We Will Walk With You (Sept 27 2015)

Homily:  Yr B, Proper 26, Sept 27 2015

Readings:  Esther 7.1-6, 9-10, 9.20.22; Ps 124; James 5.13-20; Mk 9.38-50

On the occasion of a Baptism, and the Re-Naming of a Transgendered Person

There is power in a name.  In the gospel we just heard, there is a man who is doing powerful things in the name of Jesus, casting out demons.  This is a man who knows the power of Jesus’ name, who is doing good deeds in Jesus’ name.  But there seems to be a problem.  He’s not one of us.

“Teacher we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

Today we will celebrate a naming.  And we will celebrate a re-naming.

Davis is being baptized today.  And he wanted lots of water, so after we are done here we will be heading to Mooney’s Bay for his baptism. 

Davis, from this day on, you will bear the name of Christ, which literally means ‘the anointed one’.  We are going to go to the river, submerge you in the waters and bring you out again.  It will be a symbol and sacrament of your baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ, and of your new birth and new life.  You will be anointed with oil, and you will bear the name of Christ, the anointed one, child of God.  And as one who bears the name of Christ, you will from this day on act in the name of Jesus, and do mighty deeds in Jesus’ name.

There is power in a name.

Eliot, you too will be anointed today, just as you were anointed at your own baptism many years ago.  You continue to bear the name of Christ, the anointed one, beloved child of God.  We re-affirm that today.  That has not changed.  But some things do change.  Often our faith journeys can take twists and turns as we live and grow into the people that God created us to be.  Today you take on a new name as a testimony to the person you have become and as a testimony to the God who welcomes us as his children, loves us through all the twists and turns of our life journeys, and promises to make all things new.

There is power in a name.

There will be some who will wonder why it is that we are celebrating a Liturgy for the Re-Naming of a Transgendered Person at St. Albans today.  There might be some who would wish to stop us, who think that this is not something that the church should be doing.

“Jesus, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.”

“Because he was not following us.”  Did you notice the “us” in that complaint?   The problem wasn’t that the man wasn’t following Jesus, the problem was that the man wasn’t following us.  He wasn’t one of us, he wasn’t doing things our way.  One of the realities of our human condition is that we tend to think in terms of ‘us vs them’.   We are part of a group, or many groups.  Those groups can be family groups, ethnic groups, religious groups, social groups, whatever.  And we tend to draw our identity from the groups to which we belong.  And sometimes we strengthen our individual identities by strengthening our group identity, drawing boundaries around our groups which allow us to know who is in and who is out.  And if an outsider wants to be part of our group, well, they will just have to play by our rules.

People who are queer and transgendered in our society and in our church understand this dynamic only too well.  They know first-hand the barriers and boundaries that we set up to define who is in and who is out.

“Jesus, we tried to stop him because he was not following us.”

And Jesus replies, “Do not stop him.”

There is a fundamental generosity in Jesus’ response, a generosity that transcends all of our ‘us vs. them’ boundaries and barriers.  It is a generosity which is gracious, a generosity which is inclusive, a generosity which is compassionate, a generosity that offers a cup of water to drink to all who bear the name of Christ, to all who were made in the image of God, to all for whom Jesus was sent, to all who are God’s children.

Some people resist that generosity.  Sometimes it’s because they are afraid that it means that “anything goes”.  But of course it doesn’t.  Clearly that’s not what Jesus means, certainly not in today’s gospel.  He goes on to say that if anyone puts a stumbling block in the way of someone who believes in him, it would be better to put a millstone around his neck and throw him in the sea.  He goes on to say that if your foot causes you to stumble, better to cut it off and enter life lame than to have two feet and be thrown into hell.  That certainly doesn’t sound like anything goes to me.   How we live matters, and there are right ways and wrong ways to go about it and there are right ways and wrong ways to treat each other.  Discipleship, the call to follow Jesus, is a demanding call, it is a call to take up your cross, to love God and to love you neighbour. 

But discipleship is also most certainly a call to a fundamental generosity and graciousness which transcends the human boundaries and barriers that we ourselves have created with our ‘us vs. them’ mentality.  The scriptures attest to this.  We find again and again that the moments when God’s grace surprises and confounds humanity are the very moments when that grace is more generous than we could have imagined and crosses boundaries that we thought could not be crossed.  Jesus eats with outcasts and sinners, confounding the rule-makers of his time.  He is convinced by the Syro-Phoenician woman to extend his ministry to foreigners, not just the Jewish people.  The early church, in a powerful movement of the Holy Spirit, breaks with tradition so that Gentiles may be fully included in the body of Christ.

To borrow a phrase from The Report of the Commission on the Marriage Canon of the Anglican Church of Canada, which was released this week and which I strongly commend to you, in all these moments in scripture,

“there is a recognition that God’s grace is broader than we had assumed, and that those who had been excluded are now being invited in.”

And so to those who would ask why we are celebrating a Liturgy of Re-Naming for Transgendered Persons today, I would humbly dare to answer that it is because Jesus wants us to show a generosity to all God’s children which transcends and breaks down the ‘us vs. them’ boundaries and barriers which exist in our church and in our society.

Also, it’s because we love you Eliot. 

The truth is, I may never be able to understand what it’s like to be a non-binary gendered trans person.  I don’t even know if I said that right.  But, at least in our better moments, by the grace of God, we are able to be generous by offering our support to a fellow traveller who bears the name of Christ on their faith journey.

Soon, we will turn to Davis and we will pledge to do all in our power to support him in his life in Christ.

Then not long after that we will turn to Eliot and pledge as follows:

“Eliot, we will walk with you.”

Amen.

http://www.anglican.ca/wp-content/uploads/Marriage_Canon_REPORT_15Sept22.pdf

Expectations. (Sept 13, 2015)

Homily.  Yr B Proper 24.  Sept 13 2015.  St. Albans Church

Readings:  Proverbs 1.20-33; Ps 19; James 3.1-12; Mk 8.27-38

We all have expectations.  Many of us are starting new phases in our lives this month, new jobs, new homes, a new school year.  And we have expectations for all of these things.  For those of you who are students starting a new year of university, what are your expectations?  Are you expecting a great learning experience?  To meet new friends?  A busy social life?  Hours spent in the library, or hours spent at the pub, or maybe both?

We have expectations of ourselves.  We have expectations about how we’re going to live, and maybe most importantly, we have expectations about what it will take to be happy in life.  Will it take a good education and a good job?  Do we expect to find happiness in romance?  Will we need to travel the world, do we want to party and have fun?  What does it mean to live a good, full and happy life?  Think about that for a moment.  What do you expect an abundant life to look like?  If you’ve got a pencil and paper, jot down a few things.  I’ll give you a moment.

Of course we don’t just have expectations about ourselves and our own lives, we have expectations of others too.  Here in Canada we’re right in the middle of an election campaign, just in case you haven’t noticed.  And we have expectations of the party leaders, the people who are running to be prime minister.  I want you to imagine for a moment that one of the party leaders has announced that he will be making a major speech.  And not just anywhere.  The leader has decided to travel all the way to Ottawa to make this major announcement on Parliament Hill.   And so he makes his way to Parliament Hill, and finds a place with the Parliament Buildings as the background, surrounded by his followers.  The media is there, with their cameras and microphones, and a large crowd gathers.  He begins his speech,

“Friends, I am running to be the prime minister of Canada!”

Wild cheering and applause breaks out from his followers.

“And if I am elected prime minister, my plan is to be rejected by the people of Canada, to suffer immensely, to be an object of ridicule, to be convicted as a criminal and to be thrown in jail.”

The cheering and applause stops abruptly.  The crowd starts to grumble.  The party communications director faints and falls to the ground.  The campaign manager runs up to the podium, takes the party leader aside and starts to berate him.

And all that is nothing compared to what we just read in today’s gospel.

In today’s gospel, Jesus decides that it’s time to make a major announcement, an announcement that he knows will confuse and crush the expectations of his followers, but must be made anyways.  He picks his location, taking his disciples and the crowds that follow them way up north to Caesarea Philippi, a Roman imperial city and a symbol of the military oppression of Israel.  And with the barracks of the Roman legion and the monuments of Roman imperialism as a backdrop, he asks his disciples a question:

“Who do people say I am?”

They answer him, “John the Baptist; and others Elijah; and still others one of the prophets.”

“But who do you say that I am?”

And Peter answers, correctly, “You are the Messiah.”

The Messiah.  The anointed one.    The one that the prophets had been pointing to and all Israel had been waiting for, for hundreds of years.  The one that God would send to defeat the enemy and save the people, restoring Israel to its proper place.  Finally, after years of waiting, after years of oppression and defeat, God was acting and the whole world would finally see what God is like through this Messiah whom he had sent.

And what do we expect God to be like?  What did Peter expect God to be like?

We want a God who is strong.  A God who keeps us safe, a God who helps us prosper, a God who fixes what’s wrong with this world.  If you don’t believe me, just listen to the words of the songs we sing in church.  In the 16^th century, Martin Luther wrote his greatest hymn.  What was it called?  “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”.  In our Anglican tradition, one of the all-time favourites is “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation”.  And are we any different in the 21^st century?  Well, we started out this morning by singing ‘This is Amazing Grace’.  Listen again to the words of the first stanza:

Who breaks the power of sin and darkness

Whose love is mighty and so much stronger

The King of Glory, the King above all kings

Who shakes the whole earth with holy thunder

Who leaves us breathless in awe and wonder

The King of Glory, the King above all kings

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.  That’s a strong God, a powerful God, a mighty God.  Gimme’ some of that holy thunder.  We want a God who is strong.  That’s what we expect.  That’s what Peter expects.  That’s what he expects of God’s Messiah.

And that’s not what Jesus gives us.

“The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

And the communications director faints and falls to the ground, and Peter rushes to the front, pulls Jesus aside and rebukes him.  But Jesus will not turn back.  Because Jesus must show us who God is, and this is the moment when his mission to do just that really gets going.

We want a God who is strong.  Jesus points us to a God who is weak, who suffers, who is vulnerable.  All in the name of love.  Because that is who God is.  God is love.  And that’s a good thing.  Because when we are weak, God is with us in our weakness.  When we suffer, God suffers alongside us.  When we are vulnerable, God meets us in our vulnerability.  When you think about it, you realize that there is a great strength in that.  But it’s not holy thunder.  It is, rather, the strength of rising again.

Jesus points to God.  And then he points to us.  Because if you want to follow Jesus, it will have an impact on your life.  Why?  Because life is like love.  It is meant to be given away.  It is only when you give your life away that you discover what life really is and what it is meant to be.  The only things that  really last, the only things we can hang onto, are the things we give away.  Things like love.  Forgiveness.  Compassion.  Service.

Does that sound confusing?  Difficult maybe?  Does it meet your expectations?  Maybe, maybe not.  For those of you that took me at my word earlier and wrote down your expectations for what a good, happy life would look like, take a look at what you wrote.   Jesus said “those who lose their life will save it.”  Any resonance there with what you wrote down?

You see, this is the pivot point of the gospel.  It’s the moment when Jesus points us to the truth about our lives that is mysterious and difficult to grasp, but is crucial:  that real and abundant life comes through sacrificial love and service to others.

Is that what you expected?

I admit, it’s a bit counter-cultural.  But then again, Jesus always was and always will be.  Love, forgiveness, compassion, generosity, gratitude, humility, vulnerability, sacrifice, trust.  Denying yourself, taking up your cross.  Nobody said it was going to be easy to follow Jesus.  

Oh and he’s leaving now.  He’s back on the road, on his way to Jerusalem, and along the way he’ll show us what this sort of life looks like. 

Are you coming with us?

Amen.

Getting Involved in Politics (July 12, 2015)

Homily:  Yr B P15, July 12 2015, St. Albans

Readings:  2 Sam 6.1-5, 12b-19; Ps 24, Eph 1.3-14; Mk 6.14-29

“King Herod heard of it.”  What?  What did he hear of?

Why, the mission of course.  What we read about in our gospel last week.  Jesus sent his disciples out to towns and villages all over Galilee, to heal the sick and to proclaim the Kingdom of God.

Of course King Herod heard of it.  He’s got his sources, the internal police, his spies on the ground.  Of course he heard of it.  And if King Herod heard of it, that’s not good, not good at all.  Because you remember what happened to John the Baptist, don’t you?

When I was walking the Camino in Spain last month, one of my walking companions in our group of seven that formed was a Hungarian woman.  One Saturday evening we went to mass in the village church.  But mid-way through the mass, I noticed that the Hungarian woman was gone.  I asked her afterwards what happened.  She told me that she’d left after the prayers because the priest had included prayers for the Spanish election which was just about to take place.  And it made her angry, because, she said, the church has no business in politics.  Church and state, religion and politics, these should be kept totally separate. 

We hear that often don’t we, that there should be a separation between church and state.  Some of that comes out of European history, where so-called religious wars were a scourge on society for hundreds of years from the 16^th century on.  Some of the drive for keeping religion out of politics is more recent, a secularizing tendency to restrict religion to the individual and private domain, keeping it out of the public domain.

Whatever the merit, or perhaps the foolishness, of these attempts to keep religion out of politics, it appears that Jesus didn’t get the memo.  Because Jesus chooses as his main message a phrase that is at once intentionally political and a deliberate challenge to those with political and military power:

“The time has come.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent.”

Just think how that would have sounded to King Herod.  Some upstart from Nazareth calling for fundamental change and proclaiming a new kingdom right under King Herod’s nose.  And Jesus was popular.  Massive crowds gathered around him.  And now he was expanding his mission, recruiting followers, sending them out to more and more villages.  

Who is this Jesus?  Some were saying John the Baptist raised from the dead.  Some said Elijah.  Still others claimed “He is a prophet.”

And tell me, what happens when prophets tell powerful men like King Herod the things they don’t want to hear?  What happens when God’s truth is spoken to power?

Well you know what happened to John the Baptist.

More than just an execution, the story of John’s death is a sick and twisted story.  To get an image of how sick and twisted, picture just for a moment the severed head of John the Baptist being placed in the hands of a young girl at the request of her own mother.  You’ve heard the old adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Well there’s its image, right there, a severed head being presented on a platter to a twelve year old girl.  That’s what power can do.

One of the ironies in the way that Mark tells the story is that Herod is actually presented as a sympathetic figure.  He feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man.  He liked to listen to him.  He is distressed at the thought of John’s death.  When John speaks truth to power, Herod actually recognizes the truth.  And that’s not enough, because still he is unable to give up the way of power, and power demands the head of John and gets it.

Last week when we considered the disciples heading out on their mission with nothing for the journey, no bread, no bag, no money, no spare clothes, we remarked on their vulnerability, how they would have to depend on the hospitality of those they met along the way to provide them with the basic necessities of life.  Today’s text takes their vulnerability to a whole new level.  The disciples have just joined the mission, they too are out proclaiming the Kingdom of God, and Herod has heard of it.  Keep this up and you will suffer the same fate as John the Baptist.  That’s the way of power.

I suppose that the disciples, as minor players in the drama, might have the option of scattering when things get bad.  Jesus won’t get the same opportunity.  He is already a marked man.  He has challenged the powers and authorities, and power will do its thing.  But Jesus is not deterred.  He will speak truth to power, in fact when asked why he came, he will reply that he came to bear witness to the truth.  And what truth is that?  The truth that Jesus bears witness to is that God’s way is not the way of power, but rather the way of the cross.

So on this question of the separation of religion and politics, who’s right?  Is it Jesus who intentionally begins his mission with a deliberately political declaration which he will take right to the capital city, the seat of power?  Or is it my Hungarian friend, who having surveyed the carnage of European history declares that the followers of Jesus have no business getting involved in politics?

Actually, I think that both are right.  Jesus is right because he knows what the psalmist declared in our psalm reading this morning.  “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and all who dwell therein.”  When the psalmist makes this declaration, he’s not just talking about the birds and the bees.  He’s talking about every sphere of human activity, including economics, politics and military engagement.  The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.  No sphere of human activity can be separated from the sovereignty of God.  Jesus’ mission is inherently political, and his followers are invited to join him in the realization of God’s kingdom on earth.

But my Hungarian friend is also right.  Because Jesus’ way is not the way of power, it is the way of the cross.  And so when we as followers of Jesus engage in the public sphere, we’re called to do so not from positions of power, but from a position of vulnerability.  And when we do so, our sole allegiance is to God, not to our country, not to our cultural or ethnic group, not to any political party.  And that’s where the church has gone wrong in times past, those are the tragic mistakes that so enraged my Hungarian friend.  Often, when the church has engaged in politics it has been, first of all, from a position of power and secondly, in allegiance with nation-states or political parties. 

That’s not the way of the cross.  That’s not the way of Jesus.

As people of faith, we bring our faith into all domains of life.  Our faith is not something we limit to our homes, or to Sunday mornings.  We’ve been invited to proclaim the kingdom of God in our time and place.  We’ve been told to love our neighbours as ourselves.  We’ve been called to feed the hungry and care for the needy and to release those who are oppressed.  We’ve been taught to love our enemies.

                                                                                                                                 

None of these things can be done from the privacy of our own homes or from the confines of this building on a Sunday morning.  All are inherently public and political acts.  So we must enter the public domain.  But when we do enter the public domain we are called to do so as followers of Jesus.  Take nothing for the journey – no bread, no bag, no money in your belts.  And yes, Herod will hear of it.  But go anyways.  We follow not the way of power, but the way of the cross.

Amen.

He Called Her a Dog (Sunday Sept 6 2015)

Homily:  Yr B Proper 23, Sept 6 2015, St. Albans

Readings:  Proverbs 22; Psalm 125; James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37

He called her a dog.  Then she won the argument, and Jesus changed his mind and he did what she asked.

You know, I was planning to preach on the letter of James today.  In fact, I was looking forward to it.  The letter of James is all about theological integrity.  It’s about practicing what you preach, in real practical ways.  Do you really believe in our Lord Jesus Christ?  Well then let’s see what happens when a rich, well-dressed person and a poor, poorly dressed person walk through the doors of the church.  Do you treat the one differently than the other?  I was looking forward to preaching on that, because it’s good practical stuff, it’s stuff that happens in our lives every day and it reminds us that faith involves more than just affirming theological formulas, it really means a thorough re-orientation of our lives.  Our faith has to make a difference – otherwise it’s dead.

That’s what I was going to talk about this morning, and believe me, I can get into that stuff, it would have been a good sermon.

But then I read the gospel.  And he called her a dog.  Then she won the argument, and Jesus changed his mind, and he did what she asked.

Whoa!  That’s not the Jesus they taught me about in Sunday School.  What happened to the Jesus who is compassionate, who is always nice, who knows everything that’s going on and is always right so he wouldn’t ever have to change his mind.  Does anyone else here find today’s gospel a challenge?

So I figure that we should talk about this a bit.

In today’s gospel, Jesus enters foreign territory.  He goes northwest to the region of Tyre on the Mediterranean coast.  It seems like he just needed to get away.  Up until this point, his ministry has taken place in and around his native land of Galilee, in Jewish territory.  He’s been swarmed by crowds, he’s been called demon-possessed, the authorities are out to get him.  Maybe he just needs a break, so he takes off to foreign territory and holes up in a house there, hoping no one will find him.

But he is found.  There’s a pounding on the door.  A woman, a foreign woman, desperate, begs Jesus to heal her daughter.  But Jesus says to her, “let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Now it was common enough in those days for Jews to refer to foreigners as dogs.  And the relationship between Jews and the people of Tyre was particularly bad as a result of a recent conflict.  Jesus may have been simply saying what any other Jew might have said.  How often after all, do we simply parrot the biases and assumptions of our own culture and society?  But it still sounds rude, and it seems to be out of character for Jesus.  And because of this various theologians and commentators on the gospels have done all sorts of mental gymnastics to get around this.  Some explain that Jesus used the diminutive word for dog, so what he was saying was “little dogs”, which sounds a bit nicer.  Others explain that Jesus was just testing the woman, or that the verbal exchange was purely for the benefit of unnamed listeners, or that Jesus, knowing what would happen, was simply setting the woman up for a witty reply.

To be honest, I don’t buy any of those explanations.  What Jesus said still sounds rude to me.  I can’t understand it, I can’t justify it and I can’t explain it. 

But I am very thankful that he said it.  Because through this exchange between Jesus and the woman, whether he intended to or not, Jesus has taught me a lot about two things:  First about the Kingdom of God.  And secondly about discipleship.

In the gospel of Mark, the kingdom of God is always portrayed as this surprising, exciting, boundary-crossing new reality that breaks into our world in the least likely of places.  Even Jesus himself is surprised and stretched when the kingdom of God breaks into his house in Tyre through this encounter with the Syrophoenecian woman.

And discipleship?  Well, discipleship is just a fancy word for “learning”.  We are called to be learners, disciples of Jesus.  And how is it that we learn?  It’s a new school year.  Many of us have just embarked on a new phase of our learning.  We’re taking courses, we’re going to lectures, we’re reading books, soon we’ll be writing papers and exams. 

All of these are good ways to learn.  But the best way to learn, the most profound and life-changing learnings, happen when we encounter and engage with someone who is very different from ourselves.

In today’s gospel, Jesus encounters someone who is different from him in just about every possible way.  He is a Jew, she is a Gentile.  He was born in the land of Israel; she was born in Syrophoenicia.  He is a man, she is a woman.  He’s single, she has a daughter.  He doesn’t know who she is; she’s heard all about him.  He’s seeking a time of rest and solitude; she’s desperate and it’s urgent.

I imagine that the reason that Jesus has holed up in this house in the region of Tyre is that he’s trying to figure some stuff out in his life.  He needs time to seek guidance from God the Father.  He’s trying to flesh out this mission he’s been given, trying to understand what this vocation of Messiah is all about. 

And I can imagine that as he is praying, as he is asking God, ‘tell me what comes next in my ministry’, there is a pounding on the door, and he opens it and the woman throws herself at his feet and begs for his help.

And immediately, Jesus is faced with a dilemma.  Because up until that moment his understanding of his mission, his own theology if you like, tells him that God’s kingdom, God’s grace and healing and salvation would be given first to the Jews, the children, and only later to the Gentiles.  This theological understanding wasn’t unique to Jesus, it was the usual Jewish way of thinking, the understanding reflected in the prophet Isaiah, and in the theology of Paul that you find in his letter to the Romans.  And so Jesus answers the woman by saying not yet, it’s not yet time for his ministry to extend to her and her daughter.

But she won’t accept this.  Sometimes human need trumps theology.  She responds with humility, with insight, with persistence and humour.  “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

There is enough of God’s goodness and love to go around, she is telling him, it doesn’t have to be confined to one people, and even a crumb of God’s grace will be good enough for me and my daughter.

The Syrophoenician woman refuses to accept the limitations of Jesus’ theology.  She refuses to accept his timelines.  She has a greater vision of God’s grace than he does.  She is stretching him, and Jesus allows himself to be stretched by his encounter with her.  The abundance of God’s kingdom is breaking out in ways that surprise even Jesus!  And he goes with it, he learns from it.  He changes his mind!  He broadens his theology and expands his mission.  He heals the woman’s daughter, and then he goes on to travel through foreign lands, feeding crowds just as he did back home, making the deaf to hear and the mute to speak, the very signs that Isaiah had prophesied would mean the in-breaking of God’s kingdom here on earth.  Not just in the land of Israel, but throughout the nations.

Isn’t it remarkable that the same Jesus that calls us to be disciples, to be learners, also shows us what learning looks like.  Learning happens when we encounter someone who is very different from us, and allow ourselves to be stretched, to be transformed, to change our minds, to be led into a greater vision of what God is calling us to do.  Isn’t it remarkable that when Jesus calls on God for guidance, that guidance just may have come in the form of a surprise encounter with a hated foreigner who also happens to be a desperate mother.

And if Jesus can learn from his encounters, if he can be willing to go beyond his perceived limits, well, don’t you think we can too!

We have, right here in this community of St. Albans, an amazing opportunity to do just that.  Because as a new congregation in a dynamic urban neighbourhood right beside the university, we get to encounter new people every week.  How will this change us?  How will we as church be stretched and shaped into a more abundant and life-giving vision of the community we are called to be and of the ministries we are called to engage in?  What might we be asked to do now that we thought could wait until later?

Well, the answer is that we just don’t know!  What we do know is that we are called to be disciples, to be learners, and that our most profound learnings will happen when we encounter and engage with people who are different from us, who challenge us and stretch us.  May God bless us and surprise us by bringing these people into our lives.

Amen.