The principalities and powers of sin and death were clearly on ugly display before the world in yesterday’s Senate hearing. Will the exposure lead to repentance?

• turning away from protecting the privileges of the privileged and toward solidarity with the vulnerable and violated;
• away from the love of power and toward the power of love;
• away from bombastic bullying and toward compassionate conversation;
• away from tribal partisanship and toward justice for the common good.

It may be difficult to believe in the moment, but God has already won the decisive victory! Compassion, justice, and peace will win!

Let us live now in the light of God’s victory already won by engaging “the powers” at the ballot box, in our congregations and neighborhoods,  and in solidarity with and advocacy on behalf of the violated and vulnerable.

We hear a lot about the role of fear amid current cultural, political, and religious wars. Pundits theorize that we tend to vote our fears, hoping someone will defend us against all threats and make us safe and secure.

“Fear of the other” dominates–those of different race, ethnicity, socio-economic class, sexual orientation, political ideology, religion, nationality. . . .!

I have an uneasy feeling that the person I fear the most is not “the other!”

The person I fear the most is myself! 

Maybe what I am most afraid of in the other is projection of my own woundedness, my own inadequacies, my own insecurities, my own prejudices,  my own  sinfulness.

Stanley Hauerwas put it pointedly:

“The fear that dominates our lives is not in the first instance the fear of an enemy, unless it is acknowledged that each of us is the enemy, but rather the fear that is the source of violence is the fear that makes us unwilling to acknowledge the wounded character of our lives.”

Overcoming my fear of the other requires that I honestly, humbly, and courageously confront my own woundedness. Projecting fear onto others only compounds its destructiveness.

God, grant me the courage to face the fear of myself in the light of Your Grace; and  may Your Love heal my wounds and cast out my fear! Amen.

Linda has a marvelous team of caregivers! With the exception of one substitute, they are members of the same family–grandmother,  two daughters, and a granddaughter. They lovingly, efficiently, and faithfully care for Linda around the clock, seven days each week.

I marvel at their skill, patience, and attentiveness. They can change the bed with Linda in it! Linda’s resistance and agitation never rattles them. Her slightest sounds and movements get their attention.

They treat Linda with utmost respect and dignity.  They have learned her unique mannerisms and sounds. She’s treated as a person with a story rather than as patient with symptoms. It is not uncommon for me to overhear one of them say, “I love you, Miss Linda.”

To them, “family” means more than biological relatives. That’s evident in their annual cookout.   Each year they have a huge cookout and invite all who wish to come.

The event began a few years ago as a way of expressing appreciation to their neighbors who had helped them during a difficult time.  It has evolved into a joyful celebration of and for community.

Here is some of the food prepared this year: 16 racks of barbequed ribs, a roasted pig, 4 cases of chicken, two cases of turkey wings, several boxes of hot dogs, 10 gallons of baked beans,  10 gallons of green beans, 10 coconut pies, 10 sweet potato pies, 10 pecan pies, 2 sheet cakes that would feed a hundred people, dozens of cupcakes, scores of deviled eggs, and more! What a feast!

As many as 150 people show up! Black, brown, and white! Rowdy kids and frail elderly! Married and single! Gay and straight! Religious and non-religious! Educated and uneducated! Employed and unemployed! Parolees and police officers! Strangers and familiar neighbors! A motley gathering of diverse humanity!

“Anyone who comes to the table becomes family,” said the host. “It don’t matter who they are; they’re welcome!”

Now, as we pastors say, “That’ll preach!”

Caring for one another and all of God’s children seems to be in the DNA of this family! I know little about their religious affiliation and their understanding of religious doctrines.

What I do know is this: They embody Christlike love and their lavish table and generous hospitality are visible signs and foretastes of the kingdom of God.

Is this not what the church is called to be? Have we not been made one family? Is that not what we celebrate at The Lord’s Table?

God grant that the church would open wide its doors and announce to the world: “Anyone who comes to the Table becomes family!”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is well known for his resistance to Nazism and subsequent martyrdom. Less is known about the influence on his thinking by a small community of disabled people called Bethel. Bonhoeffer spent significant time among these castaways as German society moved toward creating a “super race” by eliminating those with perceived genetic defects rending them as “life not worth living.”

The people who were considered “defective” because of their physical, psychological, and intellectual disabilities helped to shape Bonhoeffer’s basic principle for understanding reality.

In a world that worships at the altar of the hyper-cognitive and physically dominant, we would do well to hear Bonhoeffer’s call to learn “from below.”

“It remains an experience of incomparable value that we have once learned to see the great events of world history form below, form the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short for the perspective of the suffering. . . .That we come to see matters great and small, happiness and misfortune, strength and weakness with new eyes: that our sense for greatness, humanness, justice, and mercy has grown clearer, freer, more incorruptible; that we learn, indeed, that personal suffering is a more useful key, a more fruitful principle than personal happiness for explaining the meaning of the world in contemplation and action.”

Until we hear the voices “from below,” from “the least of these,” we will not hear the voice of God!

After all, God’s eternal Word became flesh in a helpless baby born of an unwed peasant teenager, who became an immigrant fleeing politically motivated violence, lived in obscurity for thirty years,  and was executed as a convicted criminal.

Perhaps we would do well to turn off the television, get off Facebook, silence talk radio for a while; and visit a homeless shelter, holding center for migrant families, the local jail or prison, nursing home, Alzheimer’s facility, hospital emergency room, or attend an AA meeting.

Yes, God’s voice may come “from above” but most often it comes “from below,” from the vulnerable, the powerless, the silenced!