September 2011 Sermons

Pentecost XXI

Year A Creation Three (RCL)

September 25, 2011

Joel 1:1-3, 8-20                        Revelation 21:1-5
Psalm 25                                   Matthew 21:23-32

I thought about titling this sermon “My Prison Adventures”—but that might give the wrong idea.

I’ve been in prison or jail three times in my life—all voluntarily, I should add.

The first was my senior year in high school. My basketball team was scrimmaging some inmates at the minimum-security federal prison in Lompoc (this prison, by the way, in the ‘70s became famous as “Nixon’s Country Club” and “Watergate West”).

Now, you have to remember this was back when basketball players wore short shorts. Or, as I like to say, back when men were men and shorts were short.

Some of the prisoners figured out my name. So, any time I had the ball they would catcall in their best falsetto voices, “Vivian, oh VIV-I-AN!”

My second experience, about a year later, was much more somber. For some reason that baffles me now, instead of going to college locally I hied myself off to the University of Texas and lived with my aunt and uncle in Austin. I lasted one, miserable, semester.

One night my uncle got a phone call around two or three in the morning. My older brother, Les, who was living in Austin, had been arrested.

Here you need to know, or remember, that this was the 60s—Fall, 1969: Vietnam was escalating, Bobby and Martin had been murdered, riots had raged in LA and all over the country.

This was also Texas.

Les had been arrested for marijuana possession, second-offense. Officers from the Texas Department of Public safety (also known as “the Gestapo”) had broken into Les’ home in the middle of the night, without a warrant, and vacuumed up enough pot to bust him.

The next morning my uncle boosted me through the bathroom window. The house was a wreck; everything they hadn’t destroyed, they stole.

My brother, you see, was a member of the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, a radical left-wing group; he’d been organizing students at the university. Because of his radical activities, for second-offense possession Les was facing a prison sentence of twenty-five years.

Les asked me to bring him some books that hadn’t been stolen. When I got inside the jail, a guard snarled at me, “Boy, whata you bringin’ that trash in here for?” Les never got the books.

My uncle, a lawyer, consulted with a criminal defense attorney. His advice was simple: pay the bail bondsman, and get Les out of Texas.  The State would be glad to get rid of him.

So, that’s what we did. And, purposely, none of us knew where he went. I later learned that Les had gone to Oregon and grown America’s favorite illegal cash crop.

My third prison visit was last week. Mary and I visited an inmate in Tehachapi, an Episcopalian. I’ll call him “Kevin.”

Since Mary and I hadn’t been there before and didn’t know the 10,919 rules (which Kevin later told us vary every day), our initial entrance was a comedy of errors.

Mary had to surrender her pants—but you can ask her about that.

Eventually, we were let into a huge visiting room. I think we were at table 49. So there were fifty to sixty tables with people visiting prisoners. As we waited for Kevin, I looked around. One huge wall was covered with bright, colorful, and expert renderings of Disney characters and Barney the purple dinosaur.

At every table a prisoner was seated—all prisoners required to face one way so the guards could watch them. And each table, except for the prison-garbed inmates, looked like a Grace potluck: parents, friends, siblings, girlfriends, wives, grandparents, children—all eating, laughing, sharing stories.

I looked at the faces. Humanity.

I thought: Here’s humanity, in all its greatness and craziness, happiness and sorrow, freedom and imprisonment.

And I felt blessed to be there.

I hoped I could do our prisoner as much good as being there was doing for me.

Now, I don’t want to be naïve. Prisons can be dangerous, and there are a lot of scary people, both inside and outside prison. And we were in a minimum security unit. There were two more for the scarier guys.

Why did I feel blessed? Because being there was challenging my stereotypes, fears, and assumptions. These were people just like me. Well, mostly like me: one guy had his shaved head covered with tattoos. I think I’ll avoid that fashion statement.

Kids, friends, siblings, parents, grandparents: the astounding and perplexing cornucopia and cacophony of humanity.

And Mary and I were there to bring a message of hope—from God, from Christ, from all of us at Grace.

When I read today’s passage from Joel this week, I immediately thought of Kevin:

Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your ancestors? Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.

Because of what he’s done, Kevin has lost most of his family and friends. I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to lose Miriam and my children, especially if I myself caused that loss. There’d be a hole in my soul that you could drive not one, but a thousand, semis through, side by side. Such torture has to be infinitely worse than anything the State can inflict:

The fields are devastated [Joel continues], the ground mourns; for the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil fails. Be dismayed, you farmers, wail, you vinedressers, over the wheat and the barley; for the crops of the field are ruined. The vine withers, the fig tree droops. Pomegranate, palm, and apple— all the trees of the field are dried up; surely, joy withers away among the people.

For Joel, Israel’s devastated landscape holds a condemning mirror up to Israel’s wasted soul.

Dare she look deeply into that mirror? Dare we?

Our brother Kevin has not only looked into the mirror, he has stepped inside.

I think each of us has inside us a Hanoi Hilton, an Abu Ghraib, a Guantánamo.  Les’ torture chamber was drugs, where he incarcerated himself for far too long.

Thanks be to God, much of the time our cells are empty, the cattle prods and water boards lie idle. And usually, I think, when the cells are occupied, it’s other people—or, rather, their barbed-wire shadows—that we’ve imprisoned there: we’ve made them the prisoners of our own angers, fears, hatreds, and projections.

And here’s where Kevin may be able to help us. Any time someone’s languishing in one of our self-made dungeons, we turn ourselves into prison guards. Perhaps worse, all too often the prisoner we entomb is ourselves. We drink the same brackish water and eat the same vile bread as other prisoners. An unholy Communion we concelebrate with the Devil.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s prisoners who can most teach us hope. Society’s inmates, and our own. Like the prostitutes and tax collectors in today’s Gospel, who believe John the Baptists’ message of justice and righteousness (1).

In Jesus’ day, prostitutes and tax collectors were unclean, beyond society’s carefully-tended and –manicured boundaries. Like the guy with the shaved head and tattoos, like Kevin.

And yet, as Jesus says today, it is they who hear the Gospel.

The whole human family is sitting at those tables in that visiting room in Tehachapi, each and every one of us, whether our sins are great or whether they are small, many or few. We, with our sins, concelebrating and sharing a most holy Communion.

What did Mary and I offer Kevin a week ago Saturday? A fragment, a sliver, a shard of resurrection.

Here’s the stupefying and stupendous truth: in some public yet private, expressible and inexplicable way, the only way we have resurrection is if we offer it to others.

Amen.

NOTES

1.     Greek dikaiosunē (thee-ke-o-see-nee) means both.



Proper 20 (RCL)

Year A—Creation Two

September 18, 2011
Exodus 16:2-15    Philippians 1:27-30  Psalm 105:1-6, 37-42            Matthew 20:1-16

Some of you know I used to be an angry guy. It turns out that most of that was due to the low-simmering depression I’d had for fifty years.

Like a recovering alcoholic, I am a walking flashing neon sign for “better late than never.”

I’m truly a changed man.

Now, I’m just frustrated

Especially with us Christians.

As you know all too well, my lamentations could go on forever. But let me share just one news item I saw recently:

One of the many lawsuits filed against the national health care act gave this as one of its reasons to oppose mandatory health care: “This health insurance law redistributes wealth among private parties to achieve an alleged humanitarian idea.” (1).

So, who was this suit filed by? It was filed by Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Liberty is the fundamentalist Christian college founded by Jerry Falwell.

Yes, health care should be discussed and debated. But what flabbergasted me was who filed the law suit, and

This Christian school has made an idol of radical individualism. I can absolutely guarantee you that one thing the Bible does not teach is radical individualism. The Bible, the Gospel, teach just the opposite: community, caring for each other.

This teaching is on almost every page. As it so happens, the section on Matthew we’re reading now in Pentecost is about “redistribution” of wealth and the idolatry of individualism.

Our Gospel reading for today is Matthew 20. Just before this, in Matthew 19, is the famous exchange between Jesus and a rich young man who wants to know what he has to do have eternal life (2).

Jesus says, “Keep the commandments.”

The guy says, “But I do all that.”

Really? Really?

I give Jesus props here. If the guy said that to me, I’d burst into laughter: “Dude, are you kidding me?”

But this guy’s clueless. “What else do I need to do?” he asks.

Jesus looks over at the disciples and rolls his eyes. Then he tells the rich young guy, “If you really want to be perfect, go, sell everything you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”

The young man, saddened, walks away.

To whom would Jesus redistribute wealth?

But what does all this have to do with God’s Kingdom? To borrow from St. Augustine: there’s the Kingdom of God, and there’s the Kingdom of Man. As Christians, we have the privilege, responsibility—and discomfort—of living in both. As Christians, we’re supposed to see that our kingdom is not ultimate truth. It’s God’s Kingdom that’s ultimate reality.

The mistake too many of us Christians make is that we accept society’s norms as reality: poverty, discrimination, unequal health care, state murder, endless war. Then we make matters worse by claiming to find these norms in the Bible and wrapping them in the American flag.

For two thousand years Jesus’ Kingdom parables have told us that our kingdom, pretty as it sometimes is, comfortable as it sometimes is, is not God’s Kingdom.

For two thousand years, we’ve done a pretty good job of playing deaf.

The kingdom, the kingdom that Jesus taught, and lived, and died for, is not in heaven, it’s on earth; the Kingdom will not wait for the Second Coming. It’s here, right now. In every breath we take, in every mouth we feed, in every person we clothe. In every person we forgive.

Our reading from Matthew today, like the one about the rich young man, is one of the Kingdom parables.

In today’s parable a landowner goes out to where the day-laborers hang out—just like today with farm workers. He hires these braceros at 6, 9, noon, 3, and 5.

Then he pays them all the same wage.

Of course the guys who worked all day are pissed. Who wouldn’t be?

And that’s precisely Jesus’ point. Our ways are not God’s ways.

Can you imagine what would happen to Jesus if he gave this proposal before the House Budget Committee?

But here’s what’s most important: what Jesus says about God’s kingdom surpasses economics by as far as the universe surpasses a microbe.

With these Kingdom parables, Jesus is asking us to imagine not just economics but reality, all reality, God’s reality, in a radically different way than we normally do.

Someone who actually does this on a daily basis is Sara Miles. Her book Take this Bread has changed my life (3).  From now on, when lamentations fill my heart to the breaking point, when frustrations make me crazy, I’ll reflect for just a minute on Sara and what she is doing, and restore my soul.

Sara Miles is a convert to Christianity, an Episcopalian. Against all odds, she started in San Francisco a now-thriving food pantry that has given birth to a dozen more. Her parish, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, is in Potrero Hill, a section of San Francisco that’s divided, just as America increasingly is now, between the haves and the have-nots: abundant wealth living cheek-by-jowl with abject poverty.

By redefining church every day, she redefines our Christian reality. And here’s the most wonderful part: if we’re brave enough to redefine our Christian reality, we redefine all reality.

Listen to how Sara redefines church and, by doing so, redefines reality: “One evening,” she says,

after everyone else had left [the food pantry], I’d heard a confession from a pantry volunteer, who’d brought me what she said was a “secret” in a shopping bag. She had a cast on her leg and kept looking over her shoulder anxiously, and she made me close the kitchen door. Her boyfriend, she said, who beat her up regularly, had been threatening to kill her, she said, swallowing hard.

           “I thought this is a church, it’ll be safe here,” she said, unwrapping a dirty dish towel from around a huge .357 Magnum revolver.

          That’s what church was for, I realized: a place to bring the ugly, frightening secret you couldn’t tell anyone else about. I checked that the gun was disarmed and stuck it in a cookie tin in a locked closet beneath the pantry shelves. I didn’t tell anyone from the Sunday congregation. The woman moved away, to stay with a sister in Sacramento.

[A month later Sara tells Steve, the parish administrator.]

“You must be kidding,” he said.

“Isn’t this what church is for?” I said.

“Uh, yeah,” said Steve. He looked scared, and as if he wanted to laugh at the same time. “Whoa, that’s a really big gun.” We drove down to the local police station, and I walked up to the officer on duty. I was wearing a crucifix and a fairly respectable sweater. “Excuse me. I found this in our churchyard,” I lied. “Can you please take it?”

          The cops had gathered around the officer who unwrapped the package. ”Holy shit,” one of them said. “Excuse me, ma’am.” They passed it around, gingerly, and let me leave after I insisted I didn’t want to make a report or get a receipt. I said to Steve, “Can you imagine if we’d been two black teenage guys walking in with that?”

          Steve replied, “You just made the high point of my career as a parish administrator. I never imagined I’d show a cop something that could make him say ‘Holy shit.’”

          “Yeah, well,” I said, “I guess that is what you call the Christian life.” Amen.

NOTES
1.    http://www.liberty.edu/index.cfm?PID=18495&MID=30152.
2.   Mt 19:16-22.
3.   Take this Bread: A Radical Conversion. http://www.amazon.com/Take-This-Bread-Radical-Conversion/dp/0345495799/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316304859&sr=1-1. the reason: a Christian school horrified by the supposed “redistribution of wealth” and feared restrictions on the sovereignty of the individual.



The 13th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 19)

Readings (Mt 18:21-35; Romans 14:1-12; Exodus 14:19-31)

        September 11 2011. The ten year anniversary of a modern “day of infamy” for us, we are still in pain, still feeling great sorrow, still harboring feelings of anger. To any of you who lost a loved one, I understand and I love alongside you.  To those of you who have loved ones in either of the resulting wars, I worry alongside you. To those of you who are fearful about the future, I worry alongside you. May peace and love fill our hearts and minds. May we remember there is only one source, one power in our lives.
        What an auspicious day. Today we will be bombarded with images old and new. Old feelings of grief, anger, fear, and sorrow will resurface and threaten to send us back, back to those moments of disbelief and shock.

        Today’s gospel is so very fitting and all the more important because today the day of remembrance, the day of reliving, is a day that can be easily lost in patriotism, and flag waving.  For, many today will be a day of flag waving and chest beating. Cathy and I live across the street from Valley Baptist Church on Fruitvale. When we got up this morning, we saw that members of the church had lined the street with American flags. It was quite a stirring sight – all those flags waving in the breeze. The street was awash in red, white, and blue, but somehow I just don't think this is what Jesus was preaching.

        Here we have Peter, all puffed up because Jesus has chosen him to be the rock, the first pillar of His New Church. Can’t you just imagine some of the grumbling from the other disciples? Why him? What has he done that's so special? From the gospel we get the distinct feeling that Peter is beginning to believe his own publicity! Or Peter is easily egged on by the other disciples to confront Jesus on forgiveness.  He sounds convinced that he understands this strange concept of forgiveness. He brags to Jesus. “Oh I get it, Lord. You want me to forgive 7 times. I mean, Lord, that's a lot, but I get it.”  

We can see Jesus shaking his head in disbelief. You can just hear him thinking –

‘These guys will never get it! I talk and I talk. I explain and explain. I tell story after story and here Peter is one more time, thinking he gets it. “O’Brother- Peter, Really?’

Jesus would like to say to Peter, “Peter, Forgiveness is not limited to 7 times. Think more along the lines of 70x7!!!!  That's hundred times more than your - little 7 times!!!!!!”  

        How shocked Peter must have been, scratching his head in disbelief.  How shocked we all are!  I wonder are we capable of doing this, especially in a world gone wild?

        Usually, our parents are the first persons to teach us about forgiveness.  As a young school boy, I remember a vivid occasion of confusion about how my dad understands forgiveness.  I overheard him talking to a close friend about the Japanese and Pearl Harbor. While waving his hands, he talked about “the hole” in his heart because the Japanese dragging us into World War II and how it changed his Dad and his life forever. In his eyes, I saw bitterness and hurt when he declared, "I will never buy Japanese products...and I will probably never go to the Memorial at Pearl Harbor...it is still too painful." This confused my young mind since I had a friend at school who was Japanese. I was perplexed.  Parent’s say the darnest things.

        Being stuck in a place where we cannot or do not forgive strikes at the heart of our faith.

        Many of you know that I was a Roman Catholic priest and that now I am a licensed marriage and family therapist.  I heard as a priest and still hear as a therapist comments like: “I do not care what Jesus says, I just can’t forgive my spouse for the affair”: or “Am I really supposed to forgive that man who physically hurt by daughter? He ruined her life!”; or more to the point “Come on…How can anyone even think of forgiving the terrors who destroyed the World Trade Center?”

        During the 1990’s, forgiveness finally came into the light as a legitimate topic for study and research from the American Psychological Association.

        One does not need to be an expert on psychology to know the long-term emotional and physical consequences of not forgiving oneself, others or God for their wounds.   They are likely to suffer from sleeping issues, heart disease, and have less resistance to physical illness.  

        A particularly significant study, the Stanford Forgiveness Project, was begun October, 1998.  Since then the study has demonstrated the personal benefits of “letting go” of one’s grievance stories and moving from harboring hurts to actual practice of forgiving others.  I find it interesting that a waterfall of forgiveness studies started prior to the 9/11 attack on American soil.  I cannot think but God’s hand is at work.    

        As I prepared for this sermon, I read many articles, many tributes, and many explanations about the first 9/11 attack. The media is littered with stories.

        One story entitled “An Unlikely Friendship” spoke to my heart about forgiveness.  Phyllis Rodriguez lost her son, Greg, in attack on the World Trade Center. In the years since that terrible loss, she has formed what many consider to be an unusual friendship with Aicha el-Wafi, the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was convicted of playing a large role in the attacks.  He is currently serving a life sentence for his crimes. So how did Rodriguez come to forgive? In an interview with the Forgiveness Project, she spoke a bit about her philosophy, “When Greg was killed, I thoughts, I would never forgive the people who murdered my son. But I have come to see forgiveness as more than a word. It's a context, of process. I don't forgive the act, but trying to understand why someone had acted in a way they have is a part of the process of forgiveness. Forgiveness is being able to accept another person for being human and fallible.”     

        Generosity, tolerance, and speaking out against violence are things the two women agree on --strong beliefs that have helped them through unimaginable pain and suffering.

        Today the finished 9/11 Memorial in New York is opened.  From the internet video, it is beautiful, striking and somber. It shows cascading waterfalls into the places where the two towers stood.  Around each acre-long cascading waterfall are the names randomly etched into the bronze-paneled railings.  Appropriately, the memorial is entitled “Reflecting on Absence.”

        Jesus asks us to forgive an unlimited number of times. As we gather as a faith community and as a nation, perhaps the place to start with forgiveness is with one.


September 4, 2011

Readings: Ezekiel 33:7-11, Romans 13:8-14, Matthew 18:15-20

Do you ever listen to the Gospel and think, “Huh? What? I’m so confused.” I have to admit; I really struggled with today’s Gospel and well, with some of this scripture too. I am not a fan of damnation and exclusion. I don’t believe in a God of vengeance or fury. I don’t believe we have the right to say to a member, “You are no longer welcome.” And then to treat them like, as Jesus says, “a Gentile or a tax collector” – although I might be willing to make an exemption for the tax collector. Very little in this Gospel feels comfortable or right to me. I just don’t know.

First we hear Ezekiel tells us to stop our ‘wicked ways’. ‘Wicked ways’? Whose definition of wicked? –For a time, saying “Isn’t that wicked?” or just “wicked” meant something was pretty cool, or fab, or awesome, or bad, or well you get the drift. I think, for many of us, when we think of the word ‘wicked’, in this context at least, we think about ‘bad action’, or sin. But what is sin? Do any of us really know? You know, Catholics have grades of sin – venial sins, mortal sins, oh, and don’t forget original sin. As a kid, I was so terrified of sinning – terrified I’d go to hell. I can remember being all of 9 years old, sitting at the kitchen table, absolutely hysterical one night. I was sobbing uncontrollably. I was so miserable. My father had no idea what to do, so he left it up to my mom. Now I love my mom. She was a victim of her age. She was bright, and fun, and not just a little crazy. She also had no time for ‘this nonsense’ as she called it. When I was finally able to calm down enough to tell her my fear (quite frankly, I was ashamed to even admit this to my mother) I managed to blurt out “I’m afraid I’m going to die in my sleep and go to hell!” I think my mom was quite stunned by this. I remember her looking at me with such an incredulous look. “Have you done something you shouldn’t have done?” she wanted to know. I shook my head, “No, I don’t think so?” Then she said the most calming thing. She said, “God doesn’t send children to hell. God loves all children, no matter what.” My mother, the brilliant theologian. Who knew? I don’t remember what happened after that, but I do know I wasn’t completely convinced. I’d go to confession and make up sins, just in case, maybe I had committed it, but didn’t remember. I can remember, as a young girl, maybe 11, 12, or 13 years old, going to confession and confessing the sin of adultery. I had no clue what that was. I just knew it was bad, and since I was a sinner, I mean we were told that regularly, and adultery was talked about in such hushed tones that it must be really bad, then I must, at some point, have done it. How crazy is that?

So next we hear Paul telling us to ‘WAKE UP’! Paul, the original end times guy. ‘Wake up’. I don’t think he means stop hitting the snooze button, although that idea certainly does fit. We do like to hit that snooze – just a few more minutes, just let me keep my eyes closed, just let me be. I don’t want to be aware. I don’t want to know. I just want to be left in peace. And here Paul is, reminding us that the ‘end’ is near. Salvation is near – wake up!

We hear quite a bit about end times.  We seem to be rather obsessed with it. Just a couple months ago, the end was supposed to happen – When was that? May 21? Wasn’t that it? And then, what about the Mayan calendar, and all those predictions about December 21? Is that ‘the end of time’? Are we, perhaps in the end times now? One wonders when we look at the economy, at the shenanigans in Washington, at the cataclysmic weather events happening around the globe. Why even some of my favorite spiritual leaders are preaching about end times, but the end times they are talking about have more to do with a consciousness shift, an awareness shift, a shift from being 5 sensory beings caught up in our own little teeny tiny worlds, or bodies with souls, to becoming multi-sensory, intuitive, spiritual beings, or souls with bodies. Perhaps? Maybe?

And then we come to the Gospel and Jesus setting down some rules (which kind of confused me. I get the first one – when someone offends you, use I statements, and work it out. But the other two? Bringing extra people, getting the church involved, shaming and shunning people? I just don’t know. Whatever happened to turn the other cheek, and you who is without sin, throw the first stone? Perhaps the Scripture expert sitting behind me can explain that part.). But then He tells us, “whatever you bind on earth, will be bound in heaven. Whatever two of you agree on and ask for, will be granted. Where 2 or more are gathered in my name, I am there among you.” I wonder if we have any clue what that means. Are we capable of ‘getting this?’ I do know, though, many churches have taken these 3 sentences and built entire dogmas and doctrines around them. Such power and, boy, our egos just love it. Such arrogance.

But, wait, what about those wicked ways? Could they be somehow tied to this sense of arrogance, this “we know the way” mentality? I mean, really, what is wicked? What is sin? So many different definitions out there, oh, and what about venial and mortal? Well, what about them? Oh, and waking up? And binding? Personally, I wonder if that ‘s all too much responsibility for me!

I read a few Bible commentaries as I prepped for this today. I’m not saying these scholars don’t know what they are talking about, but I will say that I was very uncomfortable with their explanations. Every explanation left me feeling that God is over there. Jesus is over there. And I, we, are somewhere way off in the distance. No, that just can’t be right. That implies that there is a separation, a gap, a distance, between us and God, between us and Jesus, between each other, and within ourselves. No, No, No.

I want to say this very clearly. We are not separate. Nothing we do is causes or creates separation – not from God, not from Jesus, not even from each other. Nothing. It is our egos that play up this fear driven belief in separation, and we are ego-centric enough to think that we have this power – this power to be separate.

So if we are not separate, when we talk about binding and loosing, when we talk about wicked ways, then we are saying whatever I do to you, I do to myself, and whatever I think about you, I think about myself. Whatever I think about myself, I also think about you. If I believe I am bad, then you are too. Dare I say,  we are also doing and thinking the same thing about God and Jesus. I mean, listen. Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, ‘whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.’ So when we are binding each other with anger, fear, prejudice, limitations, sorrow, we are not only binding each other, we are also binding Jesus, binding God. 

But, wait, there is salvation. We are told how to “wake up.” Paul mentions it in the first part of the reading we heard today. He says, quoting Jesus, ‘Love.” Not romantic, flowers and roses love, not familial love, not the love of friendship, but love as in compassion, love as in acceptance, love as in recognizing human frailty, love as in forgiveness. Love. Love is all that matters. Love is all there is. Or as those modern day prophets, the Beatles, and John Lennon, sang, “All you need is love.”

Amen.