Love now

We Americans are living in unsettled times. Our country and churches are full of fury, factionalism and fragmentation. Many celebrate, but many others lament the actions of those in authority.  

I weep for our divided country and church. 

Whatever the issues and our positions on them, I think all of us would do well to pause and remember that before all the other claims on our loyalties, we belong to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In baptism, St. Paul writes, we died to sin and death and were raised to new life in Christ.

In our diversity, including in our opinions on the great issues of the day, we belong to Christ and are valued members of his one eternal body.

In our liturgy of Holy Baptism, we Episcopalians make a statement of faith, drawn from Ephesians, which sums up our essential Christian unity, regardless of denomination, unity that is deeper than our divisions:

“There is one Body and one Spirit; there is one hope in God’s call to us; one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism; one God and Father of all.”

We are one in Christ now and always, one in his love for us and in our love for one another.

And he shows his love, which the gospels call agape, on the cross for the salvation of all, even the very religious authorities who called for his death and the soldiers who accomplished it.

As he loved us, so we are to love one another and all people, even those with whom we profoundly disagree, people who inflame our anger, our rage.

When I was away in North Carolina recently, I found a café in a grocery store where daily I read my Bible, prayed and wrote in my journal. I would occasionally look up and watch people. A few of them declared their political loyalty on their hats and shirts (and in the parking lot on their car bumpers and fluttering from flags in their truck beds).

At first, I was angry and expressed that feeling in my journal. Then, God the Holy Spirit spoke to me, challenging me to love my neighbor as myself, as Jesus taught, lived and died that love. 

I did something I was unable to do on my own when I saw those shoppers in their red hats and shirts, I smiled, said hello and prayed silently for God to bless them.

Wouldn’t America, wouldn’t the Body of Christ, with all the differences in theology, politics and more, be a much better place if we practiced the love of Jesus, with the help of God’s grace? Wouldn’t it be worth a try?

Love the other, especially the one with whom we so bitterly disagree, whom we might even see as the enemy. This person is first the child of God and loved by him. Love that person, if only with a smile, a hello and a prayer for Gods’ blessings upon him or her. 

And you and I will start to change the world by making it a little less cruel, a little more kind.