We say “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it
bends toward justice.” (MLK Jr)
We say “Love wins”
We say “God has this”
We say “In God we Trust.”
In faith, we insist that Sacred is somehow “in the
building”
Doing holy things
And that we do not have to be afraid
For "All shall be well, and all shall be well,
and all manner of thing shall be well" (Julian of
Norwich)
I believe all of that
But there is something that we often do not say.
That the path toward love and justice
Involves a profound encounter with hate and evil
What we do not say
Is that often the center does not hold
And we slide into the abyss
There is a reason Jesus said we have to “die to live”
And Paul insisted that “all of us who were baptized into
Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by
baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the
glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6)
We sometimes want to forget that
In between Palm Sunday and Easter
Horrible things happened
Conflict, rejection, betrayal, injustice, brutality, and
murder
We forget that the world “did its thing” on Jesus
That Empire killed him,
Before the resurrection happened
We cannot trivialize the power of hate and fear in this
world
Yes, Hitler was defeated
But what happened before that happened?
Concentration camps.
Genocide. War. Devastation
Yes, Europe and the world crawled out of the ashes
But the devastation happened.
Yes, people recover from illness,
Tragedy
Mass shootings
Injury
Hate
Racism
Yes, when Sacred is present the end of the path
Will be life and love
Justice and equity
But along the path?
So often the path to transformation and change starts
Not (as Richard Rohr says) “when something new begins,
but when something old falls apart.”
I trust that eventually love will win
That people like MTG and DJT and all the rest will
eventually be defeated
But I also believe there may well be a lot of chaos along
the way
There may be “fire, dark night, death, emptiness,
abandonment, trial, the Evil One. Whatever it is called, it does not feel good,
and it does not feel like God.” (Rohr)
There are times we do not feel the presence of God
Times when in spite of what we say, we wonder
I see hard times ahead
I hear the words of the ancient prophets echoing in my
ears
Woe to those who devise wickedness and evil deeds[a] on
their beds!
When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in
their power.
They covet fields and seize them, houses and take them
away;
they oppress householder and house, people and their
inheritance (Micah).
We don’t have to go there
But we may well go there
And if we go there
God will be there
“He shall judge between many peoples and shall arbitrate
between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and
their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither
shall they learn war anymore; (also Micah)
How do we hang on in that chaotic, liminal
Painful, deadly, time
In between?
We remember that Jesus walked this path too
We remember that out of death God brings life
We remember that Sacred hangs out in our souls
We remember, remember, remember
And we turn in
We go to that deep place within us
Where Love dwells
We become awake to the Spirit
We give it room to work
Knowing that it will not take the pain away
But will transform the pain
Into hope
Into love
Into action
And then we will keep walking
Keep serving
Keep giving
God does not change the world as much as
God changes us, in ways big, and ways small
God’s presence changes the way we see the world
React to the world
Live in the world
And that is why, in spite of it all
The Kingdom will come
And love will win
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