to, doesn’t mean it isn’t just as true.  But mistaking something for its trappings, getting fooled by the outside and not looking within is something we as humans will always struggle with.  We don’t like change, we don’t like it when differences crop up into our lives.  Between bills, work, family, and all the drama that gets put into that mix we like things to stay the same, we like things the way we are used to, the way we can handle them.  Humanity’s been like that since Adam and the fall, and it was no different for people living in Jesus’ time as it is today.

                Most people don’t really appreciate how different Jesus’ ministry was, how so very radical  compared to what was going on at the time.  I want you to imagine yourselves as Israelites living in Palestine, as 1^st century Jews living within walking distance of the Holy City. The temple and the synagogue are the biggest contact points of your faith, the places where you fully embraced your identity as Jews.  The synagogue was where you learned about your ancestral religion: Your learned what to eat, what to wear, and what to do.  The temple, however, was where you most publicly proclaimed your identity and where you performed the most important rites as an Israelite.  Here the Day of Atonement was performed, here the sacrifices and the various offerings were made to absolve all Israel of her sins.  Here was where you were supposed to meet God.

                But not all of your fellow Jews are happy with things the way they are, indeed the strife with your countrymen is almost equal to the strife you feel with your Roman conquerors.  In the first century there are four major divisions of the Jewish faith that you must contend with, all quite different from one another.  There were the Sadducees, the ruling class of Israel.  Surprisingly secular believers, they do not believe in angels or spirits nor do they really believe in an afterlife.  They pick and choose from their Bible, taking the verses they like and conveniently excluding what they don’t.  Only the first five books of Moses were Scripture to them, you see.  Cutting out ¾ of your book means cutting ¾ of your responsibility and where life would be at odds with the Prophets, the Prophets could simply be discarded.  Still, while deeply flawed by power and compromised by convenience, it must be noted that these are the only Jews among your people who are not racist, that do not believe Gentiles are bad simply because they are gentiles and by extension they do not believe Jews are good only because they are Jewish.

In addition to the Sadducees, however, there are the Pharisees and they are not so far from our evangelical movement.  They are a Scripture driven movement, a missionary movement, and a grass roots association interested in keeping the Scriptures central in the daily lives of their fellow Israelites.  No one person leads it, no organization heads it, rather it is rallied by its charismatic preachers who often decried their government and were quick to advocate war against foreign powers.  Their adherence to the whole of Scripture often makes them legalistic, obeying the bare words on the page but caring little for the spirit in which those words were given, but at the same time you will be hard pressed to find a Jew more openly living their faith or more interested in relieving the suffering of their people than this group.  

After the Pharisees are the Essenes, Puritans and End Time Believers.  They believe most of the country has fallen into horrible sin, so they do not mix with the common Israelite, seeing them as too tainted, too unclean for Holy Living.  They have removed themselves from society and live in the desert far away from the false government and the false religion that have taken on God’s name.  When God comes to judge their nation, it is their intention to be “Left Behind”, looking forward to the destruction of the temple and the coming of a great teacher.

There are also the Zealots, a group of Jews who feel that the only response to an unclean and gentile ridden government is its violent overthrow.  They were inspired by the Maccabees, the Jewish generals who threw off gentile oppression and foreign entanglements by the sword.  These are your constitution party members, the liberty lovers and the militiamen seeking to return their society to its perceived origins.  They are believers in their weapons and are fervent in their opposition to their government, but they are also the Jews most willing to give their lives in defense of their friends.

But finally, there are the people like you and me.  People who are somewhere in the middle, perhaps seeing one side or another but in all honesty just trying to eek out an existence that both gives credence to your people and shows faithfulness to your God.  You know the Temple isn’t perfect, you know the flaws of your leaders, and you know the dangers of losing your way of life, but it’s also all you’ve got to work with.  And so you work, you live, and you wait.  You endure the times and raise a family, doing your best with what you have…that is until someone comes along and shows you a better way.

And that someone comes…a man, a lowly carpenter’s son, rumored to be of illegitimate birth.  He is a rabbi, but he is not like the other rabbis.  He has no education, no formal training.  He didn’t apprentice himself to another teacher like the others did, he simply took up the mantle one day and, shockingly, people listened.  But people did more than listen, they followed.  They followed by the thousands.  And when this rabbi took disciples, he didn’t take the cream of the religious crop.  He didn’t go to the Scriptoriums, the religious schools for their best students, he took everybody.  He took fishermen, tax collectors, Zealots!  He even taught women!  And what did this man teach?  He taught that the root of all evil was neither Sadducee nor gentile, but the love of money and power and any Jew was quite susceptible.  He taught that gentiles were not an enemy of the religion or the state and they were indeed capable of great faith.  He taught the Temple was about to be judged and replaced with nothing, that the new holy community could be comprised with just two people without any buildings or sacrifices for sins.  He taught that there are no unclean foods and that working on the Sabbath is not necessarily against the law if those works are for good.  He taught that the Scriptures are Holy and Good, but they need filling to be complete.  But more than any of that, in a land of schisms and disagreements, in a land more and more given to violence this rabbi taught that Peace was the answer, that love for neighbor was the solution, that simple faith in God even unto death was the way.

                Now, all of you may be wondering, what in the name of the Holy of Holies does this have to with our gospel text?  Well, I’ll tell you.  As a Jew or even a Gentile in the first century the question arises, indeed begs to be asked how then is this Jesus still a Jew?  How can this sect of Christians still consider themselves part of Judaism when they will eat any food, have no use for temple or sacrifice, are willing to include gentiles into the people of God, and understand their Hebrew Scriptures as now secondary to the message of the gospel?  Yes, this Jesus might be important, indeed he might be the most important man who ever lived, but how can Christianity be thought of as having Jewish roots?

                And the answer is that appearances can be deceiving.  What looks one way can in fact be another and THAT is a theme that Luke deeply addresses in his gospel.  Luke begins his tale as a Gentile would.  Important people, people of divine importance, are often heralded before-hand.  So important is this Jesus, however, that even Jesus’ herald John is heralded beforehand.  Yes, this all occurred as a gentile would think fit, but these heralds are not gentile, they are Jewish.  Jesus and John are born to Jewish parents.  John’s father is a Jewish priest and Jesus’ parents have him circumcised and presented at the Temple according to Jewish law.  The inherent Jewishness of the Jesus story is hammered home time and time again and the relevance of the Jewish scriptures and their filled-full-ment in Jesus is not some outlying afterthought or a tangential footnote, but is central to the fulfillment of God’s promises to his people.  Indeed, where the story seems least Jewish, it in fact shows quite the opposite.  Joseph and Mary are recorded in Luke as obeying the Roman census.  Most jews rebelled at every census, but Joseph and Mary did not.  Their scriptures told them to obey the gentile king, to pray for them and indeed intercede for them while under their rule.  The Prophets proclaimed this, and Mordecai in Ruth lived this, even to the point of seeking royal permission to defend themselves against Haman and their enemies.  Joseph and Mary were not less Jewish for obeying Caesar; they were in fact more Jewish than all the rest of their countrymen.  And so it is for this part of the story, Jesus having just proclaimed the faith of a centurion now goes into Nain and raises a widow’s son, just like Elijah the Jewish Prophet did so many centuries before.  But unlike Elijah, who raised a gentile widow’s son, Jesus goes to the Jews and returns a Jewish widow’s only son back to her.  God has indeed returned to bless his people.  They were not left out.

                So yes, things changed.  The trappings of the past, the trap-things, the outside appearances that ensnared, yes they were discarded but the heart was no less true to its heritage.  God is not an exclusive God.  Claiming the Gentiles did not mean dismissing the Jews, and the blessings of the future in fact did not include the cursing of the past.  Both were upheld and one did not happen at the expense of the other.  So it is with us.  So often we look at the future and we see great cataclysmic change.  We look at our society and our children. We say “look how different it’s all going to be”…except it’s not.  2000 years from now we will still be silly, ridiculous humans in need of Jesus, but I will not lie to you, my friends, things will look different.  We will have a different president, we will live in a different world.  Our children will grow, they will not be exactly like us and our church will look very different in the years to come.  It’s only looks.  God is the God of the old and the new, and he gives the same heart to them both if we ask Him.  So yes, things will change, just not really.  And we can take heart in that.               

The Quality of One's Friends...

          A miraculous itinerate rabbi, a Roman soldier who loves his slave, Jews that value the gentile that built their synagogue, and a miracle completed just because of one man’s belief.  I must admit my friends, this is one of my favorite texts in Luke, superceded only by the parable of the prodigal son.  It is such a brief, odd, but incredible little story.  It is unfortunate, however, that we as a culture have lost just how odd and incredible this story really is.  We read it and see merely a soldier, a servant, and Jesus; only a tale about the ultimate power of belief.  Make no mistake, all those elements are there, but they are not the only ones.

                In seminary and law school, you learn very quickly about the incredible importance of context.  It can mean many dull hours at books too dusty and too old for reasonable humans, and it can mean a lot of discomfort as old understandings need to be tilled up and the seeds of new understandings get sown.  But this is no mere mental exercise.  For those of us called to this path it becomes very clear how important this work is because in the end you realize there are real people going to be affected by it for weal or woe.  Whether a man borrows something or is stealing something depends on the context, and whether someone kills in self defense or will be found guilty of murder depends on the knowing the exact situation in which it happened.  If context means so much, then it is clear we as faithful people are going to have to master it.

                So what is our gospel lesson in context, what did it mean to a first century Gentile living within the confines of the Roman Empire?  We’re going to find out, but instead of my usual means, instead going into the Greek, instead of talking about first century Judean history, I am rather going translate our lesson culturally, changing only the names and the setting in which the story occurs.  Listen, and see if you can’t hear the difference.

      “After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Civil War era Georgia as a black preacher.  A white plantation owner there had a female slave whom he loved dearly, and who was ill and close to death. When he heard about Jesus, he had the elders of the African- American community come to him, asking him to come and heal his slave.  When they came to Jesus, the elders appealed to him earnestly, saying, "He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our church for us." And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the Plantation owner sent his friends to say to the black preacher, "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.  For I also am a slave set under authority with people under me; and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my servants, 'Do this,' and they do it."

When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, "I tell you, not even in all the South have I found such faith."  When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

                A little different isn’t it?  Let’s try something more modern.

“After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered modern day Palestine as a rabbi.  A Hezbollah soldier there had a gay partner whom he loved dearly, and who was ill and close to death. When he heard about Jesus, he had other Israelis ask him to come and heal his partner.  When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, "He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us." And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the soldier sent his Muslim friends to say to him, "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my love be healed.  For I also am a servant set under authority with soldiers under me; and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my lover, 'Do this,' and he does it."

When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, "I tell you, not even in all Israel have I found such faith."  When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the man’s partner in good health.

                Beginning to see how really shocking this story really is?  Are we starting to see the elements we have been missing?  Let us now go back to the original text, filling it in with what would have been unwritten but obvious to an ancient audience. 

After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum, a Jewish fishing village under gentile control.  A centurion, an enforcer of the Roman governor’s whims, had a male slave lover who was ill and close to death.  When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave.  They came to Jesus without hesitation, appealing to him earnestly, saying, "The centurion is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us." And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent his Roman friends to say to him, "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for despite my station I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.  For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this,' and the slave does it."

When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, "I tell you, not even among Jews have I found such faith in God." When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health - without Jesus having to say a word.”

                Reads a lot differently now doesn’t it?  Yes there is the faith of the centurion and the power of belief, but there is so much more to it.  Each character in the story is defying the supposed order of things, recognizing the era in which they live but also loving past it.  There is the centurion, a Roman soldier, the very kind of person who in but a generation will put every Israelite in Jerusalem to the sword.  But he is not cruel to the Israelites, he does not force them to worship the emperor or the Roman gods, indeed he builds their synagogue for them.  He has such a relationship with the Israelites that he can ask the Jewish elders to go talk to this dangerous new rabbi for him.  The elders, who by all accounts know that even being seen talking to this upstart, this rabbi with no formal education who constantly challenges the religious elite, could get them into real trouble, but for this centurion they do it.  And this needs to be explored further, the risks they are taking are no less phenomenal than the reasons they are taking them.  They approach this Jewish radical, this rabbi who does miraculous works on the Sabbath and that declares all foods to be clean, a man who is upsetting every Jewish authority at a time when doing so would literally get you killed.  Not only that, they are approaching this rabbi as a favor for a man viewed as a Jewish oppressor so that man can continue a relationship many Jewish leaders would not consider legitimate.  But the elders didn’t care about any of that.  This centurion had developed such a friendship, had such a meaningful impact on their lives, they approach Jesus without a second thought.  They don’t come to Jesus saying, we have to relay a message to you.  NO!  They say “this man is worthy of having you do this for him.”  In a world that would be all too quick to brand you a traitor, they knew the price of compassion in this instance and they didn’t flinch for a moment.  Their friend’s well being and joy meant so much more to them.

But after the Jewish elders show the quality of their character the Romans in Capernaum show theirs.  Jesus, of course, would know the repercussions of entering into the house of an unclean gentile, but He doesn’t care.  He goes anyway.  But the centurion, the centurion sees Jesus coming and has his Roman friends meet a conquered Jew and tell him not to come.  “Our friend knows the stigma that will be attached to you if you come to his house,” they say.  “But this is his message, ‘My Lord,’”… Incredible!  His friends see that this man of military station is debasing himself, calling a conquered Israelite My Lord, but they don’t care.  They relay the message anyway.  “My Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof and so I did not presume that I was worthy to see you.  Do not trouble yourself on my account.  Simply say the word and I know he will be healed for I myself am a man who both is a master and has a master, just like anybody else.  Just as when I give a command my will is done, I know when you issue the order thy will be done.

Jesus is astounded, amazed by this, and the story ends by Jesus doing something equally shocking.  He turns to his fellow Israelites and says, “I wish Jews had this much faith.”

Ladies and gentlemen, if the world needs anything it needs this story.  In a day and age where Christians mix with Muslims, Hindu’s, and Neo-Pagans, where those in the fishing villages of the world must live with the whims of the Caesars of the world, this story of risk-taking love and borderless compassion shows us the world as it could be.  A world where politics and disagreements mean so much less than one another’s happiness and the miracles that can happen when we do not let other people’s discomfort and disapproval rob us of our care.  But we don’t choose that world, ladies and gentlemen.  Instead we only love those like us, love when there is no cost to us.  One of my heroes, a German Lutheran Pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, coined a term for this: He called it cheap grace.  Ladies and gentlemen, I look upon an America more fractured than I have ever seen it, I look upon a world more ready to burn than I have ever seen it.  This is the answer, my friends.  If you don’t like somebody –befriend them.  If you are concerned about a social movement -  host their rallies.  If you despise an entire religion – build their synagogue for them.  Scream at the top of that mountain that no matter how different we are, how much we disagree or how much you don’t like me there will NEVER be a time when I don’t have your best interests and your happiness in my heart, that under no circumstance will I EVER be your enemy.  That is how we change the world, ladies and gentlemen, and that is how we make the miracles fly. 

Because if we only love those who love us, how is that to our credit?   

How Now Shall We Behave?

Good morning!  Grace and peace to you all this 3^rd Sunday in the Lenten season.  It is indeed well into the Season of Lent and as such, I feel compelled to be honest with you: I really wanted to preach another sermon this week.  Oh, I had a number of things floating around in my head and after hearing Craig’s sermon last Sunday I thought I’d just spot off of him.  He brought up a number really excellent points and given our church’s mission to really grow this year I thought they bore repeating.  I still think that, but as so often happens Sunday’s plans wind up in Monday’s garbage can, and so I wound up writing a very different sermon.

                My friends, it is 2016, and in case the incessant ads, the mudslinging and the personal attacks haven’t made it obvious, it is most definitely an election year.  Let’s make no bones about it, a lot is at stake this year.  As a nation we must decide what to do about the so-called Islamic State, the Syrian refugee crisis, there is China and their ecological disasters, there is continued questions of global warming, what to do about Planned Parenthood, America’s Silent Prison dilemma, Marijuana Legalization, and racial tensions the likes we have not seen in decades.  Indeed, if there can be any adjective, any one word that can be used to describe the years 2015 and 2016, it is the word “Unrest”.  People sense that life is coming to a turning point, that we are on the verge of great change either good or bad.  Anxieties are very high and tensions politically, socially, and economically loom like a shadow over everything – neither the dinner table at home nor the water cooler at work is safe from it.  What has become even more evident to me this week, however, is that in light of these great questions we as Americans are taking every opportunity to treat one another like garbage.  In this week alone I have personally witnessed more blatant racism, violence, and self-righteous indignation than I have since my children were born, and I want to entreat you all as fellow Christians to have nothing to do with it.

                I remember looking up our gospel text early this week, and remember being struck with how incredibly apt it is for the times we live in.  You see the 21^st century and the first century were not really all that different.  Political unrest, danger from armed terrorists, failing religious institutions, corrupt people in power, and a culture’s dying way of life - All of these were just as much the terrible realities of 16 AD Judea as they are in 2016 America.  It is almost as if the times might change but people just never do.  And just as we face the same realities as they did so we see the Jews making the same kinds of mistakes we do.  Did the Jews of Jesus’ time sit down as family and truly seek good answers to their problems?  Did they join together across religious and political barriers, reaching across the aisle so to speak to make the world a better place?  No.  No I dare say they were just as prone to splitting into political parties and religious movements as we are, and in a world so full of differing points of view, with so many people with so many competing interests, the humans did then as the humans do now.  They blame.  They point fingers, the find someone, ANYONE, with whom they can say “See how life would be a virtual Eden if these people just…weren’t…here.”

                The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, Jesus has an opinion about this kind of behavior, and we find it in our gospel lesson for today.  In the ancient world, calamity and tragedy were often thought to have happened because of the person’s sin.  Even though the Hebrews had in their Scriptures the Book of Job which makes it very clear that sometimes what happens to people has absolutely nothing to do with a person’s own righteousness and relationship to God, people still come up to Jesus to point the finger.  “Jesus,” they say, “did you hear about those Galileans Pilate had executed at the altar, mixing their blood with the sacrifices?  How terrible they must have been!  Can you imagine the sinfulness of those men that they should die in such a way?  Imagine what the rest of the family is like.” 

                This last part is very, very important.  It is the unwritten understanding that would overshadow this entire conversation from front to back.  When we read these ancient texts with modern eyes, we must understand their culture is not ours.  Individualism as we know it does not exist in these ancient cultures. A son or the daughter is not a person unto themselves but they are the extension of their family.  If the son or daughter is evil or is guilty of sin, it is because the entire family is evil and guilty of sin.  You don’t have this kind of conversation with someone just to bring up an interesting anecdote; you bring it up because you are looking for a scapegoat; you are looking for living prey.

                But Jesus will have none of it.  “Do you think these men were worse sinners than all the others because they died in this way?  You think these people were garbage to be burned when the reality is it is your attitude that’s garbage.  This is not how God expects you to treat people and unless you repent you too are going to perish - only in a far worse way.  You think those eighteen random people who died when the tower fell were more guilty, you think those families were more despicable than any other living in Jerusalem?  Unless you all repent of your attitudes, you too are going to perish.  And let me tell you why.  A man had a fig tree you see, planted in his vineyard, and when he came to inspect it he saw that it has failed to yield any fruit for years.  He tells the manager of the vineyard to cut it down, because if it hasn’t born fruit by now it never will and it is just wasting soil.  But the manager pleaded with the owner, sir, let me pay special attention to it.  Let me dig around it and fertilize it.  Let me give it every opportunity to succeed and if by this time next year it still hasn’t yielded a crop then, yes, it deserves to be cut down.  

We are all being watched, Jesus says, we are all trees in a vineyard being inspected and indeed being specially cared for so that we can be as successful for the kingdom as possible.  It is fruitfulness; not purity, not righteousness, nor even being correct, that God is looking for and if we want someone to be worried about, Jesus says, be worried about that person you see in the mirror first.

Ladies and gentlemen, we think we have moved beyond these lessons.  We haven’t.  We think somehow we’ve become better sorts of people these past 2000 years but let me tell you the same issues that plagued them still plague us.  We think we have become the exception rather than the rule.  We aren’t.  We are still a people who would rather be right than be good and there is nothing, there is no one whom we will not grind into the dirt to get that feeling. 

I am Pro-life, like I suspect many of you are.  I do not doubt for an instant that an unborn human life is still a human life with its own rights and protections.  The child deserves to be recognized for the life that it is.  But I was challenged, you see.  I was challenged by my Pro-Choice counterparts and I realized something.  I wasn’t really pro-life.  When it came down to actually saving the lives of unborn children I in fact bore no fruit.  I could not point to one human life that I had saved.  There were no babies alive because of me, I did nothing to alleviate all the social pressures that our women go through when forced into the question of whether to terminate the pregnancy.  I could have stood up for equal pay, I could have stood up for a living wage so having an unwanted child wasn’t an economic death sentence.  I could have lobbied for more affordable adoptions.  Of the nearly 300,000 children in the United States that have no permanent home, only 7000 parents adopted in 2012, leaving a mother choosing between abortion or adoption with the terrible reality that her child might never find a permanent home. Tens of thousands of potential adoptees age out of our foster care systems every year, and with it the very large likelihood of never graduating school, never holding a job, and with roughly half of them falling victim to substance abuse.  I didn’t want to actually save babies, because if I wanted to do that I was given plenty of opportunity.  The end result of my actions was not to reduce the number of abortions in my country but to make young women feel alienated and abandoned when they needed a brother most.        

Now you may say to me, “But Keven, wait just one minute!”  I want you to stop, I want you to stop right there.  That feeling you have, that emotion that is making you uncomfortable right now, I want you to stop and look at it.  All those arguments you are mustering in your head, all those indignations you are feeling right now.  This is what Jesus is talking about, valuing our positions more than we value other people.  Just as ancient peoples valued the belief that a person can be judged by the family they belong to, so we value the belief that a person can be judged by the party they belong to.  We blame them, we turn our nose up at them, we judge them as unworthy because after all it is just so obvious how wrong they really are.  We do this for hours on end but never once do we ask the question, “Am I being fruitful?”

  Now I don’t care what side of any issue that you are on.  Pro-life, Pro-choice, Pro-business, Pro-Earth, less filling or tastes great – Every single issue we as humans side upon is just right enough to win followers and just wrong enough to earn enemies.  None of us is so without sin that we can pretend we don’t taint everything that we touch.  Ladies and gentlemen, it is not about who is right, it is about who is teachable.  It is about who is willing to be challenged into growing into something greater.  If we are so sure, so completely convinced, so thoroughly loyal to our particular understandings that we would sooner lose our soul than admit maybe the other side has a point – that maybe they are just as human, just as right and just as wrong as we are…well, guess what?  Jesus says we might just get our wish.  Unswerving loyalty and Unrepentence are two sides of the same coin.  If we want to be unswervingly loyal to someone, if we want to pour our hearts and souls into a cause that’s right,   Scripture is very clear on Who that is supposed to be and He cares far more about how we act toward each other in our disagreements than what those disagreements actually are.  Let us resolve to better this election season.  Let us stand out amongst the name-calling and the backstabbing.  Let us be an island of refuge from the destructiveness of self-righteousness, because no matter what side we hold or what philosophies we adhere to we realize that above all we are Christians first.      

Amen and Amen