\“What Can We Do? We Can Love One Another!_
June Teenth Week
June 23, 2024
“Then a great squall of wind occurred and the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was already being swamped. But he was in the stern asleep, asleep on the cushion. Then they awoke him and said, ‘Teacher do you not care that we are lost?’ Waking up he rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Quiet now!’ ‘Be silent!’ And the wind stopped and there was dead calm. Then he said to them:’Why are you so cowardly? Have you still no faith?’ They were overcome with awe, and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and sea obey him.’ (Mark 4:35-41: Revised New Jerusalem Bible).
On June 19th we commemorated “Juneteenth”, the day in 1865 in which Blacks in Texas discovered they had been liberated, a joyous day!
We must reflect on the systemic issues that continue to affect Black communities across the United States. One pressing issue is the racial disparity in drug-related arrests and incarcerations.
Black people are 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people. Despite comprising only 13% of the U.S. population and rates equal to Whites, Black people account for 24% of drug-related arrests. Further more Black men are sent to state prison on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men.
As we celebrate freedom and equality during this Juneteenth week, these statistics remind us of the ongoing fight for racial justice.
The Gospel of Mark reading for the 12th Sunday of Ordinary time has Jesus asleep in a boat with the disciples when a storm comes up and they become terrified, and they wake him and ask whether he cared for them or not, which I am thinking they had been asking themselves before they awakened Jesus, was ‘What are we to do?
Amid all the political and religious division, and the problems of poverty, housing, and homelessness, I am sure we asked the same question.
Christianity has always had its divisions and fighting beginning with the writing of the Gospels, for each one is an expression of a political point of view Matthew, is very Jewish; Mark is very rebellious; Luke seeks to communicate at a more moderate level to the Jewish population; and John wants nothing to do with the political situation. But all four in one voice tell us that Jesus said: “Love one Another!” No matter the fighting we are called to care for each other and all humanity. Any other philosophy or theology that says otherwise is not of Christ!
One way of understanding our command to “Love One Another! is to ask the Desert Fathers, and they will tell us that solitude gives birth to compassion:
“Because it makes us die to our neighbor.
At first, this answer seems quite disturbing to a modern mind. But when we give it a closer look we can see that in order to be of service to others we have to “die to them” that is we have to give up measuring our meaning and value with the yardstick of others.
To die for our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and to become free to be compassionate.
Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates distance, the distinction that prevents us from really being with the other.”
Fr. Henri Nouwen
Celebrating Juneteenth this past week, we see the answer demonstrated, the answer of loving one another without judgment. We see the answer in the response to the death of Willie Mays, a great man who brought people together in love and is doing so in death, as we see people of all races mourning together.
I remember a Presbyterian Church where I was the Interim Pastor some forty years ago, a man saying to me: “All you ever talk about is love, preach some judgment and hell, we need to hear that.” My response was simply: “Howard I am just following the example of Jesus!
As I see people of all races, men, women, and children laying on the streets, hungry, in pain, with no health insurance, and no housing, and look around me at well-dressed people who seem to care for their dogs more than they care for these people. My heart bleeds, I struggle with a sense of hopelessness, and if all this preaching and writing of for years has been in vain.
While I feel the political storms pounding around me, beyond my control, the gospel of Mark reminds me not to panic or be “anxious,” but to respond in concrete ways to brewing storms, political or otherwise.
This is what I have learned these years of doing church: the gospel of God is the Bread of the Presence, and it reaches down into the deepest, darkest, ugliest recesses of the human spirit, the places polite chit-chat won’t allow, the places watery juice doesn’t open up, the places where crabs and creeping things of the sea live. God does not peer at us through stained-glass eyes, no He/She is all flesh and tears on the streets, the park, and sidewalks, where our only food becomes God, Himself/Herself. And when we find Him/Her, we are pulled close, we are fed, until we feast we laugh, until we cannot help but pull others close too.
Mother Teresa tells us: “I held the host with two fingers and thought: How small Jesus made himself in order to show us that He doesn’t expect great things of us, but rather little things with great love.”
And so I sit, listen, feed, and care for the ones who sit in our doorways, I die to each one of my friends in the solitude of being in pain with each one, raising the same question and preaching the same sermon to all who will listen: Jesus tells us to “Love our neighbor as ourself! And I do “little things” one by one! Join me!
“
Whoever does the will of God
is my brother and sister and mother.”
—Mark 3.35
The old Italian woman doing her rosary,
the Hindu lighting a candle,
the homeless addict sharing a sandwich,
they are all my siblings.
The Episcopalian, the pagan, the child
too young to denominationalism,
they are all mine.
We fight over our lies.
How odd that we who have come
from the same womb
should belittle each other,
should give ourselves permission
to abjure our own.
This is enlightenment:
to say to every living being,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh.”
All else is illusion.
Breath prayer:
Siblings … welcome
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
“Help me to journey beyond the familiar
and into the unknown.
Give me the faith to leave old ways
and to break fresh ground with You.
Christ of the mysteries, I trust You
to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know
that my times, even now, are in Your hand.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You!
Amen.
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SAME ENERGY!
Put me in jail, then.
Throw me behind your religious bars
since you have dubbed me a breaker of your law.
I live my days in the courtroom of your criticism.
I move unbothered under the gaze of your gavel.
I have no interest in defending myself before your bench.
Go on, clench your fists, raise your voice to make your point.
Type the rebuke that you must make on my page.
Who asked you to come through anyway? Is this rage your duty?
We operate under a different set of obligations and get worked up to frustration for different reasons,
even though we both claim fidelity to God.
If you were interested,
which I doubt,
here is where my passion lies:
feed the hungry,
clothe the naked,
heal the sick,
defend the rights of the orphan,
plead the widow’s cause,
and woe to you who unjustly enforce God’s Law.
Why spend your energy policing me
when that same energy could be used to love, fiercely?
Justice, mercy, and humility. Go learn what this means.
Drew Jackson
Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
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#religious; #spirituality;#youth;#homelessness;
TEMENOS CATHOLIC WORKER 
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