The Harvest Is Plentiful

sermon preached at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Medina, WA

by Josh Hosler, Postulant for Holy Orders, Diocese of Olympia

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 9C / July 7, 2013

“All the earth bows down before you, sings to you, sings out your Name. Come now and see the works of God, how wonderful he is in his doing toward all people.” Amen.

The end of the Great Hall
at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Medina, WA

This past Monday, having just arrived in town, I was crossing the bridge and saw the St. Thomas exit. I thought, “Well, I am running late for lunch, but I’ll just drive by and see how the place looks.” I didn’t expect much difference yet. But when I arrived, I saw familiar-looking people standing in the parking lot, and a giant claw tearing down the Great Hall! Of course, I stopped to say hi and to watch for a few minutes, my jaw rather agape, and my whole being feeling full and thankful. 

I have just finished my second of three years at Virginia Theological Seminary. In addition to my academic work, I am doing field education at Church of the Ascension in Silver Spring, Maryland, a vibrant, multi-cultural, inter-generational parish with a heart for social justice and a knack for welcoming and incorporating everybody. In January I spent three weeks in the Dominican Republic with several other classmates. I picked up some Spanish, explored the culture, met our Dominican seminarians, and learned a lot about what the Episcopal Church looks like in a very different context. In May I attended a preaching conference in Richmond, Virginia, where our own Bishop Greg appeared on a panel of bishops, and where I was able to bond with seminarians from all over the Episcopal Church.

Meanwhile, my wife Christy has been working on the seminary campus as research assistant for a study funded by the Lilly Foundation, research that is teaching us how clergy from a variety of Christian denominations make the transition from seminary into ordained ministry. Our daughter Sarah has finished second grade and looks forward to third; she makes new friends joyfully and has discovered a love of swimming, basketball, math, and Harry Potter.

In all the busy-ness of our seminary adventure, I think of you often and look forward to news from home. I have watched names of newcomers, strangers to me, begin to appear in the Collect newsletter as they dig into leadership roles at St. Thomas. I was moved deeply by the photos from Holy Week on the website. The children I remember well are inexorably growing up. I’m excited to see your developing partnership with the Diocese of Haiti and your strategic planning for the future of youth ministry at St. Thomas. Most of all, I have watched as you have slowly but steadily moved the Ebsworth Life Center forward to this stage: groundbreaking, and the beginning of a chaotic but joyful desert time. I feel honored that I was able to be present here for so many years to work in partnership with you and with God.

Likewise, as I look around the Diocese of Olympia I see exciting developments. I am especially inspired by a new group called Outside Church Walls, which is blogging and engaging people in conversation, imagining creative new ways we can be church for the people of Western Washington. Recently Outside Church Walls wrote this on the diocesan website:

So often in the church we want to transform the ‘other,’ those who don't yet get what we have. At its best, this grows from our love for Jesus, and wanting to share that love with others. At other times it reflects a desire to validate ourselves by making people more like us … Are we willing to be transformed by those ‘others’ as well? If God is working through us for them, God is also working through them for us. In a genuine relationship, both parties are open to change.

It seems like such a simple thing, doesn’t it? And yet there’s something rather revolutionary about it. I remember standing here three years ago and remarking that if the Ebsworth Life Center is constructed but not well used, it will be only half-finished. St. Thomas is and can become more and more a powerful resource for all people on the Eastside, and for all Episcopalians in the diocese. I pray you will give of the new building, but even more importantly, give of yourselves. Be open to the presence of the Holy Spirit in the most surprising people. Let them change you.

This past Lent, Bishop Greg invited the diocese to read a book together: People of the Way by Dwight Zscheile. I commend it to you, whether you are newly baptized or experienced in the faith, as you discern where God is calling you next. To be one of the baptized means that we are always both inside and outside the church. It’s great to be a welcoming church. It’s crucial to practice the hospitality of God. But the walls must be permeable and must encompass the entire world, because the church exists for the sake of those who are not its members. And then we need to allow others bring their gifts and transform the church.

I think one sign of a healthy, vital church is that it gets more and more difficult to tell who is a member and who isn’t. Membership has its privileges, as they say, but it’s not like a credit card or a club of any kind. Gone are the days when being a member of a church improved one’s social standing, and I say, thank God for that! Respectability is meaningless in the Kingdom of God and is so easily a barrier to entrance. Membership has its privileges, but the #1 privilege is the freedom we have to give ourselves away, to be servants to one another. Membership is discipleship, a continual deepening of loving actions for God and neighbor, a journey of formation in becoming citizens of God’s Kingdom.

Indeed, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers don’t need to be few. Jesus’ instructions to the disciples are for us as well. We go out like lambs into the midst of wolves. When people have been hurt by the church, we are to listen to their story and say, “I’m so sorry that the church has hurt you.” It’s not fair to expect those who have been deeply hurt by the church to enter its doors again. Let’s leave that to the Holy Spirit while we cultivate non-anxious, agenda-free relationships with God’s beloved people. This is what Jesus calls “curing the sick.” In fact, sometimes the sick cure us as well.

Jesus also instructs us to bring nothing for the journey: just ourselves. We are to rely on the kindness of strangers, and besides, Jesus sends the disciples to places where he himself intends to go! Our job is to show up faithfully, ask God for the next task, and pay attention. We can plant seeds wastefully, because we’re not in any danger of running out. Or, as Paul writes to the Galatians, “Whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.” The family of faith is much bigger than we assume it to be, for it includes those of other faiths as well as those who claim a vague, unformed belief in some sort of creator. Even in the Pacific Northwest, that adds up to most people.

Jesus also says, “Eat what is set before you.” This seems like basic politeness … until you realize that these observant Jews may have been served food that wasn’t kosher. Maybe Jesus is saying, “Take the experience you are given, and don’t judge it—just taste it.” That’s hard to do when the experience is off-putting, and even harder when it is hurtful or tragic. Somewhere, though, there is a blessing in it, and Jesus did not send us out to avoid meaningful experiences.

“Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’” Christians are to hold every human being in unconditional regard. We don’t ever give up on anyone, because we would never want to be given up on. We must always come in peace, our only agenda to serve. What we and God are building together is not an institution but a way of life, and anybody, regardless of affiliation, might choose something like that way of life, even if they never enter the doors of our church.

“‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’” It sounds harsh or self-righteous at first, but I think this one is about healthy boundaries. Know where you stand, and know when it’s time to move on. Come in peace, listen, and bring good news, but don’t beat people over the head if they’re not listening back.

Let’s say St. Thomas does all these things, and people catch the spirit, and it’s such an attractive vision that people come pouring in to join us in Jesus’ joyful mission. You may well feel proud. “Lord, even the demons submit to us!” But the work didn’t begin with us, and it won’t end with us. We will reap what we sow, but it’s not reaping time yet. Jesus said, “Do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” And Paul said, “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” If you’re going to brag, brag on God for loving us so much.

But what if the people don’t come? I was talking this week with a priest who claims his church is doing everything right: great music, great preaching, great hospitality, great formation programs, feeding Tent City once a week, etc., etc. It is a marvelous place. And not many people are coming to church. He said, “The old model of the church that attracts people by its mere welcoming presence is dead.” And I think he’s right. When the people don’t come, we continue to invite, but we also remain content with those who are present. And we continue to listen attentively for the promptings of the Holy Spirit, who might be calling us into something more challenging and more rewarding than merely “getting everything right.”

Our mission is not to fill a building, but to fill the hungry. We cannot clothe ourselves with righteousness unless we are clothing others. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers do not have to be few. I pray that you, whether you are a member of the church or not, will labor to share good news today: God is in this holy place called The World. God creates us and loves us. Jesus shows us God’s very face. The Holy Spirit inspires us and sends us out to love, honor, and feed others. And every time we fail to love, forgiveness and renewal are right before us, loving us back into life again. Amen.

There Is a Blessing in It

sermon preached at Church of the Ascension, Silver Spring, MD

by Josh Hosler, Seminarian

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 7C / June 23, 2013

Last week I was sitting in church with Sarah, my almost-8-year-old daughter, and she was reading the psalm with me. Now, last week’s psalm included these words, addressed to God: “You destroy those who speak lies.” Sarah read these words aloud, stopped short, and whispered to me, “That’s not true! God doesn’t destroy anyone!”

I was both surprised and proud. All I could whisper back was, “I think you’re right! God doesn’t destroy anyone, because God loves everyone!”

So now that I’ve openly disagreed with one of the psalms and taught my daughter that she is right to do likewise, I keep coming back to it and wondering about it more deeply. I still don’t believe God destroys those who speak lies. And shouldn’t that come as a relief? I’m not always entirely truthful, yet I don’t think God wants to destroy me. 

Rather, I think what we have here are raw, human emotions, and they are abundant in the psalms and throughout the Old Testament. Sometimes the psalms are embarrassingly emotional, frequently urging God to strike down enemies or to smite the unjust. And that’s why I can relate to them. Often I feel the same way the psalmist does, whether I’m feeling angry and vengeful, or melancholy and longing, or jubilant with joy. These emotions burst out so honestly in the psalms that that can make us feel uncomfortable, especially when we find them being projected onto God as well. It isn’t theologically accurate to do so, but it is emotionally accurate, and that’s why I think the psalms are so important.

Regardless, though, I’m very pleased to see a brief phrase in today’s passage from Isaiah that seems to contradict last week’s psalm:

“Do not destroy it, for there is a blessing in it.” 


In the Book of Isaiah, God positively longs for us. God keeps reaching out to humankind, hoping we’ll notice, hoping we’ll pay attention. We disregard God and go after idols, those millions of other things in our lives that we think will keep us safe, loved, and prosperous. We make our sacrifices to the gods of money, security, and self-absorption. These offerings will come back to bite us, writes Isaiah. But even so, through it all, God sees the grapes on our diseased vine and says, “Wait! Stop. Do not destroy it, for there is a blessing in it.” 

Whenever we approach the Bible, we can expect to feel uncomfortable, and I think that’s why so few Americans read it. Its texts are not supposed to go easy on us. They were written long ago and far away, and there are aspects of them that will forever feel long ago and far away to us. But they are also steeped in meaning that is as relevant today as ever before. Different parts of the Bible speak to different people in different ways at different times. When a text feels problematic to us or just plain wrong, the answer is not to write it off, but to be patient with it, the same way God is patient with us. God does not destroy us, but keeps searching for the blessing in us. Likewise, we must be patient with God as God is revealed to us in scripture, in the sacraments, and through the other people in our lives. We need to keep looking for the blessing. 

You may notice that our Gospel story for today contains some of the same elements as the Isaiah passage: tombs, and pigs … and even some nudity thrown in. Imagine it in the ears of a first-century Jewish audience: the story reeks with uncleanness. The Greeks didn’t mind nudity as much; they famously performed athletic events naked. But Jews were very modest. According to the Torah, contact with the dead would render one ritually unclean, and pigs were unclean as well: only Gentiles would herd them. And, of course, the evil spirits in the man are the epitome of “unclean.” So Jesus has gone from the comfort and safety of home into a Gentile country of over-the-top uncleanness. 

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I hear this story of the Gerasene demoniac, I can’t help but think of J. R. R. Tolkien’s famous character from Lord of the Rings, Gollum. I can see him skulking among the tombs, pouncing on unsuspecting passers-by or going down to the beach to catch fish with his bare hands. When he meets Jesus, I imagine him hissing, “What has you to do with ussssss, Jesussssss? We are not just one, but Legion! Don’t send ussss back into the abyssss! Let preciousssss go into the pigsies, yesss, yesssssss!” 

All kidding aside, I don’t think it’s a bad comparison. Gollum, many of us know, was once something like a regular person, but after being owned and tortured for hundreds of years by his idol, the evil ring of power, he gradually becomes something twisted, broken, and relentlessly self-absorbed. The man Jesus meets in the Gentile country of the Gerasenes is a victim, and we have no idea how he got that way. Demon possession, after all, is another thing in the Bible that we think of as long ago and far away, if it ever existed at all. Perhaps it’s a disease masquerading as a malevolent force. But in this story it is very real and very threatening, whatever it is. A legion of demons is consuming this man, much the way Gollum was consumed by the ring. Perhaps it is even his own fault. 

Yet Jesus has compassion, and so he begins to hunt for the man beneath the demons. “What is your name?” This is what Jesus asks a person who is lost in uncleanness. Who are you? What is your identity? Can you remember? Gollum was once called Sméagol. When we give something scary a name, we do two things: we gain some amount of power over it, and we remind it of what it used to be. But to whom does Jesus ask the question? The demons respond, but can the question be for them? Does Jesus’ compassion extend not only to the man but even to the demons that inhabit him? Can there be hope even for them? 

When the demons come face to face with Jesus, they know the jig is up. They are overpowered merely by being in Jesus’ presence, and they must submit to his authority. We people can fool ourselves about Jesus’ authority; other created beings cannot. And so Jesus bores into the man’s soul and draws out the demons from deep within. Everyone else has thrown this man away as a threat and a lost cause. But Jesus says otherwise. “Do not destroy it, for there is a blessing in it!” 

So intent is Jesus on restoring this man to health that he completely disregards the property rights of the pig herders. And after all, what’s a herd of unclean swine compared with even one human being’s restoration to wholeness? But the pig herders run and tell the neighbors, and soon there’s a crowd coming out to see what has happened to this man. He was naked, and now he is clothed. (I always wonder where his clothes came from.) He was insane, and now he is in his right mind. He belongs to himself again, so now, he can give himself to Jesus. 

This scares the people so much that they beg Jesus to leave. I wonder what they’re so afraid of? Losing more pigs to exorcism? Or is it that they will have to deal with the startling, disturbing reality that in Jesus’ presence, nobody—nobody is a lost cause? Who knows what other former scum they’ll have to welcome back with Jesus around? Fear of change can lead us to want to drive goodness away. 

The healed man wants to follow Jesus away from this place, but, importantly, Jesus says no. Jesus needs this man to spread the good news of his transformation to the surrounding Gentile areas. Besides, restoring the man to his own community was exactly what Jesus set out to do in the first place. 

So the man goes home and follows Jesus’ orders … well, sort of. I notice a little intriguing detail in the text. Jesus instructs him, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So what does he do? He declares how much Jesus has done for him. The man knows that in meeting Jesus, he has somehow, inexplicably, come face to face with God. He doesn’t see any difference between them. 

So let’s step back for a minute. When you heard the gospel story read this morning, did it scare you a little? Did you wonder what to do with these demons—like, oh, great, one of these readings? I mean, maybe you believe in demons, and maybe you don’t. Or maybe different people mean different things by the term. I have encountered situations in my life that I can only describe as demonic—there’s no more appropriate label. But I have also seen miraculous healing, with no better label than that. Have you? 

Can you catch a glimpse of the other layer of reality that the Bible can only hint at with its bizarre yet engaging stories? And when you do encounter a demon or a healing, what will you do with it? What mysterious goodness comes to upset your imperfect but orderly world, the world you can wrap your mind around? And when it comes, will you send goodness away? Or will you find the blessing in it? After all, that divine healing power is available to absolutely everyone. Amen.

A Lot Can Happen in Forty Days

Forty days is a long time. A lot can happen in forty days. You could quit a job, move, and start a new job in forty days. You could take and pass a one-quarter class at Virginia Theological Seminary. You could recover from a serious illness, or conquer a video game. The gestation period of a squirrel is about forty days.

Forty days is a period of time that comes up a lot in the Bible: forty days and forty nights, especially. It’s a holy amount of time, overflowing with symbolism. The church decided centuries ago that there are forty days in Lent, not counting Sundays. Many of us took on some sort of spiritual practice during the forty days of Lent. But now it has been forty days (43 actually) since the Day of Easter.

For Jesus’ disciples, the first forty days after the Resurrection were a sort of anti-Lent. They moved from fear and confusion to sudden joy as Jesus appeared to them at different times and in different ways. We have many stories in our four gospels of the appearances of the resurrected Christ, and they most certainly don’t agree with each other. But how could they? The experience was so deep, so profound, so euphoric that the disciples struggled to describe it at all, let alone try to get their stories straight. Gathering scientific data was not their primary concern. The fact of the matter was that Jesus had been dead, and was now alive! And now the most important thing in the world was to tell everybody.

But they weren’t ready to do so on the very first day. I imagine there was still as much fear as joy during that time, as Jesus came to be among them, showed them his hands, feet and side, blessed them, ate with them, but just as often mysteriously disappeared again. It wasn’t like before, with all of them trooping around the Galilean countryside, following the call of a teacher and healer. He still bore the wounds of crucifixion—nothing in the past had been undone. He had not come back so much as gone forward, and somehow he was beckoning the disciples forward with him.

It may be that by the fortieth day, they were finally starting to get used to the new situation. They would think he was gone, and then he would call to them from the seashore, urging them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat, and then sharing breakfast with them on the beach. They would think he was gone, and then they’d realize he’d been walking beside them for seven miles and they just hadn’t recognized him. He was different. His very body was different, like a hologram that you might mistake for something else if you look from the wrong angle. You had to shift your vision to see him. You had to want to see him. Sometimes believing is seeing.

Maybe they were finally getting used to this new Jesus, this resurrected Christ, in all his characteristic strangeness and overwhelming reassurance, when the Day of the Ascension came. It had been forty days. Jesus was raised from the dead. But now, a very odd thing happened. Jesus wasn’t finished yet. He had more to do, and it meant that he would leave them yet again.

“Is this the time?” his friends asked him. “After all your earthly ministry, and after your brutal murder, and after that horrible Friday and Saturday, and after your returning to be with us again, is it finally time for you to reclaim our country for us and be our king?” As usual, even after forty more days and after everything that had happened, the disciples were still asking the wrong question. They had forgotten that it wasn’t the same anymore. Not only was it not the same as before Jesus’ death, but it wasn’t the same as it had been in previous generations. There was to be no return from this exile, no exodus across a river, no re-entering the Garden of Eden. There was to be no retaking of the land from the Romans. Jesus was not going to suddenly transform from a man of peace into a conquering warrior. Yet still, they clung desperately to their preconceived notions of the way things should happen.

But the risen Christ was patient with them—maybe even more patient than he had been before his death. “You don’t need to know,” he said. “You just need to follow these instructions. Go back into the city and wait until you have been clothed with power from on high.” And then he was gone.
It took two angels to pry them from that spot. “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” they asked. “Are you looking for shapes in the clouds—the shape of things to come, perhaps? If you must know something of the future, we can tell you that he’ll be back, and he’ll come the same way you saw him go.”

Well, I don’t know what that means. Do you? It’s very mysterious. But that’s OK. Jesus had just told them that it wasn’t their job to understand. That’s so hard for us! In our day and age, we feel we have a right to understand. We’re entitled to an explanation, and if we don’t get one, we jump to the conclusion that it’s a lie, or that it’s historically outdated, or that we can just ignore it. Or worse, we feel compelled to develop our own story than says exactly what it means, and then urge people to subscribe to it!

I hope we won’t insist on doing either of these things with the Ascension—neither explain it away, nor throw it away. I want to assert that some things can, indeed, be left as mysteries. That doesn’t mean we stop thinking, pondering, imagining about them, either. We need to let the imagery seep into our hearts. The question is not, “Is this story true?”, but, “What is this story for?”

Jesus died, descended to the dead, rose again, and then ascended into heaven. This is how we talk about it in the Nicene Creed. I hear these theological doctrines pointing to a savior who is always on the go. The Son of Man has no place to rest his head. He came to be with us, to teach and to heal. He descended to the dead to be with those who feared they were lost. He burst the gates of hell and bore it up on his back, releasing all those who were trapped within. He appeared to the women and the men who had known him best and loved him most. He spent forty days with them. Why?

A lot can happen in forty days. In forty days, you could benefit from a diet, quit smoking, quit biting your nails, or take a forty-day pilgrimage or sabbatical. If you didn’t have a day job, you could watch all seven seasons of The West Wing. Forty days is a short time, but it’s a long time. It was enough time. During that forty days, Jesus helped his disciples move from fear to faith. He appeared to them enough, and reassured them enough, that they were ready to move from that hill outside Bethany—with a little prying from two angels—and go back into the city to wait. In the meantime, Jesus moved from his temporary spatial location on earth to complete the work of resurrection—to ascend—to go from being Somewhere to being Everywhere. Resurrection does not mean a return to the way things were, but a going forward into a future that’s better than we could possibly imagine. And Jesus brings us along with him into that future.

Next Sunday we will celebrate Pentecost, the Jewish feast of “first fruits.” That’s when the resurrection went public, when the disciples harvested the first fruits of the reassurance and strength Jesus had given them for forty days. Indeed they did return to the city, and they waited. And when, to their strength and reassurance, God added to them the power of the Holy Spirit, they were ready. They were ready to go out to the ends of the earth and set the world on fire with the Good News that Christ is alive, that the exile is over and we can go on up to the new Jerusalem, that our exodus is accomplished across a new, eternal river, that a new Eden awaits, and that the entire universe has been delivered from death and saved forever. Amen.

Love and Dignity

sermon preached at Church of the Ascension, Silver Spring, MD

by Josh Hosler, Seminarian

The Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year C/ April 28, 2013

“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” Amen.

I have a cousin who is a Southern Baptist. We don’t have much in common politically, but we do share a love of C. S. Lewis, and I respect his deep involvement with disaster relief efforts. We both do the work we do from the heart. We both feel called by God to live a life of faith. Recently my cousin posted on Facebook this quote from a Baptist pastor and author named David Platt: “Faith is the anti-work. It’s the realization that there is nothing YOU can do but trust in what has been done for you in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.”

When I read this quote, all the things I don’t understand about my cousin seemed to become less important. Faith is the anti-work. All we can do is trust. Yes. We have faith in common, my cousin and I. It works to overcome the barriers that stand between us. Faith gives me hope.

Christians hope together as well. Some say the Christian hope is that we will go to heaven when we die, while others hope for “thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.” There’s nothing wrong with believing both things at the same time. Either way, “the home of God is among mortals.” This is our common hope.

One morning when I was about twelve years old, I woke from the most amazing dream of my life. Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, I dreamed I had died, along with my entire family, and that I found myself in a beautiful, sunny land with green, rolling hills. All my friends were there, and new friends as well. My brother and some other boys were playing together, had a disagreement, and got into a fight. But they found that their blows did nothing to harm each other, so they shrugged and stopped fighting. The great lion Aslan was there, too: he divided us into groups and had us sit down on the grass to eat together. We reached into our pockets and drew out as much food as we wanted. There were games and fun, and there were deep, important conversations. Above all, there was a growing realization that this was forever: that we would never have to be parted or miss anybody ever again, and that death was only a memory.

This dream felt like a promise, and it has sustained me ever since. I think this passage from the Revelation to John is intended to be a promise as well. In John’s vision, the very cosmos is changed: not only is there no need of a temple, but there is not even need of the moon or sun, for light pervades everything. The sea, for the Hebrews a longtime symbol of primordial chaos, has been done away with. There is no more war or fighting, for the very leaves of the trees are able to heal broken nations. The tree of life, which God prevented Adam and Eve from touching when he banished them from the garden, is now available to everyone. A river waters everything all around; perhaps it flows with the waters of baptism. In this place, we are all marked and sealed on our foreheads as God’s own forever. This unifying promise is the Christian hope.

St. Paul wrote that “faith, hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” Love really unifies us. This is the “new command” Jesus gives us, that we “love one another.” It may seem hypocritical to suggest that love is a special mark of Christians. After all, you don’t have to be a Christian to love, and we can see Christians failing to love everywhere we look. How can love be that by which everyone will know that we are Jesus’ disciples?

I believe that Christianity stands at a crossroads today. As individuals and as Christian communities, we need to decide just how seriously to take Jesus’ command. It’s not easy. Love comes with a cost. It will cause us to reevaluate our priorities. It will draw us into scary places, places where might be wrong, where we are unable to control the outcome of events. But having faith in Jesus means trusting that love, in the end, works—for even if it costs us our very lives, it cannot cost us our dignity as children of God. So how do we begin to love one another?

In our baptismal covenant, we promise to “respect the dignity of every human being.” This promise has always pulled strongly on me. I believe it is a very good starting place for the Christian who wants to learn to love more deeply.

So in what actions do we show that we respect the dignity of others? A few practices come to mind, and they begin very simply. First, get to know people’s names and stories. In my time in the Dominican Republic in January, I was invited to help serve food to hungry people in the courtyard of the Episcopal cathedral. I watched closely for signs that dignity was being respected. While there was some room for improvement, I noticed immediately that the people to be fed were called by name. A logical next step for the organizers would be to learn the people’s stories: where they have come from, where they hope soon to be, what they most desire, and what they most fear. To do so with a needy population introduces a higher risk, but it is the only possible way to move from merely meeting people’s daily needs to promoting transformation in their lives.

Another helpful practice is to allow oneself to be wrong. Recently I heard a story about a woman who, while working in a library, was confronted by an angry customer who couldn’t find the topic “Psychology.” She complained, “What kind of library is this? I can’t find Psychology anywhere in the ‘S’ section of the card catalogue!” The library employee patiently suggested, “Oh, let’s try the alternate spelling of Psychology, under ‘P.’” The problem was solved, and the customer’s dignity was respected.

In my life as a parent, I am constantly presented with the choice of whether to build my daughter up or break her down. When my patience runs thin and my anxiety runs high, I fear that I respect her dignity less often than I should. When she is unreasonable, she can box herself into a corner and refuse to see any solution to whatever problem she may face. But when I can find within myself the capacity to suggest a graceful solution to a problem that seems to her intractable, I have respected her dignity. Creativity and improvisation are key elements in respecting human dignity.

Likewise, to respect dignity as often as possible, one must not lose the forest for the trees. Once I was working with a teenage boy who was writing an article for a church newsletter. His atrocious grammar showed me he had never paid attention in English class. But he cared what he was writing about, and I missed that passion completely. I spent so much effort trying to get him to rewrite his article that he gave up and stormed out in a huff. We were never able to build a rapport again after that. I had failed to respect his dignity.

Finally, to respect dignity means to treat the other as an equal, no matter what society may dictate. My 13-year-old goddaughter Kaia spends much of her time training and showing dogs. Last week she told me sagely, “You have to treat them like equals. If you yell at them, they’ll only be afraid of you. If you plead with them, they’ll say, ‘I don’t have to do this.’” I replied, “I think that’s very wise, and I wonder how you might apply it to relationships with people.” She said, “Well, that’s much harder.” Yet this is exactly what Jesus did: everyone he encountered, from the rich and powerful to children and outcasts, received his respect. Peter respected the dignity of the Gentiles to whose home he was called when he followed the Holy Spirit’s direction not to make a distinction between himself and them.

To take the time to get to know people, to be willing to be wrong, to find creative solutions, to “keep the main thing the main thing,” and to insist on an equal relationship—in all of these practices, we respect people’s dignity. Examples abound. I might find myself offended by something a friend has said in public. But I will delay an appropriate confrontation until my friend and I are alone. Perhaps I find myself overly eager to hear my wife’s deepest feelings about a job interview, but I will wait until she is ready to share. In some cases, I might even give up something very precious to me—my pride, my reputation, perhaps even money—so that another person will not lose face. Only through respecting dignity can we rise to the type of love Jesus asks of us. Only through respecting dignity can we aspire to the paradox of giving ourselves away completely without losing ourselves at all. This is what Jesus accomplished on the cross, and it is the heart of Christian love.

The main intentions of all these actions are twofold: to build up the other’s self-worth, and to sublimate our urge to control. But these practices can also deepen our relationship with God. We cannot promote others’ self-worth for long without finding that we also love ourselves more, and in this, we are loving God’s creation from more than one angle. We cannot let go of control too many times before we realize that it is not usually fatal to do so, and this deepens our trust in God. We begin to trust that simply by our practice of respecting dignity, love will result. By respecting each other’s dignity, we can achieve true unity—not uniformity, but unity. Jesus unites us around the common purpose of love, and in so doing, he reveals God’s Kingdom already breaking into this fallen world.

We have been given a promise of eternal life, and we have also been promised that loving one another is the way to fit ourselves for such a life. May the Holy Spirit continue to guide us in our efforts to respect the dignity of every human being, that with faith and hope, we may love one another as Jesus has loved us. Amen.