Perfectionism in Relationships, a sermon based in Philippians 1: 21-30, preached on September 24, 2023

It’s been a sad week in Marietta, Georgia. On Monday, after her cross-country practice, a high school student named Liv Teverino died in a single-car accident on Burnt Hickory. You may have read about it in the paper. Our whole town has been in shock. Many students at Marietta High School have been feeling this loss profoundly. Prayers for her parents and her brothers have been lifted from every place of worship in our town. It seems like everyone has been talking about the accident, and everyone has been talking about her. In the wake of her death, what have people been saying about Liv Teverino? She was an outstanding student, but no one has really mentioned her grades in detail. She ran cross country, but I don’t know how fast she ran a mile. No one is talking about the kind of car she drove, the brand of shoes on her feet, or who she was going with to the homecoming dance. When you read about Liv, it’s almost all about the way she made people feel. It’s almost all about relationships, and when tragedy strikes, it’s often this way because death reframes things. When tragedy breaks into our lives, it changes our focus to what matters most, and what matters most in the end is love. When we realize how fragile our lives are, so much of what we spend time obsessing over suddenly feels trivial, so, while I have known many students who cared deeply about their grades, I have yet to see anyone’s ACT, SAT, or grade point average in an obituary. Never have I heard anyone’s dress size or body weight mentioned in a eulogy, and yet we spend so much time thinking about the way we look. When our time comes, what is vanity will be forgotten. What will remain is the way we made people feel. Knowing that, how will you live? Jesus told a parable about a man who was walking down the road when he was attacked, robbed, and left for dead. There he was, naked and dying on the side of the road, but up walked a priest. Surely, the priest would stop and help, but he didn’t; he kept on walking. Maybe he had a meeting to get to. After the priest came a well-born man from the tribe of Levi. He was born and raised to perform the work of holiness at the Temple, only it must have been his day to burn the incense because he walked right by the wounded man and went on his way. Finally, up came a Samaritan man. The Samaritan man, the lowest type of person on the societal totem pole. He’s the janitor, the garbage collector, the illegal immigrant, the convicted felon; just fill in “kind of person it is socially acceptable to make jokes about,” and you’ve got it, yet he’s the one who stops. He’s the one who put the wounded man on his own horse and takes him to get the help he needs. Knowing that, how will you live? Knowing that tragedy has a way of showing us that what matters most is not our ability to show up to meetings on time or how well thought of we are, how will you live? Knowing that what matters the most to Jesus is our willingness to stop and help when someone needs us, how will you live? It’s the way we treat each other that matters. It’s our relationships that matter. Still, relationships are hard. My favorite proverb in the Bible is Proverbs 21: 9: It’s better to live on a corner of the roof than inside the house with a quarrelsome spouse. That’s right there in the Bible. Look it up. It’s really in there, and it’s in there because it’s true. Our relationships matter most, but our relationships also require work, so, while some spend all kinds of time working for perfection in academics or athletics, and some spend all their time thinking about money or how well-decorated their home is, and while I understand wrapped up in all kinds of senseless pursuits, if we’re going to work for perfection in something, let it be in our relationships. Does that make sense? Of course, that’s easy to say while it’s harder to do, especially when we spend little time thinking about how to do it. I recently read an opinion column by David Brooks, where he said that talking with young adults has recently made him concerned. He noticed how animatedly young adults talk about their career prospects, having spent considerable time thinking about what they’ll do and how they’ll meet their vocational goals, yet they haven’t spent much of any time thinking about with whom they will spend their future. Relationships matter most in the end, and so the Apostle Paul, who in our second Scripture lesson writes from the perspective of his own death, has his relationship with the church in Philippi on his mind. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever see the people he is writing to, yet he clearly loves them, and so he says, Whether I ever see you again or not, “whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” What he means by worthy of the gospel of Christ is to “strive together as one for the faith of the gospel without being frightened.” Fear and isolation go hand in hand, don’t they? The more afraid of rejection we are, the less we work for relationships. The less we work for relationships, the more isolated we become. The more isolated, the more frightened of the world we are. What are we to do about these twin scourges in our modern society: fear and isolation? A new member of our church staff, Jauana Eidelwein, works with the kids in Club 3:30, our afterschool program. She’s also in seminary. She’s been doing a wonderful job, and she’s been promoting our church so well. Last week, she invited her manicurist to church. She came, along with all her family, just last Sunday, but to my point, a couple weeks ago, she gave me this quote, and I’ve been repeating it ever since: Safety is not the absence of threat. Safety is the presence of community. Write that one down. It’s worth repeating. Safety is not the absence of threat. Safety is the presence of community. If all that matters in the end are not our professional accomplishments but our relationships, and if Jesus is more interested in seeing us care for each other than He is in us making it to the temple on time, and if the thing that truly makes us feel safe is the presence of community, why aren’t we working harder at building healthy relationships? Honestly, why would anyone say, “I can’t make it to dinner tonight because I have to work late” when dinner is what’s going to make him feel safe and loved? Why would anyone slander her friend to beat her out of the promotion, when the promotion will be forgotten while the relationship will be remembered? If what makes us the happiest, makes us feel the safest, and pleases the One we claim to follow is the way we treat each other, why do people pay more for wedding photographers than for premarital counseling? I don’t know. If that last statement sounded a little resentful, forgive me. I have so much trouble posing for pictures that I get a little self-conscious around wedding photographers. My wife, Sara, once wondered how many wedding photographers have captured me with my eyes closed. She can just imagine some couple whose wedding I officiated looking at their old wedding pictures on down the road with their grandchildren, and some bright-eyed granddaughter wants to know why the preacher looks like he just woke up from a nap. Perfection in photographs won’t matter in the end, right? I hope that’s right. After all, you don’t have to be perfect to be in a perfect relationship. In fact, accepting each other’s imperfection is most of what makes relationships work. Reading Paul, notice how much he talks about his struggles. This morning, we hear him talk again about his suffering, which makes me think that admitting that we need help because we aren’t perfect and asking for help is so much of what makes relationships perfect. Meanwhile, we hide our imperfections. We try to get everything just right. We judge our waiters based on how well they take our order and deliver it correctly, as though the perfect meal, the most nourishing meal, was the meal where everything went perfectly. Last Wednesday morning, I was listening to a podcast that Catherine Breed, our Director of Children & Youth Faith Formation, sent me. It was about a restaurant in Japan where the service is notoriously awful. Normally, that’s a bad thing. Good service matters, and at this restaurant, customers rarely get what they ordered. At this restaurant, if you order sushi, you might end up with dumplings. If you order steak, you end up with miso soup. A glass of water might make it to your table having been drunk already by your waiter, who might or might not bring your order to the table next to you because every member of the waitstaff at this restaurant suffers from dementia. That’s not the kind of restaurant we usually look for, but what if we’ve been looking for the wrong thing? What if we have it all wrong? What if our culture of high achievement is only pushing us apart? My friends, perfection in academics, athletics, beauty, or vocation is unattainable. It’s also boring. Emily Adams left the 8:30 service and told me I was right about that. Perfect is boring, she said, having gone to a baseball game where the pitcher pitched a perfect game, which is an accomplishment that’s worth celebrating, though it’s not very fun to watch. Nothing happens. When we reveal our imperfect, broken hearts, miracles happen. Last Tuesday morning, the morning after Liv Teverino’s death, I went to Marietta High School and saw crowds of broken-hearted kids. Not a one of them was alone in her grief. Not a one. In the end, relationships are what matter most, so build better relationships, and build them with the people you love by being bold enough to reveal your imperfection and by tolerating theirs. Amen.

Forgive, But Don't Forget, a sermon based on Matthew 18: 21-35, preached on September 17, 2023

Forgiveness is a common theme for sermons. You’ve all heard sermons on forgiveness and know already how important forgiveness is. Today, I want to separate forgiveness from forgetfulness because “forgive and forget” is one of those phrases we hear so often that it’s just about programed into our brains. However, while forgiveness is in the Bible, forgetfulness is not. In fact, the Bible advocates for remembering. Five times in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses says some version of: Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. The Bible deals with memory of salvation the same way we deal with the Holocaust or September 11th. Never forget, we say. Remember. But why? Why is it good to remember? When is it bad to forget? Yesterday, I heard a great sermon illustration on the importance of forgiveness. A man was strolling for exercise around a beautiful lake when he was bit by a copperhead. He said to himself, “I’ve got to get to the hospital, but not before I kill that snake!” For twenty minutes, he hunted down the snake, each step taking him further and further from his car. Later, when the paramedics found him dead, they couldn’t understand why he hadn’t survived. He was five minutes from the car, just a 15-minute drive from the hospital, but like Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, he couldn’t forgive the snake and chose vengeance over getting the help he needed. That’s foolish. It’s wise to let go of that desire for vengeance. Forgiveness is good. Forgiveness can save your life, but forgetfulness? Forgive the snake and get to the hospital, but don’t forget that copperheads bite or that white whales sink ships. Let go and forgive, for some have said that holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping that the person we’re angry with will die. One prisoner of war asked another, “Have you forgiven your captors yet?” “I’ll never do that,” the second one answered. “Then they still have you in prison, don’t they?” the first one replied. Forgiveness is good, and it doesn’t necessarily require forgetting. Rabbi Harold Kushner tells another good one: A woman in my congregation comes to see me. She is a single mother, divorced, working to support herself and three young children. She says to me, “Since my husband walked out on us, every month is a struggle to pay our bills. I have to tell my kids we have no money to go to the movies, while he’s living it up with his new wife in another state. How can you tell me to forgive him?” I answer her, “I’m not asking you to forgive him because what he did was acceptable. It wasn’t; it was mean and selfish. I’m asking you to forgive him because he doesn’t deserve the power to live in your head and turn you into a bitter, angry woman. I’d like to see him out of your life emotionally as completely as he is out of it physically, but you keep holding on to him. You’re not hurting him by holding on to that resentment, but you’re hurting yourself. Forgive. Let it go to save yourself from more harm. Forgive, but don’t forget and let him move back in to hurt you all over again. Forgive and remember. Remember that snakes are snakes. Forgive him for what he did and let him go. Don’t forget and go through it all a second time. You can forgive and remember. Don’t mistake forgiveness and forgetfulness. Most important of all to remember, though, is that moment when we received forgiveness. Remember when you received forgiveness. Look at what happened to the slave who forgot that he had been forgiven. Our second Scripture lesson is a parable. A parable is a short story that Jesus often tells in response to a complex question. In our second Scripture lesson, the parable is in response to Peter, who came to Jesus and asked Him: Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus responds first with a simple answer, “not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.” Then, He gets to the story or parable, which includes a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. One slave was deep in debt, more deeply in debt than anyone else, and probably more than anyone else could even imagine. He owed the king ten thousand talents, which is meant to be a number beyond counting. It’s like a kid saying, “a million billion dollars,” so this one slave owed the king a million billion dollars. Still, brought into the presence of the king, the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, “Just give me a little more time. Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything I owe.” Maybe knowing that would never happen, maybe just because he was feeling merciful, maybe because he was more full of grace than anyone had ever imagined, the king released the slave and forgave him the debt. Now, that was a wonderful gift. Can you imagine the feeling of such a burden lifted off your shoulders? A friend in Texas sent me a picture of this mass baptism that took place last week at Auburn University. Maybe you’ve heard about it. After a worship service, students were baptized by the 10s and 20s. Some say as many as 200 students were baptized in a pond on campus as a crowd of hundreds more cheered them on. Burdens of sin and guilt were washed away by the water of baptism. It sounds like John the Baptist at the Jordan River, and I give thanks to God for this movement of the Spirit. However, Presbyterians have a way of being suspicious of these things. Did you know that? They call us the “Frozen Chosen” because we’re suspicious of emotional displays. Our tradition has often said, “Be careful about how you feel in the moment because what you feel at a revival on Thursday has to carry over into how you behave on Saturday night,” so Presbyterians have never been big on revivals. In fact, back in Columbia, Tennessee, the Presbyterian Church is right next to the house where President James K. Polk grew up. That “K” in James K. Polk stands for Knox, which you might know is one of the big names of Presbyterian history. James K. Polk’s mother was a Presbyterian. His grandmother was a Presbyterian, all the way back to somebody who was related to that great Scottish preacher whose prayers were said to have terrified the Queen of England more than all the ships of the Spanish Armada, yet if you go to the Methodist Church across the street from the Presbyterian Church in Columbia, Tennessee, just on the corner from James K. Polk’s house, you’ll see that at the center of their rose window is the profile of our 11th President because the Methodists had a tent revival and James K. Polk felt the movement of the Spirit and was saved. Now, I’m not against revivals. I’ve been saved four or five times, but you can’t get saved on Sunday night then steal Texas from Mexico on Monday morning. What happens in here must carry over into how we behave in the world out there. Be forgiven, but don’t forget. Be saved, then act like it. Accept God’s grace, then give it away. The slave in Jesus’ parable didn’t do that. “As he went out, he came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’” Notice how quickly it happened. As he went out from the place where he had just received forgiveness for a debt of a million billion dollars, he seized by the throat a fellow slave who owed him a pocketful of change. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Did you hear that? When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, that this slave who had been forgiven a debt of a million billion dollars demands repayment for a debt of a handful of coins, they can’t stomach the hypocrisy. The king can’t believe it, and according to the parable, this is how God feels every time we withhold from our neighbor the forgiveness that we’ve been given. Remember now that Jesus says all this to Peter, who will deny the Lord three times. It’s as though He’s saying, “Peter, I’m about to forgive you for something horrible, so don’t you dare think you’ll ever be able to hold a grudge against anyone again without being a hypocrite.” That’s the way of forgiveness. It’s rooted in the memory of God forgiving us, and that memory is enough to transform the world in small and big ways. Think about what happens when the forgiveness that we talk about in here spreads out into the world. The grace that Joseph offered his brothers is a story that’s still being told thousands of years after it happened. In our first Scripture lesson, Joseph’s brothers, who had sold him into slavery, ask themselves, “What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong that we did to him?” After they sold him into slavery, now, he has all the power. After they did him so much harm, now he can make them pay. That’s what they expect from him. They expect him to pay them back, evil for evil. What he says instead is, “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.” Joseph remembered. He remembered not only the pain of being sold by his brothers, not only the confusion of being falsely accused in Potiphar’s house, not only the cold nights in that Egyptian jail cell, but the hand of God working in his life, setting him free, and placing him in a position where he can save his family from famine. My friends, remember the ways that God has been at work in your life. Remember who you were before He got ahold of you. Remember the grace He provided. Remember the blessings He’s laid at your feet. Remember that moment of joy, or of freedom, or of forgiveness, and live, out in the world, as one who has been redeemed. Remember how much good you can do, when you choose to love your neighbor as yourself, when you reconcile with your neighbor, rather than demand back a handful of coins. Remember that the debt He paid to save you is far greater than the debt your neighbor owes you. You don’t have to pay the Lord back for His grace. He asks only that you remember and pay it forward. Amen.

Lay Down Your Opinions, a sermon based on Romans 14: 1-12 preached on September 10, 2023

This morning, our first hymn was one we sing often: “How Great Thou Art.” It’s a beautiful hymn. I love to sing it. I love to hear it sung. It’s one that has been sung in this church so often that many know the words without having to look down at their hymnals (or up at the screens). They know it by heart. The line I want to emphasize this morning is in the third stanza: And when I think That God, his Son not sparing, Sent him to die, I scarce can take it in, That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died, to take a way my sin. That’s good news worth singing about. And this good news, that we are not condemned nor are we destined to carry our burdens around for all eternity, is at the very foundation of our faith. We sing of how He takes our heavy burdens upon Himself because this quality of Jesus Christ is at the heart of the Gospel, and so the church where I preached in Columbia, Tennessee has a brass plaque on the front steps, declaring, “Come unto me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” That verse is from the Gospel of Matthew, and it points to whom we know Jesus to be. He is One who not only helps us to bear our heavy burdens, but who takes them away. That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died, to take a way my sin. The Apostle Paul believed all that. In fact, he experienced it personally. This morning, we turn our attention, again, to his letter to the church in Rome. Paul, I remind you, met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Jesus called him by name, changed his life, and made him one of His disciples. The heavy burden of guilt that Paul carried after being complicit in Stephen’s death, Jesus lifts. The heavy burden of perfectionism that he inherited and was enslaved by, he laid down before the God of grace. This morning, remembering the burden that we are invited to lay down, the burden Christ lifted from us, Paul reminds us that for you and me to live in community, we must not only lay down our heavy burdens before the Lord, but sometimes, our opinions as well. In our second Scripture lesson, we read: Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. In our world of division, this is a crucial point that Paul is making. He writes to the church in Rome, which, like the church in the United States of America, was full of conflict. In that ancient Roman church, some wanted to eat meat, others were sure that the righteous were vegetarian. It reminds me of Thanksgiving dinner. Years ago, I remember sitting around the table with the entire family, only Elizabeth had been off to college and had heard about the chicken processing plant. After learning how those hens were treated, she’d sworn off meat, which her grandfather thought was ridiculous. “Did you know that during the Great Depressio, we were lucky to have meat once a week,” he said, as though her choice not to eat meat was downright unpatriotic. Unfortunately, she felt just as offended by his opinion as he was of hers, so this argument became more reason to stay on campus for Christmas rather than return to the battleground that the holiday dinner table or any other assembly of strong, opinioned Christians can turn into. Paul’s point to us this morning is that community sometimes requires us to lay down our opinions. He doesn’t care if you’re right and she’s wrong. If Jesus were as worried as we can be about who’s right and who’s wrong, we’d all be in trouble. At the heart of this religion of ours is the conviction that Jesus must save us. We cannot save ourselves. We are not capable of getting it all right on our own. Why, then, do we get self-righteous about our opinions and convinced that it’s our job to straighten out everyone around us whom we think has it wrong? This morning, I hear the Apostle Paul calling us to lay down not just our burdens. I hear him calling us also to lay down our opinions. One of the greatest speeches I’ve ever heard was delivered in April of 1952 by a young Mississippi legislator named Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Jr. The state house had been debating prohibition, and the state’s representatives were divided. Any one person could have changed the majority, so when Representative Soggy Sweat stepped to the lectern, everyone was listening as he expressed his opinion. There in April of 1952, he delivered his famous Whiskey Speech, which goes like this: My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey. If when you say "whiskey" you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation and despair and shame and helplessness and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it. But if when you say "whiskey" you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our pitiful aged and infirm, to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it. This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise. Now why would a Presbyterian minister in Marietta, Georgia quote this speech to you? It’s because whether the issue is abortion, evolution, creationism, ordination of women, universalism, authority of Scripture, divorce, homosexuality, who gets invited to communion, or what color the poinsettias should be at Christmas time, our world is divided. Sometimes, we are not even of one mind inside our own mind. Therefore, at times, we must lay down our opinions to welcome all. If we cling so tightly to our opinions that our opinions jeopardize our relationships, we may be missing the point of the Gospel. That’s the message I have for you this morning. That’s the message I hear from the Scripture lessons for today. When Almighty God, through the prophet Ezekiel, says: Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people. Say to the Israelites: “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live,” I recognize that as a preacher, it’s my job to tell the wicked to turn from their ways. It’s my duty to read this Bible and to speak the truth from it, so hear me say that a great wickedness in our world today is a growing inability to show hospitality to people who think differently. It's as though we think division is OK. Let me tell you something – the Bible says otherwise. Scripture lifts up the theme of showing hospitality again and again and again. More than any other issue that has divided the church and our country, the Bible emphasizes showing hospitality to people we don’t even know, so hear me calling you and me and this entire world to let go of division that you might love your neighbor as yourself. One of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever heard was told in an article about Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. In this article, Bishop Robinson talked about a fellow priest named Ron Prinn, who had a serious issue with his denomination naming a gay man as bishop. The two priests worked for several months on a committee, yet Robinson and Prinn were always on opposing sides of every debate. Once the committee’s work came to an end, Bishop Robinson invited the committee to his home for dinner. Prinn answered the invitation with silence. Life continued for the two of them. They interacted at various conferences. Prinn continued to struggle with Bishop Robinson’s identity, yet every chance he got, Bishop Robinson kept inviting Prinn to his home, yet Prinn never accepted the invitation. By the time Prinn finally accepted one of the Bishop’s lunch invitations, Parkinson’s disease had ravaged Prinn’s body. He could no longer walk. Another of the guests ushered Prinn and his wife, Barbara, through the garage, where the Bishop and his husband, Mark, had installed a handicap lift years before. When Prinn rolled his walker into the kitchen, Prinn beheld the Bishop with a bewildered look. Ron Prinn wanted to know who in Bishop Robinson’s family is handicapped. “No one,” the Bishop responded. “Whom did you build that lift for?” Prinn asked. “We built it for you,” the Bishop responded. Friends, we can’t allow division to distract us from love. When you read the paper and see coverage and commentary on all these issues that divide us, when you read about the school board taking sides on which books should be in the school library, and then you read about how at one local elementary school, last year only 37% of 3rd graders were reading at grade level, ask yourself, “How can I love my neighbor better?” By adding fuel to the division? That’s a temptation, but if the kids can’t read, the books in the library don’t matter. Remember that the issues that divide us may be distracting us from the main thing, which Jesus and the Apostle Paul were both clear about. Jesus says it then Paul repeats it in the second Scripture lesson I was supposed to preach on: The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s the main thing. The main thing is love. Remember that when the burden to get things right gets so heavy. At the end of my days, I want to hear the Lord say, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and I know you want to hear the same thing. The day is coming. The Apostle Paul is clear about that, saying: We will stand before the judgment seat of God. In preparation for that day, the Apostle asks: Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or why do you despise your brother or sister? For the whole law is summed up in this one thing: Have you loved your neighbor as yourself? There are many ways to be a Christian, so don’t get so tied up in your opinions that you fail to be a Christian. I’ve told you before that I love to sing. I love hymns. I really do. I love the obscure ones, and I love the hymns we sing all the time. I really love the ones Mrs. Vivian Stephens taught us in Sunday school years ago. Way back, when I was 8 or 9 years old, we’d always sing this one hymn that has forever informed my faith. It was written in the 1960’s by a Romans Catholic priest who served on the South Side of Chicago. We’re going to sing it at the end of the service, but I want to quote just a portion of it for you now. It goes like this: We are one in the Spirit; we are one in the Lord. And we pray that all unity may one day be restored. And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love. Do you know that one? It’s easy to sing, but in our world of division, where one side makes the other out to be a little more evil every news cycle, it’s a hard song to live. In humility, lay down your opinions that you might bear one another’s burdens, and so live the faith of the One who bore our burdens, who bled and died to take away our sin. Amen.