The way of love will show us the right thing to do, every single time

“As for you, you will keep my covenant, you and your offspring throughout the generations.”  Genesis 17:9 

“Remember, you are not alone.  God is with you.  God’s promises have been active since before our history began.  Powers and principalities have risen and fallen many times in God’s presence and the covenant still stands.  So must we stand in God’s promise to work toward the world of peace with justice that God is calling into being–whether we live in an age that reflects those values or obscures them,  God’s promise will prevail.”  (1)from the Day One material by the Vandersall Collective 

“The way of love will show us the right thing to do, every single time. It is moral and spiritual grounding—and a place of rest—amid the chaos that is often part of life. It’s how we stay decent in indecent times. Loving is not always easy, but like with muscles, we get stronger both with repetition and as the burden gets heavier. And it works.”

Bishop  Michael B. Curry, Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times

Dear friends, 

As our national Election Day draws nearer, I can feel the anxiety everywhere I go.  People stop me in the grocery store, during coffee hour, outside in the parking lot, in our Chapel Chats–What will happen? Will there be violence? Will there be a clear winner quickly?--  Everyone seems unsettled, no matter what political party we endorse, or none.  The anxiety about the future is something we seem to share.   

How might we manage our anxiety over the next month and our fears about what comes next for our country, for our church, our communities, and for those in need?  There is so much information;  so many sound bytes, tweets, blogs, and whispered conversations,  I hesitated to add more words to the deluge.  However, as your priest, and a fellow citizen, I want to remind myself and all of us who we are as God’s beloved people.  So here goes…..

As followers of Jesus Christ, we are part of a sweeping story of God’s creation, love, mercy, and redemption of the world.  As told in Holy Scriptures, God made a covenant, a promise, and through Abraham and our ancestors in faith, God has bound Godself to us.  In time, God sent Jesus to live and die as one of us here on the earth.  Jesus, for Christians, is the fulfillment of God’s promise and a continuation of God’s faithfulness and commitment to God’s people.  His Resurrection from the dead is for us to know without a doubt that death has been conquered and life and hope in the future is real and for all.   

 In the quote above from Genesis and from the Vandersall folks, we are reminded that God’s promises are true and reliable.  Even when the world doesn’t appear to us to be working, we can trust and carry on throughout our human lives, with faith that God’s promise, God’s faithfulness to us is unfailing.  

In our Wednesday Bible Study this week, we talked about how the author of the Letter to the Hebrews reinforces this claim; that our lives with God are part of a greater narrative that is always moving forward.  N.T. Wright (who wrote the commentary we are using) points out that “One of the great themes about God’s future purposes throughout the Bible is that God longs for real justice…to create a world in which evil at last has no place.”(2)

So this brings us to the quote from Bishop Michael Curry, who has spent his ministry as the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, reminding us that love is the only way forward.  Not love in a cloying, unrealistic sense, but Love as it is embodied in Jesus Christ.  Love is “how we stay decent in indecent times” Curry says.  Love as Jesus taught us in Mark’s gospel:  “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’  The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31

Friends, as we move forward and live into these next days and weeks, months and years, may we live together in love…Christ’s love…with a deep gratitude for God’s promise to always love us, forgive us, draw us near to Him.  We need to pray, to be gentle with one another, to listen to the concerns of others and to assure one another that our citizenship in God’s Kingdom is where our hearts truly lie.  AND we need to use our hands and feet, our voices, our voting privileges, to get on board with God’s vision for care and justice for all God’s people.  As Bp. Curry says, this kind of love isn’t easy but we at Trinity already know a lot about love, a lot about working for justice and peace for all people.  At the end of the day, when we wake up on Nov. 6, 2024, our work is the same.  To love God, to love our neighbor, to continue in our prayers and worship, to be grateful and active with the love that comes from God alone.  

You may notice that we are praying the Prayer for an Election each week in the Prayers of the People.  This prayer comes from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, to whom we must account for all our powers and privileges:  Guide the people of the United States in the election of officials and representatives; that, by faithful administration and wise laws, the rights of all may be protected and our nation be enabled to fulfill your purposes, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  (Book of Common Prayer, p.822)

In addition to this weekly prayer at both Sunday services, we will hold an Overnight Prayer Vigil in the historic Chapel on Monday, Nov. 4 to the morning of Tuesday Nov. 5.  If you are interested in helping to plan this simple, quiet space for prayer please let me know?  We will gather to set up prayer candles, prayers from our tradition, and a way for people to sign up to come in throughout the night to pray for our country and for the world. 

Email me at hagner@trinityconcord.org if you would like to help with this planning. 

Peace and blessings, 

With deep gratitude for your faithfulness and prayers, 

Nancy+

_______________

(1) Day One: A companion journal for navigating an election year. T. Reggio, E. Weber-Johnson, M. Vandersall, R. Tutera, K. Lasky 2024

(2) Wright, N. T.  Hebrews for Everyone, Westminster John Knox, Louisville KY 2023 p.5