The big news story this week is Simone Biles, the twenty-four-year-old gymnast who bowed out of Olympic competition because she needed to take care of her own mental health. Because of her tremendous achievements in the sport, she is seen as the “greatest gymnast of all time.” That’s quite a yoke to place on the neck of a young woman.

Jeff Bezos had a dream that became a reality this week when the Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket was launched. He was joined on this journey by a small cohort of others. This brave group began an adventure they never experienced before. I wonder what it was like. There is a part of me that would relish the experience, but then another part that says, “If you can’t ride on a roller coaster, you might not be a prime candidate for a rocket ship!” But I do marvel at seeing firsthand the vast space of the heavens.

I have a couple of shoe boxes on the top shelf of my closet that contain notes – love notes. They are from my wife and span the thirty plus years we’ve been together. We met in a distant past where people still wrote letters to each other. Those love notes, in letter and card, tell our love story. Once, in a moment of insanity, I took them down to throw them away figuring that I knew well enough the sentiments the boxes contained. This interrupted our marital bliss for a moment, until I came to my senses and placed them securely back on the shelf. My wife knows more about devotion than I do.

The advice Jesus gives on being a Beloved Community is pretty straight forward. For instance: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (Luke 6:37) Don’t judge, don’t condemn, forgive. Got it. Or do I?

This is, in my estimation, essential to being a community grounded in love, and incredibly difficult to practice. Judging others, evaluating people, categorizing everyone I meet is kind of part of the human operating system, isn’t it? We meet someone new, and we automatically think, “Seems like a nice guy,” or “Seems a little pushy to me.” Human interaction is a constant stream of evaluation and judgment.

When our congregation was working through the inclusion of LBTQ+ persons in the life and ministry of the congregation, a variety of people told me they could not accept such people. Then they asked, “How can you as a Christian accept them?” When I responded that judging others was above my pay grade, they were quick to claim, “I’m not judgmental!” To condemn, evaluate, or condemn someone is to judge them. And, news flash, we are all judgmental – acting like gods as we process everyone and everything through our own internal measure of what is right, wrong, good, bad in the world.

Our current culture helps us with the process of evaluation and condemnation by creating neat little categories filled with unspoken assumptions and stereotypes that are usually untrue. You are conservative or liberal, white or black, male or female, successful or lazy. On top of that, most of us assume that we are the norm for all human behavior and if you don’t agree with or act like me you are wrong. So, as you can see, living like Jesus commands is a tough task. It is, however, essential if we are to be the Beloved Community. It is even more essential if we are to be light in this dark, judgmental world.

Can we practice suspending judgement and evaluating others; can we stop measuring everyone by our own set of standards that we can’t meet ourselves? Can we, instead, just listen to and accept others as they are and learn from them through what they offer? In a community rooted in forgiveness, it is possible. Only when we can try and be forgiven for failure; only when we can mess up and find that we have not been judged, is there a hope of being the Beloved Community.

The truth is that all any of us brings to a relationship with another human being that matters is that we are a beloved child of God. The other person brings exactly, and only, the exact same thing. So, what’s to judge? You and me – we are the same in the eyes of God. In the Beloved Community we are no better or worse than anyone. Don’t judge, don’t condemn, forgive. Got it.
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Pax Christi – Tim Olson, Lead Pastor

Image by John Hain from Pixabay 

It is hard for congregations to become a manifestation of Christ’s Beloved Community. There are many reasons, but perhaps the biggest reason in our age is consumerism. Our culture, driven by economic values and personal satisfaction, turns everything into a commodity. We “shop” for churches. In the same way we decide not to go to a restaurant that gave us a bad burger, we decide to find another church because of a slight from another member, a sermon with which we disagree, or a song that we disliked.

A cashier in Decatur, Georgia, recently came to work and never made it home. An argument with a customer over wearing a mask – encouraged by the store – led a man to walk out to his car and return with a gun. He shot the cashier dead. A month earlier, in Flint, Michigan, a store security guard charged with enforcing the store’s “mask up” policy was shot in the head and killed. Three members of a family are charged with first degree murder. Official responses to the incidents have voiced some form of, “Well, masks are a sensitive matter and tensions are high.” Seriously?! The response in my mind is “Have you all lost your minds?”

Last Sunday, about 100 people came back to worship in the sanctuary after more than a year away. As expected, things went off without a hitch for the most part. The preacher did somehow fail to get his mic turned on during the service at one point. The streaming of the video had a hiccup quickly resolved. Overall, though, it turns out that we, who had been worshipping virtually for a year, did indeed remember how to do it live, together. And it was glorious.

Last week, I offered an introduction to the whole Church, and our congregation, as a Beloved Community constituted by The Beloved Community of the Holy Trinity. God’s love makes community, it draws people together, it glues disparate people and personalities together in community that shares love with the world. Every Christian congregation is a divinely constituted holy, messy, sacred, flawed community and each of us has been drawn by the Spirit to be here – in this place, at this time.