Grace Cathedral
In lieu of our #MoreGoodNews this week, we share with you Dean Young’s sermon from the Rev. Canon David Forbes’ funeral.
Dear Congregation,
Yesterday, our cathedral was at its best. Yesterday, Grace was more than a name. We honored the memory of a beloved leader, the Rev. Canon David Forbes, whom our dean remembered so movingly as a good shepherd to us all. Later that day, The Vine hosted our special “Stand Together” service to honor the Asian American and Pacific Islander community here in the Bay and beyond. And I couldn’t help but imagine that David was smiling on us throughout both, cheering us on toward our goal of embodying the very best of our Anglican tradition while pressing toward a fuller, more expansive vision of whom we are called to become by God’s grace.
At our AAPI service, the Rev. Dr. Peter Choi, Director of the Faith + Justice Network, opened our time together, reflecting on the long colonial shadow cast over European and American Christianity. He cited Taiwanese theologian Shoki Coe, widely regarded as the pioneer of Contextual Theology. Dr. Choi reminded us that Coe contrasted “a cathedral mentality,” which strives for imperial permanency by monumentalizing conquest, enslavement, and conversion with the question “What shall we build?” with “a frontier-crossing spirituality… an orientation to faith that embraces the uncertainties and fluidity of life… [which] challenges injustice and seeks human flourishing…” For Coe, the latter asks, “Whom shall we love?”
Later in the evening, our featured musician, Tim Be Told, shared the story of how his home church was forced to shutter by conservative denominational leadership after he came out. That experience inspired the song Temple of Stone:
“Brick by brick with stilts and sticks, you build your empire walls.
So raise up, your kingdoms and thrones, turn the broken and the weak away.
Cause God is not in your temple of stone.
He’s the outcast of these walls you’ve made.”
It was so powerful to hear these lyrics in this space on the same day we entrusted one of the Episcopal Church’s most outspoken advocates for gay rights and racial equality into God’s everlasting care, committing David’s mortal remains to this most treasured temple of stone. As Malcolm reminded us, “David devoted his life to the liberation of all people.” We heard heartbreaking stories of the struggle for liberation from our friends in the AAPI community. I couldn’t help but wonder how David might have mobilized us in light of that moving testimony.
Malcolm gave us homework at David’s funeral. He called upon us to reflect on the words of the final hymn we sang together, “All Our Hope on God Is Founded.” The second stanza of that hymn proclaims:
“Mortal pride and earthly glory,
sword and crown betray our trust;
though with care and toil we build them,
tower and temple fall to dust.
But God’s power, hour by hour,
is my temple and my tower.”
I agree with Malcolm that David left us a puzzle. The man who founded a mission to educate souls — souls that will long outlast the temple and tower he helped to shape — was telling us something vital about who we are.
There are many definitions of grace. For me, grace isn’t just unmerited favor. It’s not about bemoaning how unworthy we think we are, wallowing in pity over our sins. I believe that God would not have given His own life had He not deemed us worthy of that life. We are worthy of God. We are worthy of God’s gift. God has made it so, and who are we to say otherwise? No, instead, grace is acknowledging that we are not the only ones who are worthy. Grace believes in our hearts and living with our lives as this radical witness to love. Grace is making space for everyone. It is a cathedral striving to live beyond Coe’s “cathedral mentality.” A beautiful paradox. It’s why I love this community and this temple of stone. The final lyric in Tim’s song captures the spirit of Grace Cathedral:”There is a kingdom and throne where the weak are never turned away. Cause God is not in a temple of stone, he’s with the people who cry out his name.” Amen.
In grace, love, and power,
Jude
The Rev. Jude Aaron Harmon
Canon for Innovative Ministries & Founding Pastor of The Vine
“I am the way and the truth and the life”
— John 14:6
In this Sunday’s sermon, I highlighted a fundamental task of biblical interpretation, a task all of us share as “stewards of the divine mysteries” (1 Cor. 4:1) to resist simple caricatures and go deeper. Deeper into the plot. Deeper into the characters. Deeper into the story. Second-century Alexandrian theologian, Origen, famously admonished that the Scriptures don’t lend themselves to a casual, easy-to-understand reading, but are deliberately layered, inviting us to search them for a “meaning worthy of God.” The Vine featured a practical sequel to Sunday’s sermon where groups were assigned a character from the Anointing at Bethany Gospel, and invited to imagine the story from that character’s perspective. The results were brilliant! Each group brought out such thoughtful insights, disrupting the standard cast narratives.
We go deeper into the story because it is our story, too. John’s Gospel is almost unique in this regard: liberally appropriating and adapting prior elements from Matthew, Mark and Luke to tell his own story, one that is concerned with delivering a “true testimony,” not in terms of historicity but in terms of profound theological truth. John isn’t just telling us something, he’s also modeling what theological reflection looks like. This approach acknowledges the connection between personal experience and Biblical witness: the stories of old are united to our stories by the One Way whose own life story of death and resurrection is the path we all trod toward God.
This Friday at 6 pm, our cathedral will host a labyrinth walk as we do most second Fridays of the year. Medieval labyrinths, like the one ours is modeled after from Chartres, started popping up in cathedrals throughout Europe around the 13th century shortly after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in 1187 rendered paschal pilgrimage there impossible. The Chartres labyrinth is more than a pretty design on the floor; it is a microcosm of the paschal pilgrimage itself. Inspired by a special tool found in the margins of manuscripts to assist clergy in the computus of Easter — a date that changes each year based on lunar cycles — the Chartres labyrinth’s many design features combine to create an elaborate mathematical and astronomical computer! Like Egypt’s pyramids, it became a kind of “resurrection machine.” The one path unfolds in three phases that are associated with descent (the journey in), death ( the center ) and resurrection (the journey out). At the center of the Chartres labyrinth you’ll find images of Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur: types for Christ, Mary and Satan respectively. The image of Theseus using Ariadne’s thread (the loom of Christ’s flesh woven on Mary’s body in the Incarnation) to find his way out of the subterranean labyrinth after defeating the Minotaur became a rich metaphor for our spiritual journeys in God.
Today, our beloved Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress, Honorary Canon, can be credited with resurrecting labyrinth spirituality in our time, opening the path to everyone who wishes to walk it by fusing this ancient paschal pattern with contemporary approaches to psychospiritual practices of integration. If you come on a Friday, you can learn her method for walking based on releasing (the way in), receiving (the center) and returning (the way out). I love this approach because it honors the pre-Christian roots of this archetypal symbol, paving a way for people from every walk of life to journey together. What a profound ministry it is to our city, and a “true testimony” to our expansive vision of God’s grace at work in our world in and beyond the Church! The Rev. Can. Mark Stanger also reminds us that this year marks the 100th year of the Good Friday Offering in which Episcopalians join other Christians to share their love, compassion, and financial gifts for the work and witness of our church in the five nations served by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem. Be a peacemaker through the church’s ministries of health care, education and parish life in the homeland of Jesus and beyond by going to our giving page and selecting “Good Friday Offering” from the drop-down bar or texting “GRACE” to 76278 on Friday, April 15. “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!” (Psalm 122)
Speaking of anniversaries and the Holy Land, it was 20 years ago the first group of Grace Cathedral pilgrims visited Jerusalem. Getting ready now to go again in September! Mark Stanger is available to describe the pilgrimage and answer questions this Palm Sunday, April 10, in Wilsey Conference Center (lower level of the cathedral church), right after the Palm Sunday liturgy.
Love and blessings,
Jude
The Rev. Jude Aaron Harmon
Canon for Innovative Ministries & Founding Pastor of The Vine
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
— Matthew 6:28b-29
Dear Congregation,
As I write this, I just finished welcoming our Tuesday evening yoga community to Grace Cathedral, an opportunity each week to sense how the wider Bay Area is doing. For those of us who are empaths, greeting the stream of people entering our cathedral to practice is like taking the emotional temperature of the city. Tonight felt different. An almost visceral unease. A sense of something that is off. We all feel it, we’re all experiencing it right now. I saw a meme today that read, “Two years ago this was our last normal week, and no one knew it”. How true.
Each Tuesday we select a theme to guide our yoga practice and tonight was “non-attachment” — one of the most often misunderstood concepts in Eastern spirituality. Many of us hear that and think it means not caring about the world, or simply not allowing ourselves to be moved by the things of this world because they will cause suffering when they inevitably fail to meet our expectations. Apathy will never disappoint us. But that’s not really the point.
Instead, I read non-attachment in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions to mean something more like surrendering our need to control in a world that we cannot control to discover a kind of inner freedom that can, paradoxically, lead to loving others more deeply and achieving a kind of self-mastery. Non-attachment isn’t about apathy; it’s about cultivating healthy empathy. The paralysis we may feel before Ukraine, or at the pump, or facing a broken relationship or dysfunctional workplace cannot be overcome by doubling down on our anxiety and fear. We must find another way. Throughout Lent, we are reminded to store up our treasure in heaven, not here on this darkling plain where moth and dust destroy. We are reminded that our life in God is not about amassing a series of short-term gains, but keeping our eyes on the long game. Fight the good fight. Run the race. Strive to win the imperishable crown. This Lent, as in every Lent, we are called to fast, to give alms and to repent of our sins. But all of this is for naught if it does not correspond to a change in our hearts and minds. A turning toward God. What we give up in privation, or even what we take up in edification, as Lenten disciplines are not actually the point: they are merely vehicles of this transformation. Sometimes the most obvious discipline is the one we instinctively avoid.
As folks got settled on their mats, my heart was filled with compassion for the crowd. I knew where their anxiety was coming from. Looking out on them, I shared how prone I am to doom-scroll through the news, to try and stay ahead of every eventuality, to manage risk. In doing so, though, I confessed, I risk losing sight of what is needful at this moment. So, I will tell you what I told them: at least for now, here in this place, at home or at work this week, give yourself permission to unplug. It’s not self-indulgent to let go of the anxiety and fear for a while: to put down your phone, to turn off your computer, to walk away and walk around, and to let the eyes of your heart gaze upon a world still full of beauty and hope and possibility. Love on those around you. Be present to yourself, to your heart, to your mat, to your pew… to your kneeler. Return to your breath. And return again. And with each return let go of all that stands between you and God, between you and community, between you and yourself. Come home.
Love and prayers for a Holy Lent,
Jude
The Rev. Jude Aaron Harmon
Canon for Innovative Ministries & Founding Pastor of The Vine
P.S. We are thrilled to announce the re-opening of Grace Cathedral to the general public on Wednesday, March 16 with the launch of our Visitor Experience! Explore the cathedral from 10 am–5 pm Monday through Saturday. Check out our blog for more details.
Dear Congregation,
What a momentous time Epiphanytide is! Revelation after revelation shine forth profound, and sometimes difficult truths about who God is, and who we are. Last weekend, we heard that moment of crisis and confrontation between Jesus and those in his hometown, Nazareth. How quickly they turned from saying nice things about him to nearly driving him off a cliff! Why? What drove them to such dramatic, vengeful action?
Jesus knew they expected signs and wonders the same as he did in Capernaum. Surely, if you can do that for them, then we deserve as much or more, right? We’re the home team! In some Gospel stories, it’s a lack of faith that impedes Jesus’ ability to act among the people, but this is a little bit different. Here, it’s the sense of entitlement. That entitlement turns into lethal intent when he calls them on it. He lights into them with those most piquant of words, “But the truth is…” Rarely, in our lives when someone tells us, “but the truth is” does it end well for us. We can expect some judgment that speaks to the blindness of our arrogance, and that’s exactly what follows.
Jesus rubs it in. Hard. The widow at Sidon and Naaman the Syrian occupy as distant places on the socioeconomic spectrum of power and influence as we can imagine. They stand in for the most vulnerable and the most powerful, and everyone in between. When I prepped for my sermon on this at The Vine this Wednesday, I was struck by how diluted the commentaries were in The Harper Collins and Oxford Study bibles. They make mention of God occasionally showing favor to foreigners. This isn’t that. Sidon – the sinful source of Jezebel’s Baal cult, which brought Israel into idolatry – and Syria – the great imperial power that humiliated Israel by subjecting it to vassal status – weren’t just neighbors, they were enemies. God sidesteps countless, even worthy, members of the covenanted people, to deliver a stinging rebuke of their entitlement.
During this time of intense polarization, it may be tempting to imagine that the other isn’t worthy of God, isn’t worthy of us. It’s easy for the home team to get a big head and imagine that our way is the only way, or that our view of the world is the only valid one. I recently watched a fascinating lecture at Yale by the acclaimed, but controversial journalist Vladimir Pozner. His talk was entitled “How the United States Created Vladimir Putin.” His remarks, although delivered three years ago, give an eye-opening account of the other side of the Russia-Ukraine story we’re seeing play out on the global stage. The gist is “You think it’s just about democracy, independence and Russian aggression, but the truth is…” To be clear, I’m not endorsing his perspective. In many ways, it’s deeply problematic. Still, it’s so crucial for us to listen and hear voices other than our own in such moments as these.
Jesus wasn’t subtle, even seeming to invite the violent reaction he drew by recalling such deeply unflattering moments in Israel’s past. But they needed to hear it. Where do we see privilege and entitlement cropping up in our hearts, in our communities and in our world? Where might we invite our Savior to illuminate those places? We may be the home team, but the truth is God loves the whole world.
Love and blessings,
Jude
The Rev. Jude Aaron Harmon
Canon for Innovative Ministries & Founding Pastor of The Vine
P.S. In this week’s #MoreGoodNews, Dean Malcolm Clemens Young explores the book Why Does the World Exist by Jim Holt. Why is it so hard to talk about the existence of God? Watch on YouTube today!
P.P.S. Thank you all who attended in-person and online for last night’s Evensong: Feast of the Presentation and Installation of the Canon Precentor. Congratulations to Anna Rossi!
Our three month series, Walking with the Mystics, exploring mystical spirituality across Christianity, Judaism and Islam, continues tonight at our Candlelight Labyrinth Walk with Etty Hillesum, a modern Jewish mystic who was killed at Auschwitz. In the face of Nazi atrocities, Hillesum turned inward, recording her thoughts in a collection of diaries that she handed over to a friend before she was martyred. Her writings reveal a woman of great spiritual courage and profound depth, who developed a surpassing inner peace even as the world unraveled around her.
Jason Ditzian, a clarinetist and leader of Kugelplex, will offer music from the Jewish old-world tradition of klezmorim. Jason has performed with such musical luminaries as Joan Baez, and will be leading an ecstatic klezmer chamber dance concert immediately after the labyrinth walk right down the street at Old First Church Concert at 8 pm.
At 6:30 pm in the Chapel of Grace, Dr. Barbara Morrill, core faculty and former chair of the Integral Counseling Psychology Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, will offer a thirty minute presentation on Etty Hillesum, followed by ten minutes of Q&A. Dr. Morrill has spent years studying Hillesum’s work, and retracing her life’s steps. In 2008, Morill presented at the International Transpersonal Congress in New Delhi, India: Being in the Face of Annihilation: Transformation Through Writing as Inquiry in the lives of two Dutch Women During the Holocaust: Etty Hillesum (1914-1943) and Jetteke Frijda (1925-present).
Healing Prayer will be offered in the Chapel of the Nativity from 6:30 – 7:30 pm. Next month we’ll turn to Rumi with a focus on peace in the Sufi tradition.
Friends of Grace,
I’d like to share some exciting news!
New churches and yoga studios are popping up all over SF. A hunger for authentic spirituality and a thirst for real community, is driving a spiritual Gold Rush in this city of dreamer and innovators. Over the last several months, I’ve been praying and visioning with a committed group of friends about how Grace Cathedral might serve the changing spiritual needs of our city in a new way. The culmination of that loving process, this Wednesday we launched “The Vine,” a new community at the cathedral for urbanites and spiritual seekers.
Our community is all about creating new connections as we explore, experience and share the transformative love of Jesus with the Bay Area together. Whether it’s through powerful, contemporary worship on Wednesday evenings at 6:30 p.m. in the cathedral, or the smaller gatherings throughout the city, our “Grace Groups” on weekends and weeknights, or fun opportunities to serve our city together we know you’ll find a place to connect. Grace Cathedral has been a “House of Prayer for All People” seeking and serving the city we love for over a hundred years. We will continue to embody our tradition of progressive values as we also step out in this new, exciting direction.
Grace is more than a word, more than a theological concept; it’s an experience. When we know we belong, when we can be ourselves and be loved, when we know we have a home – that’s grace. I hope you’ll check us out on Wednesday night. God makes us to flourish in community. God makes us for grace. Grace is making a place for you.
Welcome home,
Jude
Founding Pastor of The Vine & Director of Innovative Ministry
I grew up in a small town along the Connecticut coast, steeped in references to its colonial past, and keenly self-aware two hundred plus years later, of its role in the American Revolution.”
A Homily preached at Grace Cathedral
“I have given you authority to tread on serpents, and over all the power of the enemy.”
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
- Don’t Tread on Me – An American Tradition
I grew up in a small town along the Connecticut coast, steeped in references to its colonial past, and keenly self-aware two hundred plus years later, of its role in the American Revolution. In second grade, we toured the Georgian style William Hart House on Main Street, marveling over the tiny uncomfortable beds, and the hobbit-like scale of the spaces. We learned about the settlers lives, and even how to make the candles they would have used, successively dipping the taper into a cauldron of melted wax till a candlestick began to emerge. Fourth of July was a really big deal in our town, with a grand parade in the afternoon; at night parents and children flocked to the shore waiting expectantly to watch the fireworks go off over Long Island Sound. Around this time of year, I’d see this strange flag emerge with a yellow field, and the image of a coiled rattlesnake about to strike, with the words, “Don’t Tread on Me” beneath it.
I was intrigued by the flag from an early age – it was so defiant, so bold. What society would have need for such a severe warning, to enshrine it on a flag? Later I’d learn it was called the Gadsden flag, and you can see it right here in the north transept among the flags relating to our nation’s rise and development. It was named after the statesman and military officer who designed it to be a standard for the American Revolution in 1775, and especially of the Continental Marines. To this day, the oldest active vessel in the U.S. Navy has the right to fly it. Along with the stars and bars, and the bald eagle, the timber rattlesnake represented an early icon of the nascent republic.
Benjamin Franklin praised the snake as “an emblem” of America’s vigilance, “magnanimity and true courage.” He writes that though the snake appears defenseless to the unschooled, and its fangs unimpressive to the uninitiated, “their wounds however small are decisive and fatal.” If you look closely you’ll see the rattle is formed of 13 sections, standing for the 13 original colonies. Franklin notes with a tone of pride and warmth, “she never wounds till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of stepping on her.” The flag has made a resurgence in recent years as the standard for the Tea Party, who interpret it as the ultimate symbolic expression of individual rights and protections from the government, rather than as a nationalist expression of collective defiance against the British imperial antagonist.
This serpentine image for the state was not new. You’ll recall that 17th century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes’s supremely influential political treatise on the nation-state was titled “Leviathan.” Propounding views of material humanism, representative government, social contract theory, and individual rights, he laid the foundations for liberal political philosophy in the West. However, writing in the desolation and division of the English Civil War, he was sharply critical of any government that did not invest a single sovereign entity with absolute power.
2. Rise of the Leviathan – The Legacy of the Nation State’s Sovereignty
Human life, Hobbes surmised, was “nasty, brutish and short,” and human social order was not directed by a concern for the summum bonum – the greatest good – as the Scholastics maintained but the summum malum – the greatest evil, which he believed was “violent death.” Now, he believed this because he saw it first-hand, but his belief constituted a radical rupture with a thousand years of political theology undergirding the Christendom that came before the advent of the modern era.
Hobbes saw Christianity become a source of violent division and looked to another power to secure the human future. Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom had given way to a fractious Christendom, with Catholics and Protestants at war with each other. So the ancient, tyrannical sea-serpent, the Leviathan of biblical lore, became the driving image for the nation-state that ruled with uncompromising force to keep these groups in line. (With this in mind, it’s easy to see how America’s timber rattlesnake would have been a kind of visual dig at the very image that justified the crown’s oppression of the colonies. The Leviathan would be slain by a mere rattler in a classic David and Goliath story. That’s the American Revolution in short.)
Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke were the philosophical architects of a revolution in human history that would sweep aside millennia of dynastic tradition in favor of newly emerging nation states. The masses hoped that government elected by the people would be better, and by many measures it has been. Public education, social and economic mobility, personal freedom and the extensive development of the common law tradition: all of these are massive advantages to the modern age. But, Jesus warns us in the gospels that we reap what we sow. Revolutions sown in violence, eventually gave way to the most violent century the world has ever known.
Twentieth century advances in science, technology, philosophy and the arts stand under the long shadow of two world wars, mass genocides, Vietnam, nuclear weapons, global warming, and the post-colonial impoverization of the Global South. Hobbes’s philosophy, carried to its logical end gave us fascism, Stalinism, and Nazism. Elie Wiesel, who died this weekend, contended against a Leviathan that would have left even Hobbes shocked and horrified. But the human spirit springs eternal with hope. In the ashes of these tragedies, the United Nations, NATO and the European Union were born with the hope that together we could find new, creative solution to build a better world.
We live in an age when the pressures of globalization are forcing us to reevaluate our basic premises, the very foundations upon which the global political and financial orders rest: uneven benefits of a global economy; booming black markets in drugs, weapons, and human trafficking; the ever-widening technology gap; terrorism; and an ecological crisis that threatens planetary collapse. The unfettered positivism of the Enlightened West is not working. Our world is literally starving for a model of global justice that transcends the narrow self-interests of entities defined solely by their own sovereignty, and designed to perpetuate that sovereignty at all costs.
Lacking a proper telos, an end resting not only on measurable, sensory facts but also the immeasurable and immutable demands of divine justice, the world of competing nation-states seems trapped forever in a ceaseless game of thrones. And that world is becoming smaller every day. We see it the face of families evicted without a care as to where they will go; we hear it in the voices of migrant peoples pleading for a place to call home amidst dangerous politics and unimaginable economic privation; we read about it in nations electing to withdraw from international cooperation for fear of eroding privilege; and we experience it as our own nation flirts with xenophobic authoritarianism.
3. Our Work and Witness – Globalizing the Grace Revolution
Who are we in the midst of these things? “I have given you authority to tread on snakes, and over all the power of the enemy.” We need to hear that. The Church needs to hear that. Take it in. He’s speaking to me and you. We are the 70. Every time we approach this table we recommit to His revolution. The Kingdom of God is the closest thing to an anti-state that the world will ever know. It exists not to serve itself, but to serve others; it does not conquer through violence or coercion, but multiplies by the force of love’s invitation.
We reap what we sow. Jesus sowed a revolution not in others’ blood, but in his own, and for our sake. He sent out the 70 not with guns, tanks or swords; indeed, not even with a purse, bag or sandals. (I guess that means Luis Vuitton is not a thing in the Kingdom of God. Sorry lol.) With barely a tunic to their name, the 70 are sent out not as mercenaries to convert others at the edge of a sword, but as people totally at the mercy of those who would receive them. Even to those who would not receive them, they declared that the Kingdom had come near, leaving in peace, returning their peace to them.
The Kingdom comes near to us, too. When we approach this table, Jesus gives himself to us so that we may give ourselves to others. Have you ever noticed that Jesus chooses the path of relationship over the path of structural power to change the world around him? We have those huge banners out front that declare, “Grace is Love.” I love that. It’s such a powerful message – one that’s urgently needed for our world. If justice is what love looks like in public, then grace is what love looks like in person. Grace is our answer to the power of the enemy.
When we take Christ into our bodies, we affirm a mystery that unites heaven and earth, the material and the spiritual – that vastly exceeds the limits of mere positivism. We all know the bread and wine nourish parts of our body we cannot see. Do we also know that His Substance and Spirit nourish parts of our soul we cannot see? He’s planting seeds in dark and fallow places that may not bear fruit for years to come, and yet always and already working within us. Where is the harvest ripe in your life, and our life collectively as a church, to reap something great for God’s Kingdom? Where has God given you, and given us, grace upon grace to bless those are around us?
At the beginning of the sermon I painted an idyllic image of my childhood home in Connecticut. Beneath the patina of apparent privilege all around us, the story of my particular household was quite different. With two parents whose sole income was social security disability, with a father wrestling with the demons of narcotics abuse and domestic violence, my household was a very difficult place to grow up and mature. My life would have had a very different trajectory if it had not been for one single person, my 7th grade French teacher, Pat Perry.
Having witnessed my capacities, Pat decided she was going to do something to change my life. She personally contributed over $20,000 from her own resources to send me to a premier boarding school, paving my way to attend Haverford, then Harvard, to have a completely different life than the one I would have had apart from her generosity. Every day I think about Pat. Every day I wonder what our world would be like if more of us had her imagination. The thing about grace, this unexpected generosity, is that it opens our hearts, and reorients us to hope.
The thing about the Kingdom is that the establishment doesn’t see it coming. They can’t anticipate it because they can’t imagine a world where sovereignty is exercised apart from self-interest. Jesus intends for us to reign by abdicating all claim to our own honor, wealth, power and glory. That’s a tough sell. It’s a tough sell for me – because in the end, the nation-state isn’t the enemy at all: I am. The Gospel confronts us with this challenge: the only way to change the world around us is first to change the world within us. The only revolution that is the true revolution – effecting true, lasting and durable change – is the revolution inside. We need to learn to slay the Leviathans of selfishness and cowardice that keep us from knowing true freedom, the liberty of the children of God. On this 4th of July, as we remember the birth of our nation, let’s also remember Jesus’ words to us:
“I have given you authority to tread on snakes,
and over all the power of the enemy.”