Truth with Boldness, Justice with Compassion
Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast
faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with
boldness, and minister your justice with compassion. (BCP, p.230)
Faith, Love, Truth, Boldness! The
essence of what it means to be a child of God. As Psalm 100 proclaims, “God has
made us and we are God’s! We are God’s people and the sheep of God’s pasture.”
God has created us in love and with faith that we will boldly proclaim God’s
Truth, by our words and especially through our actions, in our world today. God’s
intended result of these gifts is proclaimed by Jesus in the prayer he taught
his disciples: help make “God’s Kingdom come, on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
This Earth is important to God,
just as all creation is important to God. If this were not so, I believe God
would not have sent Jesus into the world so that “the whole world might be
saved.” (John 3:16) So what does this mean to us, to you and me and the whole
world, all people, today during a pandemic and at a time when the world is in
dire need of bold truth and compassionate justice?
As I read through my social media
feeds and read and watch the news my heart aches for the need for justice, and
an even greater need for compassion in our world. It is so easy for most of us
to feel our own anger, fear and hurt and so difficult for most of us to see or
feel the anger, fear and hurt of the other. We find it easier to feel righteous
anger at those whose experiences in life and opinions and beliefs are different
than ours. We find it easier to respond with sound bites and thoughtless memes
than to open our hearts to listen to their hearts. How, for example, do I, who
believe that the Confederate Battle Flag should never fly on public property,
hear the person who believes it is a necessary part of his or her history? How
does the person who believes the Covid-19 Virus is a hoax, hear the one whose
wife just died of the virus? How do we reconcile the need for racial justice
with the importance of qualified, trained and compassionate law enforcement
officers who truly protect and serve us all?
God’s bold truth proclaims that we
are sometimes right and sometimes wrong, that you are as important as I and
that in God’s sight, no person is an other. God’s bold truth also means that
communication is not always easy, that we must listen as well as speak, not
just wait for the other person to quit talking so we can speak again. As Bear
Bryant once said to the University of Alabama football team, “Boys, if this was
easy, we wouldn’t have enough uniforms.”
We have a long journey ahead of us
as a Nation. It will not be an easy journey, but it is a journey we must take
if our nation is to continue as “One Nation under God.” I believe it is the
most important journey we will ever take, a journey that involves loving God,
our neighbor and ourselves, equally. Remember the words of St. Paul, “Love is
patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or
rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it
does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears
all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”(1
Cor. 13:4-7) The best example of this I have seen lately was the cooperation
between the Protesters and Law Enforcement two weeks ago in Albertville during
the march for peace and justice for George Floyd and for racial justice. I
believe this was truly an example of boldly proclaiming God’s justice with
compassion.
“Be joyful in the Lord, all you lands; serve the Lord with gladness and come before
his presence with a song. Know this: The Lord himself
is God; he himself has made us, and we are his; we are his people and the sheep
of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with
praise; give thanks to him and call upon his Name. For the Lord is good; his mercy is
everlasting; and his faithfulness endures from age to age.” Psalm 100
And
the People said, “Amen!”
