Parents are often embarrassed by their 3 and 4 year olds who ask “why” over and over again!  You know that broken-record-stage, where they can’t stop themselves:  “We have to go now, Jaylyn.”  Why?  “Because we have to go to the grocery store.”  Why?  “Because we have to pick up some food for supper.”  Why?  “Because we’re going to be hungry later on.”  Why?  And so on! 

Children are the ultimate symbol of an open and questioning innocence, not yet knowing and understanding.  At this age there is no such thing as a secret agenda, no competitive scheming.  And I find their questions fascinating, myself, but then of course, I don’t have any children of my own to take home and care for 24/7!  But it seems to me there’s something about the dogged pursuit of “why,” that they have, that fearlessly keeps digging into things, which I’ve probably long ago given up on. 

The disciples are afraid to ask Jesus any tough questions at all about what he was teaching them.  They don’t really understand what he’s talking about when he says he’ll be betrayed into human hands and killed. 

I remember when I failed to ask questions of my Algebra teacher back in the 7th grade, and it got me in a heap of trouble!  I didn’t really get Algebra, why I needed it, or what it could possible do for me, then, or anywhere down the line when I got older.  And the truth was, advanced math and science were not going to be my best subjects – I just didn’t have the aptitude for them.  But, more than that, what I didn’t realize, even then, was how linearly progressive Algebra was, and if you misunderstand one theorem one day, you won’t get the next one the next day, and so soon I was hopelessly behind.  Lack of aptitude and interest, led to lack of understanding, and fear of raising my hand in Algebra class.  I was afraid to ask for help becasue I didn’t want to sound dumb.  And so, ironically, I got dummer and dummer every day! 

The disciples, at least on their first day, had done well on their Quiz with Jesus.  “Who do people say that I am?” he asked them, and Peter answered correctly: the Messiah.  But, they must have been texting in class when Jesus instructed them on the next theological theorem, that he is more like a Son of the Human One/Son of Man, kind of Messiah.  And so they just got dummer and dummer, and more and more afraid to ask him what that meant.  Suffer and die?  Messiah’s didn’t do that!  The Messiah they expected was supposed to be a royal ruler of all, an unassailable conqueror, not this odd, contrarian, self-emptying, and awkward kind of savior.  Something just didn’t compute!  And so they were afraid to ask and it got them in a heap of trouble. 

Communities of faith, it is said, often experience conflict when they fail to provide a safe place to ask questions, which is why at Unity we’ve worked hard to open up a safe space for discussion, and to encourage questions.  Here, we admit we don’t have all the answers, or even that there is just one, and we make questioning and discussion a high priority.  Questions show openness to diversity and a wide range of opinion.  They don’t presuppose answers, but leave room for our personal and community transformation.  As an urban green space, welcoming everyone, here at Unity, we encourage engagement with one another and with the Holy Spirit, that we might be changed and open to where God wants us to go.  We love discovering new friendships and partnerships, even as we cherish those we have made over the years, like with the Chicago Chamber Choir, who has been our friend and partner for a long time, because of that. 

And here at Unity, we are proud of our welcome for everyone, including those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning.  In the spirit of openness, some people have asked me about why the Q is added on to LGBT?  And, that’s a whole discussion in itself, of course, but in a word, most say Q stands for Queer, on the one hand, in a positive sense, as a reclaiming of a term that was for a long time used in a hurtful and derogatory way, and so, because for some it can be a bit shocking still, we want to be sensitive and aware of that.  And then, on the other hand, Q is for questioning, for raising the awareness for all of us about “what” gender identity is, “how” it is taught to us, and how fluid, gender is!  Most of us don’t fit so neatly into female or male caricatures as we might think.  If we sit down to discuss it, we find that questions arise.  Questions like, Are you a man who doesn’t like violence? Are you a strong woman? Do you wear your hair “wrong” for your gender, or wear the “wrong” color for your gender, or walk wrong, or read the wrong books, or date wrong, or vote wrong?  So Q is for questioning gender identity and being open to who we truly are without the gloss of the dominant cultural stereotypes that have been predetermined for us.  We rejoice in this Q, and pray for the openness to ask these questions – and keep the discussion going. 

Which leads me, finally, to prayer, where, hiding in plain view, we may find the ultimate safe space for questioning, and where we are free to ask our deepest and most child-like questions.  I have found, ironically, that church people sometimes get this turned around, and that asking God “why” in times of greatest despair, is not only natural, but can be truly healing.  In prayer, we can ask God “why.”  Why do bad things can happen to good people?  Becasue if we can’t go to God about the suffering we experience, the evil we do to one another, and the brokenness we experience, than who can we go to?  Prayer is bringing our questions before God unequivocally, in child-like openness, where there is total safety and perfect understanding, and without fear. 

So, it turns out that Jesus’ disciples had an Algebra problem too.  Their burning question was not “who” is the Son of the Human One, or even who is the Messiah?  They didn’t seem to have an aptitude for that.  Their burning question that they were asking one another was, who is the greatest among them?  Who should have first place in Jesus’ cabinet?  Who should be vice-president?  Who should be Secretary of State or Education?  Who should be Secretary of Miracles or Press Secretary for Smart Snappy Answers for their opponents in the other party? 

And so for Jesus, this was a teaching moment, if you will.  He has another way of being community in mind, one which provides a safe space for asking tough questions, so that no Question is ever out of bounds.  It’s probably natural that no one wants to look uninformed, confused, or clueless. And so sometimes we withhold our toughest questions, or pretend we don't have them. But to understand the deepest mysteries and sufferings of life, we have to take the risk of asking hard questions.  Questions like, Why do good people suffer? Why are we so brutal to one another?  Why does evil succeed?  And, If God's own Son is betrayed and killed, then, is no one safe?  Why, why, why?

Prayer may be the ultimate safe space for asking these questions, but they will only be effective if we can continue to ask them of each other – and like Jesus, make them incarnate within our experience.  By the gift of the Spirit, we are the reflection of God’s realm of peace and justice in the world, and God’s reign takes on flesh and blood, in and through us. 

We give thanks for the ways Unity, and so many other communities we are part of, are safe and open places for serious discussion and questioning, so that fear will never hold us back – so that we may all know and understand the spirit of the little child Jesus sets in our midst, asking “why,” over and over again – and that the greatest wisdom, the wisdom of God incarnate in the world, in all of us, may arise and find life, and, even as we grow up – never give-up that questioning.  

Who do people say that I am?  Who do you say that I am?  No, I know Jesus said that to his disciples, “on the way” to Caesarea Philippi.  But I want *us* to ask that question of ourselves: Who do people say that I am?  What is my identity?  How do people see me in the world?  Where have I come from?  Where am I on the way to? 

One thing I have to say though, is that it reminds me of that old Talking Heads song, “Once In A Lifetime.”  You probably don’t know that group from the 70’s and 80’s – David Byrne was the front man?  But they had this video, where David Byrne would make this mocking self-parodied motion while singing: “you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here…”  And all the lyrics of the song continued to self-reflect on the question of, who the “I” is, and do we really know ourselves?  Is that who we want to be?  

In our culture, we see ourselves as autonomous individuals.  Independent and self-determined, born to be somebody unique.  In the Ancient Near East, it was not assumed to be like that.  Individuals saw themselves reflected in the identity of the whole society they belonged to, a collective that was led by a royal leader.  And that leader, in turn, was a personification of each individual in the whole culture. 

In our culture, we usually identify ourselves first by our jobs.  I am a teacher, I am a house-husband, I am a fire-fighter, I am an entrepreneur, I am student. 

In our culture, we specialize and compartmentalize, and religion is separate from politics, which is separate from the economy, which is separate from government.  Just as individuals are autonomous, our institutions and professions are distinct, each having its own particular internal language, and they are as competitive as they are inter-related.  In the ancient world, there was no separation.  In Jesus’ culture, for example, the religious leaders were also the political leaders, who also were the economic decision-makers.  And in Roman society, the Emperor was the political top dog and also the object of religious obedience, as reflected in the phrase printed on their coins and monuments, Caesar, “Son of God.”   

Who do people say that I am?  Who do you say that I am? 

This week, Chicago was ground zero for the role of Unions in the whole country, as it was last year in Wisconsin.  CPS vs. CTU!  I wore red all week.  But, not to be partisan and declare sides, as much as to support a more nuanced agenda for our Chicago Public Schools, as defined and lifted up by those who work day in and day out with students, the CTU.  Class size is hugely important.  Having the basics for a conducive learning environment, having teacher evaluations that work, are all really important.  Not just for the same ones again this year, in some of the schools, but for all, in every school.  If you’ve been in some neighborhood schools where teaching is hard and half the class doesn’t graduate, you know how important this is.  You can’t hold up one specialized school doing extra exciting things as an example, and imply that other neighborhood schools, with far less resources, and starting in a whole different place, with a whole different history, can suddenly follow, simply by deciding they should or want to.  You may ask yourself: “How can you call that kind of school system, fair?” 

For me, it’s my faith that calls me to get out on the streets and demand better, and so I was delighted when Arise Chicago emailed me to join other religious leaders to gather at Mayor Emmanuel’s office at City Hall this past Friday.  But, just as I was preparing my wardrobe, clergy collar and red stole, to hop the Blue Line “on my way” to downtown, I got an urgent email, “Religious Leaders event cancelled” because of the main CTU action in Logan Square, at the exact same time.  Well, as much as I had wanted to meet Rahm – and I’m sure he was just dying to meet me! – how could I argue with walking just a couple blocks right down the street I lived on, right in my neighborhood! 

As teachers and students and parents marched from 3 different schools in the hood and converged on Logan Square around the IL centennial column, I too, on the way, merged with them, in my red jacket, one of the crowd… unknown- but recognized, stranger- yet participant, no one – save my Tai Chi instructor I ran into – knew who I was- but I was accepted as one of them, a follower of the movement “on the way” to a more just school system for all.  I clapped whenever everyone else clapped.  I cheered whenever everyone else cheered.  I marched in the same direction around the Logan Square monument with the rest of the gathering, tall and small, Latina and Asian, African-American and white.  Not because I wanted to feel like a cog in the machine, but because I felt it was important to align my interests in the direction where I think justice and hope for a better future, are on the way, to. 

Who do people say that I am?  Who do you say that I am? 

Our contracts with each other are important.  We all follow someone, something, and living in the same “commons,” we contract with them, whether formally, like CPS & CTU writing a detailed contract right now, or informally, implied.  It’s not a question of individual rights, vs., sharing our collective gifts, one or the other.  The only question is, will we hold each other accountable?  Jesus’ questions to the disciples were, on the one hand, about his identity, his inner life, but also about his direction, “on the way” to where he was going, his public life.  We all make a contract with somebody.  And so, You may say to yourself, who should I follow and contract with?  Who am I?  Who do I want to be?  Who will people say that I am?

As the “people” were saying about him, Jesus does have similarities to John the Baptist, Elijah, and the bold speaking prophets before him.  But when Peter identifies Jesus as “Messiah,” this was going all in!  Naming him the anointed one, was to boot the elephant right out of the room, and begin to polish his crown as a human king, and to sharpen his sword, as general and commander of a misplaced sacred army.  So Jesus begins to teach them about his self-identity as Messiah, as he understood himself to be.  “I am” the Son of the Human One, the Son of Man, like the savior in the book of Daniel – where that phrase comes from – one who reigns over the whole world, but subverts the way of the sword through suffering and dying a self-giving death, in order to awaken, all the people, at least, all the people who have eyes to see. 

All the faith traditions recognize, that coming to terms with suffering and death, is key to human freedom. The prophet Muhammad said, you must “Die before you die.” The Sufi mystic Rumi said, “Lose your life, if you seek eternity.”  Jesus says, “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”  Peter’s response, to rebuke Jesus, that he had it all wrong, echoes our resistance, and our own internal anguish: You may say to yourself, “Why does this have to be?”

In our culture, the individualistic world view is crumbling and falling apart.  But it does not mean we simply go back to a perceived golden age, whether Camelot or some biblical utopia.  But instead, the dynamics of our identity as individual and group, as inner person and public person, must certainly be redrawn for our time, and the direction we are “on the way” to. 

Who do people say that I am?  Who do you say that I am?  Answering these questions will include following leaders willing to suffer for the sake of the truth, not as loners, but as gatherers, leaders right on our street corners, including those with vision for the long term, vision for an abundant life for all.  We may be wearing red and all chanting the same slogan, but not as pawns or cogs in the machine.  We gather together as similarly clear-thinking, concerned citizens and believers, “on the way” to the peace and justice we recognize in the Son of the Human One. 

You may ask yourself, who do people say that I am?  Who do I follow?  

Jesus offends, in order to open hearts to faith and truth.  Or else the only option, like the Pharisees, is to stumble over the cornerstone, and reject him. 

The Republicans and Democrats alike, seem to have a different tactic.  They assault you with the preconceived beliefs you already have, and don’t worry too much about the truth.  As humorist Andy Borowitz said after both political conventions had ended, “With the fall campaign officially begun now, both Obama and Romney must spend hundreds of hours and millions of dollars on TV to become President… of Ohio.”  And it probably won’t be pretty, however you watch it, on TV, Hulu, Facebook, or whatever.  Back in the day, of course, TV was the only social media there was!  But even now, it still seems to have some influence, or else the Ohio local news stations wouldn’t be getting so rich this election year, right? 

When the late Neil Armstrong, who died just two weeks ago, made the first moon walk, in July of 1969, it was shown on all the major television networks – all four of them.  And because that was the only way to watch it, we took our black and white TV with us on our vacation to rural Wisconsin in anticipation of seeing the historic moment.  A good 50 miles from the nearest TV station, the signal we got, through our RCA’s rabbit ears, was already quite snowy.  Add on to that, the radio transmission from some 200,000 miles away, and the broadcast was pretty primitive by today’s standards!  But it didn’t matter, because, as garbled as it was, we could still make out our American hero when he said, “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”  Only years later did I learn that the line was scripted, and even at that, Neil had flubbed it! It was supposed to be, “one small step for a man… one giant leap for mankind”  Reality TV can be so challenging, can't it?! 

But it was another TV image, from that same period, that has made the biggest impact on me, in my life.  I still remember trying to put it all together in my young, unformed, mind, as I stood on my front lawn, surrounded by the opulence and privilege I took for granted.  We lived in the first ring of Milwaukee’s suburbs: well established, well connected, extremely segregated, contributing a sizable proportion of the city, county and state’s tax base, and yet somehow still having more than almost everyone else.  Maybe it was in the summer of love, or one of those 60’s distinctive summer’s, when the rioting – just like I’d seen in Selma and Montgomery on TV, occurred also in Milwaukee. 

I was old enough to know that looking straight east down my beautiful street, just a few miles, just out of sight, a whole different neighborhood existed.  There were all kinds of derogatory names I heard used for, “that part of town,” in those years of my early teens, demonizing and dismissing it as, less-than.  And I could picture the African Americans, and other people of color, living with less-than, red-lined and profiled, subjected to untold racist policies, large and small, by which my neighborhood benefited. 

My TV showed the anger, the armed police & National Guard, and the burning buildings.  And as I looked down my street, from the serenely-surreal beautiful front lawn I occupied, I wondered, how this could be?  Why was I here and not there?  What was preventing my house from burning?  Who set up this separation between us, which might as well be like a cavern of space from here to the moon, every communication somehow garbled beyond understanding, seen by so many in polarizing black and white?  There was no physical barrier as I looked down my street, or that I could recall, from when I rode the bus that way downtown!  And finally, why are we not doing something about it?  I suppose I could have been awakened through reading the newspapers too, but on television, the first social media, if you will, it was something more, a more powerful image that linked everyone together, in a common shared experience – however offensive and full of misunderstanding it was! 

Jesus offends, in order to open hearts to faith.  Or else the only option, like the Pharisees, is to stumble over this cornerstone, Jesus, and reject him.  In Jesus’ day, oddly enough, early Christians would have been offended when Jesus challenged the Pharisees and called them hypocrites.  But when Jesus equated the Gentiles, like the Syrophoenician woman, to dogs, they wouldn’t have flinched, for that was a common expression in Hebrew scriptures, and everyday parlance.  For us, it’s the opposite, the opposition between Pharisee and Jesus doesn't phase us, while his treatment of the woman is highly offensive. 

For the woman who “bowed down at Jesus’ feet,” had three strikes against her, her gender, her religion and her race.  And-- she lived in the region of Tyre and Sidon, historic enemy territory to Israel.  Yet when this charming woman whose little daughter has an unclean spirit hears about Jesus, immediately she comes to him knowing he has what she needs and is determined to get it.  “Jesus said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first,” that is, the children of God, the Jews, “for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the [Gentile] dogs’.”  Why is Jesus so mean, so down-right prejudiced?  Other women have begged for healing and he always responded favorably.  Other foreigners, like the man with the legion of demons in the Decapolis, Jesus had no problem helping.  He didn’t berate any of them?  Why is Jesus showing such moon-sized distance from, and such a red-neck attitude with, the Syrophoenician woman? 

Jesus offends his opponents!  That’s the only explanation I can come up with for Jesus’ otherwise inexcusable behavior.  Jesus offends, by reflecting the human faith tradition and theological framework of his time – that Gentiles are like unclean, un-kosher, dogs.  Pharisees had stumbled and fell over the offensive, and sharp-tongued prophetic truth-telling, Jesus used with them.  But now in a surprising role-reversal, this woman, still standing, has the clever and snappy answer, instead of Jesus.  The Syrophoenician woman – it seems significant – is the only character of the gospels to actually change Jesus’ mind!  Certainly she has a right to take offense, and I hope she did!  But, in the gospel of Mark’s telling, she becomes the teacher and preacher for Jesus.  It is not her faith, but her “word,” Jesus says, that flips him, when she proclaims to him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  For that word, Jesus tells her, “the demon has left your daughter.” 

Healing and wholeness have arrived, through the learned charming feminist woman, not only for her little daughter back home, but for the mission of the Jesus movement.  This offense- role reversal- and new faith, is the same process and conclusion the disciple Peter arrives at, when in the 10th chapter of Acts the Spirit hooks him up with the Gentile Centurion, Cornelius, and they eat together.  “I truly perceive that God shows no partiality,” Peter said.  Like an online social network, the immense distance of space between gender, religion and race, were bridged for Peter, as they had been for Jesus, by the Syrophoenician woman. 

The truth that God reveals, can either offend or enlighten.  If even Jesus can be preached to by a foreigner, a woman, and religious outsider, and not take offense, but be enlightened, why not us?!  What is to prevent us from building bridges between our neighborhoods? 

Jesus goes on, right after this encounter with the Syrophoenician woman, to duplicate his feeding of the 5,000 insiders, with a feeding of 4,000 Gentiles.  And once again, “crumbs” were left over at this feeding, overflowing baskets full!  But now, the crumbs left over, this abundance of God’s love and grace, once just for insiders, is for everyone.  All offense, and all barriers, are broken down in cross and resurrection.  As we hear in the Thanksgiving Prayer around the table, all are welcomed, to make known God’s loving will for all humanity.  The cry of the poor has become Christ’s own cry; our hunger and thirst for justice, Christ’s own desire. 

Jesus’ younger brother was a bleeding-heart liberal!  You heard me!  James was a bleeding-heart liberal!  “Persevere” in the “law of liberty,” he said, by which he meant, ‘loving your neighbor as yourself.’   “…be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves,” James said.    “Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God… is this, to care for orphans and widows in their plight…” (NRSV and The Message trans.)  Bleeding-heart liberal! But caring for the orphans and widows, especially in Jerusalem where James was a leader, was one of the top, if not the #1, social issue of the day.   

James the Just, or James of Jerusalem, brother of Jesus, was Jerusalem’s first Bishop until his martyrdom in the year 62.  Tradition has it that he wrote this Letter of James, from which we have read this morning.  But, bleeding-heart liberal, I have to tell you, is not the normal descriptor for James.  More like moralist, or even conservative.  But by our standards of doing and not deceiving ourselves, in church, or society today, I think bleeding-heart liberal isn’t far off.  James does not let us off the hook just to think and believe the right things about our faith or citizenship, God and country, but insists we must “be doers of the word,” or your faith is a fake. 

Is James calling us out?  What does our faith do?!  “For if any [of you] are hearers of the word and not doers,” he says, “[you] are like those who look at themselves in a mirror… and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.” 

What do mirrors do for us?  How much mirror time do we need?  What is it, that we see in the mirror? 

Being the vain person I am, I would never admit to spending as much time in front of the mirror as I actually do!  I once heard that men actually spend more time in the bathroom getting ready to go out, than women.  What if that’s true!?  Anyway, I seem to notice that I’m spending more and more time in front of the mirror, now that this old body is slowly but surely falling apart, falling and drooping down. 

Some years ago Kim walked out of the bathroom with a bewildered look on her face, “I’m old,” she said.  I knew exactly what she was referring to.  Being a year and a half older, I had already had that “aha moment,” but in my vanity had not been near as forth-coming!  It seems to happen overnight, and one day it suddenly dawns on you.  Holy crap/cripes, I’m old!  If you haven’t gotten there yet, don’t worry.  I’m sure, it’ll never happen to you! 

Shaving, which is not my favorite thing to do, takes way too much mirror time!  And yet when I finish, and I look into the glasses’ reflection, there is a hopeful change.  Ya, I do clean up pretty good!  Maybe it’s not so bad?! 

The biggest problem though is this hair – thinner, and greyer, all the time.  And it started out pretty thin to begin with!  More and more, there’s less and less, you can do with it!  All I can do is keep it short, it seems to me.  So I keep looking in the mirror, wondering if it’s time to be cut yet.  Ah, maybe I should just shave it all off! 

But somehow, just as I turn away from the mirror for the last time, from whatever I’d been looking at, I muster up a sense of customer satisfaction.  Vain – like I said!  And, as I walk away, “immediately I forget,” the true image that was right in front of my face.  I suppose it helps me get on with my day, with my life.  But the deception is surprisingly easy, and unbelievably convincing. 

Most of us don’t remember, if we ever knew, that the Letter of James is in the bible.  It’s tucked away behind the influential and prolific St Paul, and his fully, one dozen epistles.  Almost didn’t make it into the New Testament for its questionable, contrarian approach.  Martin Luther, founder of the Lutheran Church in the 16th C., thought they had made a mistake letting it in.  “James does nothing more than drive to the law and its works” Luther said in disgust, who made a career out of teaching the opposite, that God’s grace comes to us by faith alone, apart from our works, or the law.   

But James, that bleeding-heart liberal, is making a resurgence in many circles.  “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.  For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror… and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.” 

The test is a good one, not only individually, but for who we are as a society.  If we put the current recession we’re in, up to the mirror, for example, what do we see?  Looking directly at it we still see an unrepentant, too big to fail banking system, in bed with Wall Street, who, funding the elections of our politicians, pay to set up the very laws which protected them when our economy went into a nose dive.  Five years later, after walking away from that mirror, we seem to have forgotten.  No one has gone to jail for ruining the economy, anyway, and no one has reformed the laws or regulated the institutions that are responsible for it!  We all listen and complain, but where are the doers of justice?  Being doers of the word is, of course, hard work, and it requires that we remember and face up to things we’d rather not see in the mirror. 

Truth is we haven’t been able to take a good look at ourselves in the mirror very often.  If we did, we’d see that the economy, and trickle-down economics, wasn’t working for lots of people, for a whole generation of folks, even before the recession.  We’ve walked away from the poor, the orphans and widows, amongst us.  Even the laughable number we call the poverty line, $23K for a family of four, is crossed by many more people today than when the war on poverty was first declared some 45 years ago.  Now both parties of our political system have tacitly agreed simply not to talk about the poor at all.  They both proclaim they are champions of the middle class.  But neither will utter the phrase, “the poor.” 

The word widow in Hebrew comes from the root word, “one unable to speak.”  Widows in Jewish society, having lost a husband by death or divorce, were without legal status – unable to speak for themselves.  James, that bleeding-heart liberal, was one of the Jerusalem leaders who supported a Christian social system that refused to let widows and orphans fall through the cracks.  They not only talked about the poor, they were doers, and widows and orphans were cared for and given a voice and equal status with everyone else in the church, and thus in society. 

If we hold up the mirror to ourselves today, how do we look?  Are we merely hearers of the word, or are we doers also?   If we hold up a mirror to our neighborhood, what do we see?  The deception, of course, can be surprisingly easy, and unbelievably convincing.  

I have a friend who is a psychologist and Vietnam Vet who is very good at not only taking an honest look into the mirror of our society, but is able to sustain that vision when he walks away.  He is not afraid of what he sees, though he is not happy with what we are becoming.  He tells me that he likes to walk through the diverse neighborhoods of Chicago, and noted how the differences between walking up Broadway and Clark Streets are so revealing in the people he meets, their problems and surprising insights, their courageous perseverance and delusional visions, and is able to use that reality in his work.   

God is not calling us to be bleeding-heart liberals, of course.  But God calls us to be accountable to the real life we see in the visage of that mirror we all spend time in front of – even after we have walked away – that we might not merely be [passive] hearers who deceive themselves, but be doers of [God’s] word.  God is calling us to fulfill the law of liberty, as James says, loving our neighbor as ourselves, in all we do.