Our youngest grandchild, Emmett, who is seven months old, lives in New York. He and his parents, Dan and Michelle, came to visit Kathy and me last week, and for the whole wonderful week.
You know how it is with houseguests. You get used to them. Even at night, the house sounds and feels different when someone is around beside us regulars. I awoke this morning thinking that Emmett and his family were still aboard. I quickly remembered and realized, with some sadness, that the house felt emptier. I reckoned the tug of feeling as Emmett’s echo — conveying the sadness of his family’s absence, joyful memories of their presence, and anticipation of reunions. We have also heard many of Frannie, Harriet, and Silas’s echoes over the years.
I have every faith that God will bring us all together again. I don’t have to struggle to believe it. I just do. It makes me feel a little like Abram, who heard a whisper on the desert wind – call it God’s echo – telling him to make his way to a new land that has been prepared for him and his descendants. No priest or religious authority told Abram what to do. He just heard God’s echo and set out on the long journey to the Christ event.
It’s a miracle that we even hear the echo of this old story. No one wrote anything down in Abram’s time. The story of Abraham and Sarah was passed along generation upon generation in the oral tradition. We accept it on faith. It rings true to us, probably because we know what it feels like to hear and obey the call of the road or the wild.
Talking to Nicodemus in John’s gospel, Jesus evokes the desert wind when he says, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it.” Some people talk about faith as something we have to work at. They surmise that some people receive the grace of faith and others don’t – lucky us if we do, poor them if they don’t. Or they insist that you don’t really have faith if you don’t say some magic words, belong to the right religion, or go to the right church.
But Jesus said, “You do not know where it comes from or where it goes.” So let’s not be too sure of ourselves when it comes to the tradition we have chosen or been born into. The spirit comes to everyone. The echo sounds in every ear. Like Emmett’s echo, past, present, and future conjoining, all safe under the mighty wing of God.
And Jesus tells Nicodemus this: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” For God so loved the world that when God gave birth to the universe, God ladled love all over it like hot fudge sauce.
And remember, Jesus was there. The Word was present at the beginning of all things. The Word was God. The Word was with God. The Word in whom God took daily delight. Jeremiah says that God wrote the Word on our hearts. Not just on Jews’ and Christians’ hearts, but everyone’s hearts. And if you want to look for a divine Word that is common to all religions and philosophies – including Confucius, who lived 500 years before Jesus – we need look no further than the golden rule. We read it in Matthew 7:12: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
So here we have the pillars of faith in action. The echo of God, whispering in my ear that my past, present, and future are all secured by God’s love, by Christ’s mighty resurrection. And the divine word of mutual love, telling me how to behave. If I have the echo and the word, no force on earth should keep me from doing my best. Trust in God’s providence unleashes all the good written on our hearts.
As for the golden rule, it’s time for people of faith to insist that government – governments everywhere, but especially our own – must abide by the divine word of the universe. Princes, kings, and presidents may never behave toward others with gratuitous unkindness, first because they don’t want others to behave that way toward them. If we happen to be married, we know we can’t get through two weeks without obeying the golden rule. It’s inexcusable that for two thousand years, we’ve let power off the hook.
We can have secure borders without cruelty, such as racist roundups and blood libels against our Haitian and Somalian siblings. We can protect our national interests without cruelty. We can learn more about our trans and non-binary siblings and in the meantime, choose not to act toward them with cruelty. We can fight drug imports without acts of cruelty and murder against men of color on the high seas.
The golden rule isn’t liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican. No matter what they believe about politics or policy, every person of faith has something like the golden rule in their tradition. Joined together, we would be a mighty interfaith democratic coalition, drawing the line against official cruelty, against any sinful act of cruelty for cruelty’s sake – and imposing a harsh political penalty on all leaders who don’t at last obey the divine law of love.
[This post is based on a portion of my sermon on Sunday, March 1 at Holy Trinity Saint Benedict Episcopal Church in Alhambra. The photo shows seven-month-old Emmett at LAX on Saturday morning, overseeing the security of his lines of supply.]