320 The Way Forward

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “The Way Forward” originally shared on July 17, 2024. It was the 320^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   When our divisions seem to have brought us to rock bottom it can seem like there’s no way forward. There is a way forward, and it has two seemingly unrelated parts. Today, we’re going to find out what it is.

   There was an attempt on the life of former president, and current presidential candidate, Donald Trump last Saturday. We are still wondering why security was not more robust within firearm range of the podium. We are also wondering about a motive and our first questions are about politics when it could be nothing more than someone who was bullied in high school and who was now not a fully formed adult male. Someone with an a-typical personality doing something that he concluded would make a mark for himself in the world.

   Social media, or what might often be called “anti-social media”, is filled with bizarre conspiracy theories across the political spectrum about this, as well as questions regarding who was responsible for security, calls for violent vengeance, fears for the future, and bland “can’t we all just get along” pleas.

   Time will tell how it all plays out, and only God knows what the future holds, but I am reminded of another shooting.

   When President Ronald Regan was shot in 1981, over 43 years ago, he was taken to a hospital, treated in the emergency room, and then taken in for surgery by a team led by Dr. Joseph Giordano. Before he was sedated, President Regan took off his oxygen mask and said, “I hope you are all Republicans.” Everyone laughed and Dr. Giordano, a Democrat, said, “Today, Mr. President, we are all Republicans.”

   Is that the way forward?

   Can we find unity around addressing what is a common disaster?

   Or are we so broken that we can’t see this attack as a common disaster?

   As many have said, this was not just an attack on one person. This was an attack on our democracy and its imperfect processes. It was an attack on our sense of security, on the rule of law, on the way things ought to be in a free society, including being free from fear.

   It was an attack on all of us.

   There was a time, or at least it seems so to me, when we could disagree without hating one another. How can we move toward respect for one another as persons? Could we even ask for love for one another?

     I appreciate the words of a past president of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, a group that gathers leaders of the world’s religions periodically to discuss shared interests, who opened one such gathering by saying something like, “Our task here is not to agree with one another. Our task is to acknowledge that we have rival truth claims without killing each other.”

   To the world, that is a ridiculously low threshold for tolerance, but for people of all religions, that is a goal that has integrity.

   That same goal may not seem like much for our political life. But today, unfortunately, it’s a start.

   How do we build a bridge made of common values in our political life, and what can Christians contribute?

   Paul was a Roman citizen and was proud of it. He called for the support of the just actions of the empire and for the good that it did even when it was persecuting Christians.

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, wrote of his two-kingdom theology, that God rules through the Church and through the good government of this world. He pointed out that both the Church and the government should be held accountable for doing God’s will to promote the good of all people.

   The blending of Church and State into a “civil religion” is neither civil nor religion.

   Violence like we saw last Saturday likewise takes the work of God into human hands. That never ends well.

   Can we agree that what happened last weekend was wrong, and should not be repeated? It may not seem like much, but it’s a start.

   Can we see one another fundamentally not as Democrats or Republicans, or as liberals or conservatives, or as our races, or our cultures, or as our genders, but as people, God’s people, people, created and loved by God?

   Can we see all people as children of God, and therefore see one another as our brothers and our sisters??

   Can we be a witness to the world and encourage one another to live holy, transformed lives as a people who have been redeemed and made new, as new creations in Jesus Christ, as Paul describes in Colossians 3:9-11,

9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10 and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. 11 In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

   Can we model that unity for the world? Can we remind one another that we are like spokes on a wheel with Jesus at the center? The closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to one another. The farther we get from Jesus the farther we get from one another.

   Can we find our unity at the hub, in Jesus Christ? As Paul reminds us in Galatians 3:27-28,

27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

   The reading from the gospel of Mark that will be read in the vast majority of churches throughout the world this coming Sunday, Mark 6:30-34, 53-56, offers us the way forward in two parts.

   First, is listening and compassion.

   Jesus saw the personhood in his disciples. He was concerned for their personal well-being.

   Just before our Gospel reading, there is an interlude to describe the death of John the Baptist (that we read last week), preceded by Jesus sending out his disciples two by two to the villages of Galilee, calling people to repent.

   He taught his disciples how to conduct themselves and how to deal with success and failure.  He gave them the power to heal people and he gave them authority over the unclean spirits.

   Then, the story resumes in today’s Gospel reading when the disciples, now called apostles because “apostles” means “sent ones”, with Mark 6:30,

30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32 And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. 33 Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. 34 As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd

   Jesus listened to his apostles to hear about their mission trip. He wanted to take them to a deserted place so that they could get some rest and some food. But when the crowds saw them and arrived ahead of them by foot, disrupting Jesus’ plans, Jesus didn’t get angry. Jesus had compassion for them because “they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

   Second, is the healing that comes through the touch of Jesus.

   Mark tells of the feeding of the 5,000 and then of Jesus walking on water, and then this happens in the other part of our Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, beginning with Mark 6:53,

53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. 54 When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, 55 and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

   Jesus brought healing even without his active intention, but even passively, even when people only touched the fringe of his cloak, because the Holy Spirit led them to recognize God in Jesus.

   Jesus showed his control over nature, over disease, even over death, not to put on a show of his power, but to show who he was, and who he is.

   Miracles are about time. They point both back and forward in time. They point to the world that God created, where there was no disease, no storms, and no death, a world that human beings messed up by their rebellion against God. Miracles also point to the world that one day will be, to the new heaven and the new earth, to the eternal life that begins in our baptism and is made perfect in the life to come, the life that Jesus made possible for us on the cross.

   Why does there seem to be so much violence in our culture, more so than in other cultures around the world? I think that one reason is that we value personal freedom. In cultures where people have a great deal of personal freedom more people will make bad choices that bring evil into the world.

   But God offers us another kind of freedom. God offers freedom from sin, from death, and from the power of the devil.

   It’s given to all who received it in Jesus Christ. It is a gift of God given in our baptisms. It is the kind of freedom that makes us want to make the choices that glorify God.

   Jesus is the way forward, Jesus is the good news that we can trust. Jesus is the way to eternal life, as Jesus says in John 14:6,

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

   We were created for unity, in a living relationship with the one true living God.

   Jesus is the Way. The way forward is Jesus.