Jesus’ grief meets ours: Today is the 24th anniversary of 9/11. Today, a family mourns its assassinated father and husband. Today, parents in Evergreen pray for the survival of their children from critical wounds and sit in horror, wondering how their small town community high school could be the site of yet another shooting. This is close to our hearts: Lisa and I have friends who trembled in fear and prayed in tears as they waited to find out if their children at Evergreen High School were able to escape and hide yesterday.

We all should be looking out over our world and nation and weeping—weeping for the violence, weeping for the hatred, weeping for the fear, weeping every time any other person is seen not as a child of God but as someone who deserves contempt or ridicule or anything else that turns them into “the other.”

In the Episcopal church, we talk about our Baptismal vows frequently, and we repeat them together every time someone is baptized. (We’ll be doing that again at the end of the month, when there is a baptism at the 9 AM service.) We promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and to strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.

But in addition to those vows, the candidates and their sponsors make these:

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
I renounce them.

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
I renounce them.

My beloved friends, the spiritual forces of wickedness, the evil powers of this world that corrupt and destroy the creation of God–they are real. These forces aren’t wearing red suits with tails and carrying pitchforks, but they are real. St. Paul warns against them in Ephesians and Galatians. They include “hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy.” These are the spiritual forces and evil powers that seek to control us and destroy us.

We have promised to renounce these. Unchecked, they are like a nightmarish microphone feedback loop that bounces back and forth, growing stronger and stronger until it bursts our eardrums.

We renounce hatred, and we embrace love. We renounce violence, and we embrace peace. We renounce exclusion, and we embrace everyone in beloved community.

In the Bible, “renouncing” is not a passive thing; it is to deliberately and publicly reject, forsake, and disown for the sake of faith in God and following Christ. It is a powerful, active decision–a non-violent one–one filled with the opposite of the forces of evil, the Christlike forces Paul lists: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

Stanley Hauerwas, acclaimed as the greatest living American theologian, recently said, “To worship Jesus is to bring to the world a witness of nonviolence that otherwise could not be seen…Nonviolence isn’t passive, it’s vulnerable. It raises questions that demand responses…The cross is a challenge to people who say ‘Jesus is my Lord and Savior.’”

Hauerwas continues, “The politics of Jesus exposed the false alternatives that claim to be peaceable but are in fact structural in their violence. God’s will is to live in a world without violence. God’s grace is always there making possible alternatives that would not be there without God’s presence.”

This day is filled with reminders of the evil powers of hatred and fear and “othering” that echo louder and louder unless we work to stop them. I pray we will not be paralyzed by our own hatred and fear, but will instead find ways to shout to the world that we belong to each other, that no one is outside the circle of God’s love, that violence and hatred are never, ever, the way of Jesus.

This is the way James describes, one that is: “pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.” And the result? “A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” (James 3:17-18)

Several times a week, our Morning Prayer team recites the Prayer of St. Francis. May it speak powerfully to every one of us as it calls us to action, calls us to make peace:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is discord, union;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

When we renounce the forces of hatred and fear, we are not left empty-handed. We are filled with the Spirit’s gifts—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is how God works through us to bring healing where the world cries out in pain.

Remember, God’s power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
Fr. Keith+

(Image: “Jesus Weeps” by Linda Richardson)