One truth about living in these increasingly hateful and violent times is that it makes things very clear:
The world needs love.
The world needs the radical kind of love that we see in the life and teachings of Jesus.
Fred Rogers famously said:
“When I was a boy, and I would see scary things on the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people helping,’ she’d say. And I’ve found that that’s true. In fact, it’s one of the best things about our wonderful world.”
When the world we live in is scary – is too full of hatred and violence and apathy – it is stories of people helping one another that break through the darkness. It is the examples of people choosing to love one another that prove to us that another world really is possible – even in the midst of this one.
In a recent podcast/article, theologian Tripp Fuller wrote:
“…[We] may find hope, not in the political fray itself, overwhelmed by crisis upon crisis, but in an alternative community bound by a higher allegiance. We may need to form communities that embody an alternative.”
Jesus embodied that alternative for us in his life of compassion, his self-sacrifice, his care and advocacy for the people who were trapped in suffering. Now it is our turn.
If you attended worship this past Sunday in a congregation that follows the Revised Common Lectionary, you heard a passage from Isaiah 58. Those words give us a clear example of how we may, like Jesus, embody a way of living that shines the love of God into the dark corners of the world:
If you get rid of unfair practices,
quit blaming victims,
quit gossiping about other people’s sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight…
…You’ll be like a well-watered garden,
a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,
restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
make the community livable again.
[Isaiah 58:9-12, The Message]
With God’s help, may we be that alternative community for our world right now.
– Pastor Kate
Rev. Katherine Museus and Rev. James A. Wetzstein serve as university pastors at the Chapel of the Resurrection at Valparaiso University and take turns writing weekly devotions.
