LOVE LISTENS

Matthew 26:34 - Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.”

What a change in tone in Jesus’s response! He went from a vague suggestion of desertion to blunt specificity in trying to get Peter’s attention. Jesus is trying to teach the disciples in these last few moments of their time together before he is arrested, and Peter is interrupting with his protests. Jesus’s switch in tone and wording is his attempt to warn Peter that he’s sliding down that slippery slope to the unpardonable sin of calling “good bad and bad good.” Peter is clearly not listening. Will he listen before it’s too late?

Will we listen?

Will we listen not just to our God (however we see God), but to ourselves, and to each other? Because that is the first step to self-awareness as well as to communion with others. Listening, really listening is hard. I’m not talking about listening closely in order to refute what a speaker is saying. Listening only to refute is so common, I don’t even need to offer an example. You can probably think of many on your own.

What would happen if we began listening to learn?

By listening to another person with the goal of learning a bit more about them and the way they see the world, how many arguments could we avoid? We often have fixed pictures of others in our minds. That’s why people can surprise us; we often don’t update those pictures. Listening to learn helps us see how people are changing – or not. Listening to learn builds community.

It also requires a mindset of humility, a recognition that no matter how smart or well-informed we are, we don’t know everything. There is always more to learn and there are always more ways to grow in loving others.

On the flip side, humility also requires us to question whether what have we learned is actually true. What is that we might need to unlearn? For example, many of us learned that in America, anyone could be whatever they wanted. If a person wasn’t rich, they didn’t work hard enough. Of course, that only applied, and still only applies, if you’re an able-bodied, cis-het white male. All others face barriers erected to keep them down. Misogyny, racism, classism, homophobia, and ableism; all these attitudes translate into real barriers for those who fall into one or more of these categories.

Was that something you needed to unlearn? What about the idea that Americans are exceptional? Or that individuals don’t need others – otherwise known as individualism? What about the idea that women don’t like sex? Or that Black men are lazy or criminal? Or that Social Security Disability pays people enough to live on. These ideas and attitudes cause real harm in people’s lives; sometimes even killing them.

Given the prevalence of these harmful and hurtful attitudes, listening for what we can learn from another is an act of love. It requires humility but also being present to the other person’s words and body language. Love listens to understand and connect; to build community.

Love listens and calls us to listen as well.

Will we?

B

 

 

UNPARDONABLE SIN

Matthew 25:33 – Peter said to him, “Though all become deserters because of you, I will never desert you.”

I, like many children, used to lie a lot as a child. I lied to get out being punished for something I did, to get something I wanted, or out of fear that I had done something wrong. That’s not particularly unusual. However, I matured. I don’t lie that easily any more. Many people do not, and they risk committing what Howard Thurman, in his book Jesus and the Disinherited, calls the unpardonable sin. In discussing Jesus telling those who accused him of casting out devils by the power of the devil that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” Jesus

suggested that if they continued [saying that] – and they knew such was not the case – they would commit the unpardonable sin. That is to say, if a [person] continues to call a good thing bad, [they] will eventually lose [their] sense of moral distinction. (italics mine.)

They will lose their sense of moral distinction. And a person who loses their sense of moral distinction also loses their sense of self, their sense of being a person in a community, their sense of connection to others, their sense of responsibility to others, possibly even their very humanness.

What does that have to do with Peter’s reaction? I mean, how many of us would react exactly the same way! How does this connect with lying? Glad you asked. No one wants to think that they are cowards or that they will hurt a friend and mentor – God! – in this way. And yet, we all have the capacity to do so as well as the capacity to be faithful. Peter’s refusal to reflect rather than react, to deny rather than think through Jesus’s words, are a form of lying, to himself as well as to Jesus and the other apostles. Peter has no self-awareness.

So, what, you might be asking.

The thing is, Peter’s denial mirrors our own (sometimes). We often want to deny our faults and highlight our strengths. Even to ourselves. Yet, keeping one’s sense of “moral distinction” requires self-reflection, self-awareness, thinking over our actions and apologizing and making amends where necessary, recognizing ourselves as part of a larger community with obligations to that community, especially the most vulnerable. This, to me, is a big part of what it means to follow Jesus.

As with people, so with nations. Being a mature nation requires recognizing our faults as a nation. Plainly put, The US has never had the courage to face what Jim Wallis calls our “original sin,” but I call the rot at the core of our foundations. Every inch of land in the US was stolen from the native peoples who already lived here, sometimes after we killed them with smallpox. (If you didn’t know, look it up and be disgusted!) Slavery and white supremacy are baked into the constitution with the 3/5ths compromise. (Look it up and be disgusted!) The Civil War was fought over the right to own slaves, no matter what people say now. Slavery was baked into the constitution of each and every state that rebelled. (Look it up and be disgusted!) Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, the Tulsa Massacre (which used to be called the Tulsa race riots to make it seem both sides were at fault), the Civil Rights struggles of the 60s and the decades-long effort by Republicans to roll back those accomplishments. The truth is that the rot has seeped up from the foundations and into the structures; the walls, the windows, the floors. It colors our view of everything. It’s our inability to look at this rot in that allows it grow and threaten the entire structure.

And it starts with small actions like Peter’s furious denial that he would ever desert Jesus.

B

 

LOVE GATHERS

 Matthew 26:32 – “But after I am raised up, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.”

Last time we met, we read Jesus’s prediction that the disciples would scatter, because of their fear of the Jewish and Roman authorities. Here, he reassures them that they will all be gathered together again. Love speaks a word of hope. “I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” The ‘you’ there is plural; they will all be together again.

Because Love gathers.

Jesus has told them that they would have a tough time, a time of fear and scattering. We too are going through a time of fear and scattering through the pandemic. We have been isolating ourselves from each other in order to keep ourselves and others safe. Human beings are social animals; we thrive when we’re able to be with, talk to, and hug each other. Without those bonds, our mental health takes a toll. Yet, we social distance so that the pandemic can be over more quickly, to keep ourselves and others safe.

It’s a tough time. Some of us have lost loved ones, some of us have become disabled through the effects of COVID or had loved ones become disabled, some of whom would have survived but for the failure of the president to act in the country’s best interest. Many of us have lamented the indifference to human suffering and death that led to even more divisiveness and suffering. The previous guy was good at sowing division and fear.

Fear scatters, but Jesus and Love gather

Indeed, almost half our country is supporting the divisiveness of white supremacy, white nationalism, and the Big Lie that Biden somehow stole the election. Those three things are all intertwined. Republican leaders at the state and national level, themselves fearing a loss of their power, are actively promoting these ideas or not speaking against them. We are seeing them continue to politicize wearing of masks and attacking Dr. Fauci.

Fear scatters, but Jesus and Love gather.

Yes, we are going through a tough time, but the end of the story has still to be written. We don’t know how it will end, because our actions can influence that end. President Biden named our dilemma, our choices succinctly the week before last when he stated that we are in a battle for democracy against the autocracy desired by Republican leadership – although not by most of the American people. It is up to us to act, to gather in love, to be the light that lights the way.

As Amanda Gorman ended her inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb:”  “We will rebuild, reconcile and recover / and every known nook of our nation and / every corner called our country, / our people diverse and beautiful will emerge, / battered and beautiful /
When day comes we step out of the shade, / aflame and unafraid / The new dawn blooms as we free it / For there is always light, / if only we’re brave enough to see it / If only we’re brave enough to be it.” (bolding mine)

Together, we will move forward. Fear scatters. Love gathers.

B