I began last time with “it can be a harrowing experience trying to follow the news. There’s a lot going on and a lot of it isn’t good and that can be overwhelming.”
I didn’t think it would get so much worse so quickly.
I also wrote about how it’s important to stay engaged, even if it’s important to have a break, a little vacation even, now and then. In fact, we can’t disconnect completely because we’re so intimately connected. I mentioned “ubuntu” and “all my relations” as a way of reminding us that we are meant to be connected, to live in community, that we are one family on this earth. The fullness of our living and our own sense of wholeness is reliant on our unique individuality being lived out in community.
I suggested the opening of what we call the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew was a really good place to hear something affirming, positive and inspiring about this. Before he gets into all the teaching about how to live well and to live out the good that is in every heart, Jesus says something important about us, something we need to begin with, before all the teaching. It’s the foundation on which the teaching is lived. Otherwise it would just be behaviour.
Jesus looks at the people and sees all the poor, the weak, broken and hurting, the oppressed, the abused, the despairing. He sees the immigrants, the indigenous people, the Black people, the people of colour, the gay and queer and trans people, the people of different faiths and no faith at all. And he tells them they’re blessed. Just as they are. They are all children of God, loved by God, worthy to be the unique individual they are.
And he tells them they are salt and light. Not only are they created of the earth and the divine spirit of God, just like it says in Genesis and just like Jesus, it’s because of that they flavour the world around them, they interact with it, are connected to it and can shine in it. Just like the blessing, Jesus tells them - and us - that we are these things, not that we can be, but we already are. Salt of the earth and light for the world.
I know I said all that before. It bears repeating. Here’s the thing the tragedy in BC this week reminds us: we share our grief, too. Regardless of rhetoric being tossed around, ideologies and politics, in this moment we are one. We see that in ourselves, from the ordinary person at home to our leaders, and others do as well. King Charles and leaders of other countries offered love, condolences and support to the victims, their families, the people of Tumbler Ridge and the people of our nation because they know that’s who we are. In moments like this, we grieve together. We offer open hearts, broken open by grief, to share our love and support as one family, one people.
Jesus, I think, encourages us to share our love and our grief, to offer care and support and be open to sharing with each other because we are connected. We are salt and light, we are bound to each other in creation by the earth and by the spirit of life. There is work that needs to be done in the days ahead, but in this moment we offer prayer, we keep people in our thoughts and we share their grief, hoping that in that connectedness we are sharing spirit, a spirit of life and love.
In that spirit, in that connectedness, we can resist fear and hold our anger. The light of love is what needs to shine today.
