The Good Life

"I was struck by the comment I heard most often from those in attendance and those who have watched online, 'It’s so refreshing to see people who are different getting along so well'..."

In January, Saint Michael hosted our second interfaith panel, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity: The Conversation Continues. Sponsored by the Women of Saint Michael, this panel built on the incredible response received from the first interfaith panel held in January of 2018. I was joined on the panel with newcomer, Rabbi Nancy Kasten, and once again by Imam Omar Suleiman and our moderator, the Rev. Amy Heller.

In the year since our first panel, friendships have deepened, and this year’s discussion was deeper and more personal. I think it made for a better overall event. And yet, even though the conversation wound through some very interesting theological issues, I was struck by the comment I heard most often from those in attendance and those who have watched online: It’s so refreshing to see people who are different getting along so well.

On the one hand, those comments, made in many different forms, is a good thing. I’m so glad that people felt good and were heartened by the relationships on the panel. What I find sad is that people felt like our respectfulness, our thoughtful discourse, and even our care for one another, is so uncommon.

It’s no secret that our general civility is at its lowest point in recent memory. It seems as if we are bombarded with drama everywhere we turn. Media outlets thrive on drama, taste leaders and politicians rely on drama to keep people engaged, and all of that filters down to us and make us think that drama and conflict and rudeness is normal. The normalization of ugliness is exhausting, and we are worn out.

How often does it feel as if the world around us is just nuts? As I watched the Super Bowl, I saw a commercial in which a man woke up to his alarm clock, bleary-eyed and groggy, only to stumble out to his front porch and pick up the morning paper, where the headline read: Today is worse than yesterday. I often feel like most of the talking heads in our lives communicate that idea in one form or another every day. The idea that there is something we don’t know that might hurt us or make us sick or end the world has become the regular hyperbolic currency of the world around us. We can easily become overwhelmed, unless we remember who we really are.

There is a young adult curriculum that I have used with preteens many times called Created by God. This curriculum, although focused on sexual education and health, has a very important concept that all young people should know: every single one of us is created by God and we

are most complete when we live with God. This idea is so simple and so fundamental to our Christian faith that we can often forget just how profound it truly is. God created you and God created me, and we are called to respond to His love with love of our own, and not just for God, but for everyone around.

Here is the other truth I wish everyone understood: Our world is based on power, not love. Everything we learn in the world is about how to succeed, how to win, and how to be powerful. When Jesus is on trial before Pilate, he says, “My kingdom is not from this world… I came into the

world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice ( Jn 18:36-37).” The truth may seem like a moving target to those of us in the twenty-first century, but I believe that Jesus is the truth, the whole truth, and his way of love is the only way to overcome the pain of this world that seek to bring us down.

We are called to follow Jesus, and that call is renewed each and every day. In a recent sermon, I said that our primary responsibility as disciples of Jesus is to live a good life, a kingdom life. We only have two primary ways to live: (1) We base our actions on what we think is good and right, or (2) we base our actions on a guide who creates those boundaries and parameters around what is good and right.