I don’t know about all of you, but my anxiety these days continues to run pretty high. In a recent prayer service I found the Taizé chant “Nothing Can Trouble” to be a moving reminder to put my trust in something much more capable than I. The chant uses words from the Christian mystic St. Teresa of Avila:
Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. Those that seek God shall never go wanting. Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. God alone fills us.
If you want to listen, I found this video of the chant on Youtube:
The words remind me that if I’m seeking Love and Justice then there is no need to be afraid, because it is these things that matter, that fill us and make us whole.
To quote the poet Pádraig Ó Tuama:
And while we’re not the same our intrinsic worth is equal. We are less if we accept anything less than equal.
To accept less than love and justice for all because we fear those in power demeans us and our nation. The United States once proudly proclaimed itself a beacon of light for the world, a nation of laws and a pillar of democracy that welcomed “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”1 The current President and his administration have made a mockery of this legacy and too many people simply accept it, perhaps wishfully thinking that it will go away and we’ll be back to “normal” soon enough.
But there’s no going back. Even if we could, would we want to? The corruption and greed and hatefulness that are running out of control right now in so many cruel ways were still there. They were just harder to see and easier to deny. Now our issues and problems have escaped the national shadow. That’s what happens with shadow. When you ignore it instead of acknowledge it and heal it, then it begins to take over and control you. The question we face as people and as a nation is not how can we go back to what was but what do we want to become? Not only who do we want to become as a nation, but also who do we, you and I, want to become?
In Jesus’ parable of the prodigal child, a young man brashly demands his inheritance and then runs off to a foreign country where he squanders it all.2 Broke, he finds himself tending pigs for a farmer. He can’t go back to what once was. He can only ask himself “who do I want to become now” and move forward. He decides to go home and beg for a place not in the family but as a hired hand. In doing so, he is reconciled with his father. That might seem like going back, but it really isn’t. The wayward son is loved and welcomed, but it’s not the same relationship they had before. Child and parent have to build something new together.
Reconciliation isn’t about restoring a broken relationship exactly as it used to be. It’s about building a new relationship. When we look at ourselves and ask who we want to become, we can either wallow in the mud with the pigs or we can move forward, seeking reconciliation with God and each other.3 For the apostle Paul, following Christ leads to such a reconciliation.4 It’s the spiritual equivalent of getting up out of the mud. Everything becomes new. We no longer see with selfishness but instead view the world through God’s love, embracing mercy and forgiveness. We walk humbly with kindness and do justice, taking the side of the marginalized and oppressed. The compassion and empathy that the world sees as weakness becomes our strength. Despair becomes hope. Fear becomes trust. Failures become the seeds of new life.
Will we continue to wallow in the fascist mud or will we get up and build something new? It’s not easy. The older son in Jesus’ parable was angry. Why celebrate the one who acted irresponsibly, he asks, when no one celebrates him, the loyal one? Aren’t we also tempted to demand a little retribution before we forgive and move toward reconciliation? The older son is looking at the world with glasses of fear and anxiety, bitterness and jealousy. But there is no turning back. His brother has returned and been welcomed. So the older son also has to ask who he wants to be in this moment.
Our national shadow is running amuck. The wealthy get wealthier and work to make sure that doesn’t change while the poor get poorer. White supremacy, racism, transphobia, homophobia, and sexism are the rule of the day. We’ve opened Pandora’s box. We can choose to double down on pride, fear and anxiety or we can move forward in love and forgiveness and become the loved and loving people we were created to be as the family of God.
Paul says God entrusts those who follow Christ with a ministry of reconciliation, making them ambassadors through whom God speaks and acts to build deeper relationship and make radical changes in the world. What kinds of loving and radical changes is God calling us to make? Making healthcare available to anyone who needs it? Welcoming immigrants as if they were a long lost member of the family? Because they are a part of God’s family. What about celebrating the dignity, beauty, and intrinsic worth of transgender people, queer people, women, and people of color? All of whom God has made uniquely wonderful, each in their own way.
God calls us to build a world of peace, hope, and justice, where we leave behind violence and selfish pursuits and put our time, talent and passion into supporting each other to become our best selves. We need to go of our pride and arrogance and move forward with humility and compassion, standing up and fighting for justice. We are called to build relationship and belonging while blessing each other and nurturing hope in the midst of our fear and anxiety. Let us never turn back, but move forward into God’s Way of Love. Into a new creation where there is justice and hope for all.
Here’s another inspiring song, “Never Turning Back,” written by Pat Humphries:
1. From the poem The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, which is inscribed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty.
2. Luke 15:11-32
3. Apologies to pigs for this metaphor. Comparing fascists to pigs is an insult to the pigs.
4. 2 Corinthians 5:16-21