Arrogance. Anger. Mockery. Violence.
No, these are not only words that might describe the current presidential campaign, but also this Sunday’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures! This lesson is stunning in its its description of a high-stakes wager and its aftermath. Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that our Scriptures contain all of the elements of human life and of ourselves at our best and our worst.
It is also a weekend of memories: of those in the military who died in service; of the murders at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston one year ago, and of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as our president visits Japan. And of course, all the good memories of picnics, barbeques and the arrival of summer.
We need to find our way not only through memory but also navigate the present and the ugly climate elections can create—even if months away, to temper our outrage with civility, our anger with respect, our fear with hope. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” Jesus said. It’s just that “what is Caesar’s” is where we live. It is the future for ourselves and our children.
Church is a place where we can go to sort it all out to listen to the Spirit, to calibrate our moral compass, to be fed, and the worship the One who promises to lead us out of the darkness.
See you there…(I’ll be the one in the pulpit not talking about politics. Directly.)
Barbara
