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The 7 Deadly Sins

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I’ve been thinking about the so-called 7 Deadly Sins.  I’ve been thinking that perhaps it’s time to revamp the list.  After all, Pope Gregory revised an older list to come up with the traditional 7 in the 6th century. 

First of all, I know lots of folks have trouble with the word “sins.”  Let’s move beyond that by saying there are things people do that hurt themselves, hurt others, and and hurt God’s world. A traditional way to describe those actions is “sins.”  In my theology, sins are not “deadly” because committing them sends the sinner straight to hell, do not pass go, do not collect $200, because I don’t believe in hell.  However, I do believe people can do things that are deadly to human relationships, to human life, and to the survival of God’s creation.  So I’ve been toying with this new list:

  1. Aggression
  2. Callousness (including disregard for the suffering of others, and conscious refusal to act when action is necessary)
  3. Cruelty
  4. Denial (including negligent ignorance)
  5. Entitlement (encompassing lack of gratitude, unexamined privilege, selfishness, and arrogance, including arrogance about the supremacy of human beings among all of God’s creatures)
  6. Prejudice (including all forms of closed-mindedness, deciding without exploring, and judgment without understanding)
  7. Tribalism (xenophobia, jingoism, white and every other kind of supremacy, and super-patriotism)

I prefer these to the traditional 7 because these imply a particular action or set of actions – or inactions.  The original list of 7, for example, includes wrath.  Sometimes the feeling, the emotion of wrath is appropriate.  What matters is what you do with it.  Do you lash out cruelly?  Do you attack aggressively?  The old list also includes pride, which can be a very positive quality – depending on what you do.

I also prefer this new list because these are the sins that break down connections, that deny our oneness with each other and our world.  Breaking down those connections is deadly not only to humanity, but to our planet.   

What do you think?  What’s missing?

Elevator Pitch

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A sermon preached at Convocation, September 16, 2026, at San Francisco Theological Seminary.

Micah 6:6-8

  Last week, a company the university hired to help increase graduate student enrollment asked all the deans to create an elevator pitch, a concise 60-second summary of our various schools that quickly explains its value to a listener.  It’s not a bad exercise; I’d love to hear your responses.  But it’s also not an easy exercise; I found it challenging for a couple of reasons.  One is that the first thing that occurred to me is this scripture passage, though I’m sure that’s not what they had in mind.  The other is why it occurred to me. 

   A number of years ago, Simon Sinek gave a TEDTalk about “Why We Start with the Why.”[1]  Sinek drew what he called the “Golden Circle.” He said most organizations start from the outer ring of that circle when making their pitch.

   (Referring to a large sheet of paper with three concentric circles drawn on it, and pointing to the large, outer circle, labeled “What”): Here’s what we do. We’ve got great computers.

   (Pointing to the middle circle, labeled “How”):  Here’s how we do it.  They’re different and better than our competitors. 

  (Pointing to the inner circle, labeled “Why”): But inspiring leaders and organizations start from the center and move out.  Here’s what we believe.  Here’s what we’re passionate about.  Here’s a way of life, a cause, a movement.  And here’s a product or a service or an activity that will let you be a part of it.

   In his TEDTalk, he kept repeating, “People don’t buy what you do.  They buy why you do it.”  Now, if you bristle at the word, “buy,” I’m right there with you.  So replace it with the word, “invest.”  Or the phrase, “commit to.”  People don’t commit to what you do.  They commit to why you do it.

   And that brings me back to the Micah passage.  The people of God that we meet in the Hebrew Scriptures would look at the injustice and cruelty around them and sink into hopelessness.  That’s not hard for us to understand.  We look around and see racist ideologies that are killing people; we see creeping totalitarianism; we see economic policies that create billionaires at the same time they guarantee that one in five children will be food insecure and the planet will keep heating up; I could go on and on.  It’s easy to lose hope.  If there’s no hope, there’s no reason to act.  If things can’t change, then you might as well not bother to try. 

   The Old Testament prophets spoke up and spoke out to counter this kind of hopelessness.  They understood how past and current oppressive realities point to a despairing future.  They remembered what God requires, and they saw how forgetting and ignoring God’s heart, God’s hopes, God’s dreams for God’s people would result in a dystopian future.[2]  

   Not much is certain about Micah; he may have prophesied around 725 to 701 B.C.E.  What we know is what he saw.  He saw powerful landlords driving farmers off the land where they’d made a living for generations.  He saw dishonest business practices.  He saw unscrupulous priests and greedy judges.  He saw worship that talked the talk but didn’t walk the walk.  And so Micah reminds the people of what God wants for God’s world.  Micah is saying, loud and clear, that injustice is not the norm.  When people are being exploited and oppressed, it means something is broken, something’s gone wrong.  It gives tremendous hope to those who are being exploited to know that their suffering isn’t just the natural order of things.  And by challenging injustice in God’s name, Micah reminds the people that it is God who establishes what is just, and who judges those who violate God’s justice.  He describes a time to come when peace will be so much the norm that people won’t even bother to learn the skills of war.  A time when people will sit unperturbed under their own vines or their own fig trees – which means they’ll have their own vines or fig trees – and “no one shall make them afraid.”[3] 

   It’s a beautiful vision.  It’s what Jesus described again and again with his metaphor, “the Kingdom of God.”[4]  If it you don’t like the word, “kingdom,” if “commonwealth” or “kin-dom” or “reign” work better for you, use those words.  The point is that it’s the life and the world that God designed, that God desires, to which God calls us and helps us co-create.  It’s God’s reconciling community,[5] God’s will being done on earth as in heaven.  Jesus said it’s “at hand”[6] – within reach, available to everyone, inviting our participation, calling us to rethink everything and reorient our lives.  It’s completely unlike any kingdom you’ve ever experienced, said Jesus, because God is the ruler and God is all about love; God so loves God’s world.  And if love is God’s way, then our calling is to reconciling, healing love.  We are called to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. 

   People don’t buy what you do.  They buy why you do it.  When I think about an elevator pitch for SFTS, our “why” is not attracting more students to our campus or our online programs.  As much as I want to increase enrollment, and believe me, I do, that is not our why.  Our why is not to keep or justify our jobs.  It’s not to get converts and it’s certainly not to save souls.  It’s not to preserve these buildings or keep the campus intact.  It’s not even about serving others and working for social justice, as important as those are.  Service and justice are still a “what” and a “how,” not a why.  It’s not even training our students to be agents of change, agents of the love and healing and justice to which we’re called.  That probably should go in our elevator pitch, but it’s still a “what.”  It’s not even keeping this seminary, this seminary I dearly love, afloat.

    Our “why” is that we trust this vision, we hope in this vision, and we live into this vision of God’s love for God’s world; a vision of peace and justice to be lived here and now in the daily lives of all people.  We can’t achieve it on our own, but we can move toward it by doing justice: proclaiming, as Jesus read from the scroll in Luke, freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, setting the oppressed free and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.[7]  We move toward it by loving kindness: extending compassion even when it’s really hard.  We move toward it by walking humbly with God: remembering God’s ways aren’t our ways, and not assuming that we’re always the good guys or God’s favorites.

   Some of you might remember, years ago, a Hebrew National TV ad for kosher hotdogs.  A smiling Uncle Sam holds a hotdog in his hand as a voice over explains that government regulations say Hebrew National could make its hotdogs from frozen beef.  “We don’t” says the announcer, and Uncle Sam’s smile falters.  “The government says we can use artificial coloring and add meat by-products.”  “We don’t,” chimes the announcer, and Uncle Sam’s smile fades again.  “The government says we can add non-meat fillers,” and the announcer concludes; “We can’t.  We’re kosher.  And we have to answer to an even higher authority.”[8]

   People don’t buy what you do.  They buy why you do it.

   (Pointing to the outer circle): What: We train agents of transformation, people who strive to help create and lead a more just and loving world.

   (Pointing to the middle circle): How: Through a rigorous curriculum of academic study and lovingly guided spiritual formation.

   (Pointing to the inner circle): Why:  We answer to a higher authority; a higher authority who loves this world and everything in it; and calls us to a future in which all enjoy the fruits of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.      

[1]  https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

[2]  Luther E. Smith Jr., Hope Is Here! (Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2023)

[3]  Micah 4:4.

[4]  Or in Matthew’s gospel, the Kingdom of Heaven.  “Matthew respectfully avoids the name of God by using, as it were, the dwelling for the dweller, just as, mutatis mutandis, we do by announcing, ‘The White House says …,” when we mean “The President says.’  For Matthew, “kingdom of heaven” means exactly the same as “kingdom of God.”  John Dominic Crossan, The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 118.

[5]  Brian D. McLaren, https://brianmclaren.net/q-r-what-is-the-gospel/.

[6]  Matthew 4:17.

[7]  Luke 4:18-19.

[8]  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR1eeV5-M4U   

Where Two or Three Are Gathered

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Matthew 18:15-20

   If you’ve been around churches even a little bit, you’re probably familiar with verse 20 of this passage, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”  It’s usually trotted out when attendance at a church event is sparse.  You can almost guarantee someone will say, “There aren’t many of us here, but ‘Where two or three are gathered …” Usually, they don’t even need to finish the verse.  People know the rest.

   This is a fine way to use this verse, but there’s more to this passage.  The verses leading up to verse 20, including the formula for handling church disputes, are more challenging.  Confrontation doesn’t come naturally to many church folks, including me.  It’s easier to think something controversial is none of our business, or that we should bear everything in silence and turn the other cheek; we should just focus on God’s love and move on, and if you have to talk about it, then talk with folks who already agree with you, maybe over in the parking lot.

   When I read the passage carefully, what emerges is Matthew’s deep concern for community – honest-to-goodness, authentic Christian community.  Community is one of those feel-good words we tend to idealize, but community is made up of people, and people can be difficult, challenging, selfish, and unreliable.  They can have startlingly different perspectives and experiences. Community is messy. Wherever two or three human beings gather, Christ may indeed be among them but there’s also the potential for disagreement, hurt feelings, misunderstanding, or miscommunication.

   Authentic community takes work.  That is the point of this passage.  Authentic community takes commitment, honesty, humility, cooperation, compromise, collaboration and even courage: sometimes the courage to tell someone you’ve been hurt, sometimes to hear that you’ve hurt someone else and then, the courage to apologize.  It take the courage to listen as well as to speak up. In my congregations and in my work, I’d rather someone tell me to my face that they disagree with me, that something I did bothered or hurt them, than that they keep it to themself or worse yet, talk behind my back.  I don’t pretend to be perfect, but I can’t address a hurt or a concern if I don’t know about it.

   Another crucial piece of the work of authentic community is deceptively simple but vital: showing up.  If you go to church, you do not go to church just for yourself.  You go to church for each other.  If this is a surprise to you, you’re not alone.  We tend to think we go to church for our own personal reasons, because we get something out of it, because it’s where we reconnect with God, because it’s a good start to the week.  There’s nothing wrong with these reasons, and everyone else at church needs you.  The other families need your child so their children feel more at home.  The adults need the hope that your presence, and only your presence, conveys.  There are many reasons folks can’t make it to church on a given Sunday, and I’m grateful that COVID taught us how to include people in worship when they really cannot be in the sanctuary.  Still, something is lost when we aren’t in the same room together. Maybe it’s that the Body of Christ really is about human bodies. 

   Every morning when I tune into the news on my car radio, I’m tempted to quote humorist Dorothy Parker: “What fresh hell can this be?”  The challenges we face in the culture, the climate, the economy, and world geo-politics are difficult to deal with and even to think about.  That’s why we need community.  Community is where we contribute just by showing up, and by showing care for the others who show up.  Community is where we can find our voice.  Community is where we can feel supported, build resilience that helps us adapt to changes, recover from setbacks, and find the strength and hope to move toward the future to which we trust God is calling us because Jesus has us pointed the way. 

   Many churches will celebrate something they might call “Homecoming Sunday,” “Kick-off Sunday,” or “Back-to-Church Sunday” in early September.  It’s a good time to ask, “Just what kind of community do we want to be?”  There are plenty of other communities: social-media communities, work- and school-centered communities, fitness groups, and political action groups just to name a few.  How is a worshiping community different from those other communities?  How should it be different? Maybe it’s a good to ask: Do we want a community that’s largely social, like a club, which is certainly safe?  Or something more meaningful, where people are more vulnerable, which is riskier and harder?  Do we want a place that can encourage us but also hold us accountable?  Do we need everyone to agree about everything?  Are we looking for a place where we can be honest about our hopes and dreams, doubts, fears, and anxieties?  Do we want somewhere we can just blend in or are we looking for a place we can make a difference?  And what does it take from each person in the community to help create the community for which we long?

    There’s a story about an odd, old woman who lives on the outskirts of town.  Some children decide to trick her.  A boy holds a small bird behind his back where the old woman can’t see it.  The children ask her if the bird is alive or dead.  The trick is that if she says it’s alive, the boy will crush the bird, and show her she’s wrong.  If she says it’s dead, he’ll let it fly off – and again, she’ll be wrong.  The woman is silent for a long time.  Finally, she whispers, “I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands.  It is in your hands.”

   Authentic Christian community is work.  And, my friends, it is in our hands. 

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.  

Walking on Water

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Matthew 14:22-33

   “He’s so full of himself he thinks he can walk on water.” “Hey, look, I’m really trying but don’t expect me to walk on water.”  Even someone who has never opened the New Testament or heard a sermon knows that “walking on water” is an idiomatic way of describing super-human or God-like abilities.  More often than not, we use the expression to knock someone down a notch.  We rarely hear it as a compliment, probably because we’ve never met anyone we’d agree is God-like. 

   We meet that person in this story in Matthew’s Gospel; that is what this passage is about. 

   The disciples’ fear is perfectly justified.  This isn’t a story condemning baseless fear; the storm is violent and the disciples could perish.  As Debie Thomas writes, “Nowhere in the Gospels are we called to prove our faith, or test God’s character, by taking pointless risks that threaten our lives. … Whether we’re talking about respecting the power of the sea during a vicious storm or heeding expert medical advice during a global pandemic, the same caution applies: recklessness is not faith, stupidity is not courage.”[i] 

   Why doesn’t Jesus just calm this storm?  The disciples witnessed Jesus perform that very miracle a few chapters back (Matthew 8:23-27), and their response was to marvel, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”  Here, instead, Matthew states that Jesus “went (elthen) to them, walking upon the sea (peripaton epi tes thālassa)” (14:25).  These very words appear in the Book of Job when God questions Job about the cosmos.  According to the Greek translation of Job, God asks Job if he ever “went upon (elthes… epi) the springs of the sea (thalāsses) or walked (periepātesas) in the recesses of the deep” (Job 38:16 Septuagint).  Earlier in the book, Job affirms that the Creator had traversed the oceans before the dawn of humanity, saying that God “stretched out the heavens and trampled on the waves of the sea” (Job 9:8).[ii]  The Gospel highlights Jesus’ choice to walk on the waves as a deliberate recollection of what God did at creation.[iii]

   Jesus hears the disciples cry out in fear when they see him, ghost-like, crossing the turbulent sea without aid of a boat.  He says to them, “Take heart.  I AM.  Do not be afraid.”  “I AM.”  Jesus does not say “I am the bread,” “I am the way,” or “I am the light of the world.”  He says the same words God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, “the bare, unfinished, unqualified I AM, the name that needs no completion because it contains everything.”[iv]  If walking on water weren’t enough to reveal who he is, Matthew’s Jesus repeats the very words of God.[v]   

   Curiously, when Peter hears Jesus’ assurances, he challenges him; he tests him.  “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water” (Matthew 14:28).  “If it is you …”  These words are eerily similar to the tempter’s during Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11).  But Jesus doesn’t need to prove anything, and Peter is not, “I AM.”  As much as Peter may want to emulate his teacher, he sinks beneath the waves.  He cries out, “Lord, save me!” and Jesus does.  Jesus does.

   Jesus accuses Peter of having little faith.  I don’t believe that this is because Peter failed at walking on water.  Rather, I believe it’s because Peter foolishly issued the challenge in the first place: “If it is you…”  But this story isn’t really about Peter and his faith or his lack of it.  It is about Jesus, and who he is.  As Debie Thomas notes, “Jesus never stops moving towards the ones he loves.  He never stops crossing the dark water to come to where we are.  Neither our fearfulness nor our faithlessness alters his steady approach, because we are the ones he’s bound for.”[vi]  Perhaps that becomes most obvious to us, most undeniably real to us, when we’re sinking, when we are surrounded by chaos, and most feel the need to cry out, “Lord, save me!”

    This time, “…those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God’” (Matthew 14:33).    

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.      

[i]  Debie Thomas, “Out on the Water,” in Into the Mess and Other Jesus Stories (Eugene Oregon: Cascade Books, 2022).

[ii]   Nicholas J. Schaser, “Commentary on Matthew 14:22-33,” https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-19/commentary-on-matthew-1422-33-6

[iii]  Zina Jacque, “Commentary on Matthew 14:22-33,” https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-19/commentary-on-matthew-1422-33-7

[iv]  Jacque, ibid.

[v]  Schaser, ibid.

[vi]  Thomas, ibid.

Wrestling with God

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Genesis 32:22-31

   This story raises many questions: Who exactly is Jacob’s attacker?  Verse 24 tells us it’s a man but after the wrestling match, the man says, “… you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:28).  Why would God bushwhack Jacob?  Are we supposed to believe God couldn’t pin Jacob?  Did Jacob want God’s blessing because he knew the blessing from his father Isaac was predicated on deceit, or was he just greedy for more blessings?  And why does a deceitful and irreverent trickster end up with God’s blessing, anyway?

   Jacob is Isaac’s son, Abraham’s grandson.  His twin brother Esau was born first, but Jacob was his mother’s favorite, and together they plotted to steal Esau’s birthright and Isaac’s blessing, both due to Esau as the elder son (Genesis 27:1-29).  Those plans were put on hold when Esau’s understandable homicidal rage sent Jacob running to his Uncle Laban (Genesis 27:41, 28:5).  There, Jacob the trickster was tricked by his uncle into working an extra seven years for the right to marry his true love, Rachel (Genesis 29:15-30).  Laban and his sons grew jealous of Jacob’s wealth and success, which he achieved by systematically stealing Laban’s sheep out from under him (Genesis 30:31-43).  So one night while Laban was away, Jacob gathered everything he had and took off for Canaan, for home (Genesis 31:1-18).

   In these verses, twenty years have passed since Jacob fled Esau’s wrath.  Jacob receives word that his brother is coming to meet him with an army of 400 men (Genesis 32:6-8).  Terrified, Jacob divides his entourage of wives, servants, livestock and possessions into two parts.  That way, if Esau attacks, he won’t lose everything.  He sends generous gifts to appease Esau (Genesis 32:13-18), and then he sends his family and belongings across the River Jabbok.  Maybe he figures that even if Esau refuses his tribute, he may at least take pity at the sight of his defenseless wives and children.  He sits down by the river, alone and a fugitive once again.  And then in a few short words we’re told, “a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”

   Jacob refuses to let his opponent go even after his own hip is put out of joint.  The man, the angel, God, whomever it is, says, “Let me go; it’s almost daylight.”  Jacob says he’ll only let go if the man blesses him.  The man agrees and gives Jacob a new name.  In Jacob’s culture, that means a new identity.  No longer Jacob the usurper, the cheat; now he is Israel, a name that means, “You have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”  That’s the big “reveal;” it was God all along.  The scene concludes with Jacob carrying away God’s blessing along with his new identity.  Not only will Jacob and Esau be reconciled in the chapters to come, but Jacob will sire a nation from his twelve sons, and they and their descendants proudly bear his name to this day, a people defined by wrestling with God.

      A God who wrestles with us, and what’s more, God started it!  This challenges any attempt to make God fit into some easy mold.  Further, God blesses Jacob even though he isn’t deserving, holy, or righteous by any stretch of the imagination.  So one lesson might be, “Don’t second guess God.”  

   But what can wrestling with God mean for us, today?  What does it look like in our lives – in your life, in my life? 

   It’s likely a very personal thing.  It’s probably ongoing, not once and for all.  It may look like when you lost a loved one, lost your health, lost a job, or lost a dream, and you wondered where God was, how God could let it happen, or what’s even the point of a God who doesn’t fix everything.  Maybe it’s when you figured out there’s something, some situation, you can’t change, fix, control, explain, or even understand.  Maybe it looks like when you found your way to a therapist, a grief group, a twelve-step meeting, a church, or seminary. 

   It may be about coming to faith or keeping faith.  Maybe you wrestle with God when you remember how you used to be able to recite the Apostles Creed without even thinking about it and now, you have to cross your fingers.  Maybe it’s when the Dalai Lama makes a lot of sense, and you find yourself wondering, “If scripture isn’t either history or science, what is there to hold on to?”  Maybe it’s when you haven’t lost your faith in God, exactly, but you’ve lost faith in the system that promised to help you grasp God by giving you the right language and answers – the Church, a denomination, a belief system. 

   Or maybe it’s that you can remember when you thought believing in God was stupid, or unsophisticated, and then something happened that shook you to your toes.  Maybe you encountered people who trust that God wants the world, this world, here and now, to be more just.  Maybe it’s when you figured out God is love, but it turns out love isn’t like unicorns and rainbows.  Love is hard.  Love is sacrifice.  Love is eating with the sick.  Love is trouble.  Love is rebellious.  Love doesn’t make the pain go away.  Love sits with us in in the middle of it.[1]. Love inspires us to act.

   Maybe God wrestles us into loving our neighbors as ourselves.  Maybe God wrestles us into opening our hearts to let God in.  Those are life-long wrestling matches from where I sit.  In the closing verse of the lesson, Jacob limps away, transformed.  When he finally sees his brother Esau, Jacob says, “For truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God” (Genesis 33:11).  Jacob looks at the face of his enemy, and he sees the face of God.  This is hard.  And hopeful.  This takes wrestling with God, and not letting go.

   Barbara Brown Taylor says it’s times like this that Jacob’s story says to us, “Don’t be so sure that’s an enemy you’re wrestling.  Don’t be so sure you can’t find God in the dark.  Don’t be so sure you know how this story ends.  Above all, don’t be so sure you can’t make it through the night.  Faith has a lot more to do with hanging on than with being sure.”[2]

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.      

[1]  “Brené Brown on Church as Midwife,” posted April 11, 2014, on David Lose, “In the Meantime,”  http://www.davidlose.net/2014/04/brene-brown-on-church-as-midwife/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+davidlose%2FIsqE+%28…In+the+Meantime%29

[2]  Barbara Brown Taylor, “Jacob Wrestles,” https://www.fapc.org/sermon/twenty-fifth-sunday-after-pentecost. 

A Pearl of Great Price

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Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

   What is worth more than anything to you?  Jesus looks at that question in this passage in Matthew’s gospel.  He’s describing the kingdom of God, or the reign of God.  Matthew uses the phrase, “kingdom of heaven,” for his audience of Jewish Christians, but in all of these kingdom parables, Jesus assumes the kingdom of God is something that can be perceived and experienced as a present reality, not just something in the future. 

   Each of these little kingdom parables is worth its own sermon, but I’m focusing on two of them: “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field which someone found and hid, and from his joy he goes and sells all as much as he has and he buys that field.  Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a person on a journey seeking fine pearls, and finding one valuable pearl, he goes and sells all, as much as he has, and buys it.”

   The owner of the field has hidden a treasure and someone else has found it.  The person who found it wasn’t looking for it; he stumbled across it unexpectedly.  He is overcome by his good fortune and joyfully sells everything he has to buy the whole field and secure the treasure.  In the pearl parable, the person is deliberately searching far and wide for a fine pearl.  He finds it, and like the first man, he liquidates all his assets so he can buy the sought-after pearl.  The two characters make their discoveries as a result of entirely different circumstances, but once they’ve found the valuable object, they are all in.  Neither one of them pauses to calculate the risks, do a cost-benefit analysis, or consult with his investment advisor.

   This, says Jesus, is what the kingdom of God is like.  It is worth everything.  Many people will use these parables to talk about the cost of discipleship and that’s worth exploring, but only after we talk about something else: overwhelming joy, and the commitment that this kind of joy engenders.  This is not a parable about sacrifice; it’s a parable about joy.  These men give up everything because what they get is worth everything to them.

   What is it about the kingdom of God that is worth everything?

   Years ago, I stumbled onto Brené Brown’s TEDTalk about shame (https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame), which led me to her other TEDTalk and her books, nearly all of which I’ve read.  My interest led to my being sent to a national training along with other pastors from my presbytery where we learned to teach groups about Brown’s research.  On our return, we led a presbytery clergy retreat in the hope that Brown’s work would help us in adaptive leadership – leadership in these changing times. 

   That’s how I ended up in San Antonio studying shame, worthiness, courage, and vulnerability.  Brown began her research trying to understand what makes certain people more resilient and whole, a quality she calls “whole-heartedness.”[1]  She concluded that what most blocks whole-heartedness is shame.  Shame, at its heart, is a fear of disconnection.  We’re all hard-wired for connection and so we fear disconnection.  Shame whispers, “If you know the truth about me, you’ll reject me.”  It’s that feeling we are not enough – thin enough, rich enough, young enough, pretty enough, powerful enough, smart enough, perfect enough – you fill in the blank.  Shame is what we’re perpetuating whenever we communicate to others that they aren’t enough – which leads to all sorts of bad behavior – bullying, for example, which Brown says isn’t a school problem; it’s a national pastime.[2]  Another expert says there’s no record of a violent or cruel action committed other than as a reaction to shame or humiliation.[3]   

   We all have shame.  We all worry, now and then or maybe all the time, that, “I’m not good enough.”  So we hide who we really are.  But in order for connection to happen – true connection – we have to let ourselves be seen.  Brown discovered that what whole-hearted people have in common is courage; specifically, the ordinary courage to be seen, to show up, even though they’re imperfect.  Whole-hearted people believe that what makes them vulnerable makes them beautiful.  They don’t talk about vulnerability being easy or comfortable, just necessary.  They are kind to themselves, because they know that we can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t first treat ourselves kindly.  They are willing to let go of who they think they should be in order to be who they are, which is essential for connection with others.  Real connection flows from authenticity.

   So, in their vulnerability, wholehearted people are willing to say I love you first.  They’re willing to do things where there are no guarantees.  They’re willing to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call with results from the mammogram.  They’re willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out.  Wholehearted people, Brown found, also have a strong sense of love and belonging.  And this was the surprise: The one variable that separated people who have a strong sense of love and belonging from people who struggle for it, was that people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of love and belonging.  That’s it.  They believe they’re worthy.

   Here is the other surprise: While all of us struggle with vulnerability, it also appears that vulnerability is the birthplace of joy, and creativity, of belonging and love.  When we numb ourselves to our vulnerability, when we numb ourselves to grief, and shame, and disappointment, we also numb ourselves to joy, and gratitude, and happiness.  We live in a culture that does a lot of numbing.[4]  The problem is, Brown says, we can’t selectively numb emotions.  She says, “We cannot say, ‘Here’s the bad stuff. Here’s grief, here’s shame, here’s disappointment.  I don’t want to feel these.  I’m going to have a couple of beers and a banana-nut muffin.  I don’t want to feel these.’  You can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the other … emotions.”[5]

   This is not a commercial for Brené Brown; it actually is about the kingdom of God.  What I figured out in San Antonio is that Brown’s research is a secular repackaging of the good news of the Gospel.  Her hardcore research just restates what Jesus said, again and again, and especially what Jesus said about life lived in the kingdom of God.  In a wonderful conversation my colleague and I had with Brown at the San Antonio airport while we were waiting for our flight to San Francisco, she told us that her friends in the Episcopal Church tell her, “Brené didn’t say that.  Jesus said that.”   

   Jesus said that.  Jesus said, and modeled, and taught: “Love each other, even when it’s hard, even when it makes you vulnerable, even when it’s a risk.  Include people, connect with people, even when they aren’t like you, even when they scare you.  Practice empathy and compassion even when your first impulse is fight or flight, even when revenge is more attractive than understanding.  Treat everyone you encounter like the children of God they are.  Love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Know in your bones that you are enough; that God knows you, loves you, and created you to be worthy, to be enough.  Live as though you are enough, and as though everybody else is, too.  Stick to your values even when it’s hard, even when it gets you in trouble.  Not to earn God’s love or prove you’re perfect – that’s the folly of the Pharisees – but in response to the gracious and unconditional love of God you already have.  You’ll be afraid.  It will be hard.  You will be hurt.  But this life, this wholehearted life and the world you will help create by living it are so much better, so much truer, so much holier, that it will be worth it. 

   It will be worth it.  It will be worth everything, says Jesus.  It will be worth the extravagant investment of your heart and soul and everything else, all you possess.  And the result is not a moaning and groaning sense of sacrifice, but joy.  Joy, and authenticity.  Connection.  Creativity.  Peace.  And freedom.  Freedom from the bondage of shame, perfectionism, and numbing.  For you.  And for everyone else. 

   What would you give for that?  It wouldn’t be easy.  It wouldn’t be pain-free.  It’d be more of a journey than a destination.  It’d be more of a practice and a path than an accomplishment.  The early Christians called it, “the Way” (Acts 9:2).

   What would that be worth to you?  

 © Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

[1]  This summary of Brown’s research is gleaned from three of her books: Daring Greatly (New York: Gotham Books, 2012), I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t) (New York: Gotham Books, 2007); The Gifts of Imperfection, (Center City, Minnesota: Hazaeldon, 2010); and Brown’s TEDTalk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” TEDxHuston, June 2010, https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability. 

[2]  Brown, “The Cruelty Crisis: Bullying Isn’t a School Problem, It’s a National Pastime,” Psychology Today, October 31, 2010,  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ordinary-courage/201010/the-cruelty-crisis-bullying-isnt-school-problem-its-national-pastime. 

[3]  Donald I. Nathanson, M.D., http://psychcentral.com/lib/shame-the-quintessential-emotion/000730/2. 

[4]  Brown reports that we’re most in-debt, obese, addicted, and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history. Brown, “The Power of Vulnerability,” ibid. 

[5]  Brown, ibid.

Next on My Path of Faith: Seminary Education

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   If you have looked forward to or even in some way depended on my blogposts interpreting the lectionary Scripture passages, I’m sorry to have gone missing for a bit.  I write today to explain why I’ll be going missing a while longer.  This blog has been a joyful spiritual discipline for me; my beloved husband claims I’m a “scholastic” in the manner of the medieval thinkers who centered their theology on a “disputed question.”  Maybe he’s right.  What I know for certain is that wrestling with Scripture is one way I wrestle with God and follow Christ. 

   However, I’m returning to full time work after about six years of, well, not “retirement,” exactly, because in addition to this blog, I’ve been preaching two or three times a month as a guest preacher, teaching preaching as an adjunct at San Francisco Theological Seminary, and serving as a spiritual director.  But I have not been working full time, and as joyful as this spiritual practice of blogging is, I won’t have time to keep it going on any sort of regular basis when I’m working full time.

   Beginning July 6, I will be serving as the Dean of San Francisco Theological Seminary.  I follow a line of deans to whom I’m grateful and for whom I have tremendous respect: the current Dean, the Rev. Dr. Laurie Garrett-Cobbina, the amazingly gifted holder of the Shaw Family Chair for Clinical Pastoral Education, Director of the Clinical Pastoral Education Program, and Shaw Chaplaincy Institute for Spiritual Care and Compassionate Leadership; Dr. Christopher Ocker, my intrepid church history professor and the current Dean of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley; and the Rev. Dr. Jana Childers, my homiletics professor, fellow Bonhoofer, and the courageous, hard-working, and eminently savvy Dean of SFTS for 16 years, including during some of the seminary’s most tumultuous times.

   I love San Francisco Theological Seminary.  I received my M.Div., D.Min., and the Diploma in the Art of Spiritual Direction from SFTS.  I served on the Board of Trustees for 10 years, participating in faculty searches and on the Lloyd Center Board.  As I mentioned, I’m adjunct faculty.  I was pastor of the church across the street, First Presbyterian Church of San Anselmo, for nearly 15 years, during which time I supervised 15 SFTS student interns, was pastor to many students, and counted about a dozen active or retired faculty and their families as church members, several of whom I buried.  There’s hardly anyone around who has had the long, varied, and ongoing relationship with the seminary that I have.  If you’ve ever been on the SFTS campus, you know what a glorious place, what a holy place it is.  I am honored to be taking this step; it feels like a call.

   I am taking this step at a time when seminary education, like the American Christian church, is changing.  If you’re a pastor or a church member, you’ve witnessed this change firsthand.  It’s tempting to conclude that the church and seminary education are “in decline;” it’s tempting to long for the good old days.  First, whenever someone talks about the good old days, you have to ask, “Good for whom?”  But more importantly, human systems, cultures, traditions, and institutions come and go, evolve and change, and God is still at work.  God is still present.  God is still writing the story.  I heard a sermon suggesting that we’re all “pencils in the hand of a writing God.”  The UCC has a marvelous slogan that “God is still speaking.”  God is not finished with us.

    There’s a compelling series of books published by a project called, “Theological Education Between the Times” (and I intend to read every single book).  That is where we are.  Between the time when one set of assumptions functioned but those assumptions are now eroding, and the next time, which God has not revealed.  I step into this new responsibility during this in-between time with humility, curiosity, courage, and hope.  I will continue putting one foot in front of the other on the path of faith.  I ask for your prayers.

The Power to Love

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John 14:15-21

This passage from Jesus’ Farewell Discourse begins and ends with love. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” says Jesus. “What commandments?” you might ask? In John’s gospel, Jesus gives only a single commandment, and it occurs in the chapter just before this one: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:14-35). He repeats this in the chapter that follows this one: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:12-13). 

“Love, love, love,” as Lennon and McCartney wrote; “All you need is love.” What does this love look like?  Jesus shows us: It looks like serving others humbly without concern for status or station (John 13:1-17). It looks like healing the sick (John 4:43-54, 5:1-14), giving sight to the blind (John 9:1-41), raising the dead (John 11:1-43), conversing with outcasts in a way that grants them dignity as God’s children (John 4:1-28), standing up for what is right in the face of power (John 2:13-19), feeding the hungry (John 6:1-14), and laying down his life for those he loves.     

Love one another.  If Jesus is our model, that’s a tall order. No one can hope to love others as Jesus did without help, and so Jesus promises that help. He will not leave his disciples orphaned (John 14:18). He will send the Spirit.  John uses the Greek word parakletos, or, in English, Paraclete. The word literally means one who comes along side you. It has been translated as comforter, helper, counselor, and encourager; the New Revised Standard Version translates it as “advocate,” the one who pleads your case, who takes your side, who intercedes for you, and who stands up for you. Note that Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit not as “the Paraclete,” but as “Another Paraclete.” Jesus was the first, which explains why this Paraclete will come only after Jesus himself departs. 

There have been Christian traditions that interpreted the Spirit’s advocacy role as interceding for us before God like a lawyer in a courtroom before a judge. In this interpretation, the Spirit is one who pleads our case that, though we have sinned, because of Jesus and his sacrifice we deserve to be forgiven. The picture of God that this implies – God as needing to be persuaded to love and forgive us – doesn’t fit with John’s confession that “God so loved the world that God gave the only Son…” (John 3:16).  David Lose writes, “So perhaps it’s actually the other way around. Perhaps it is the Spirit who intercedes on God’s behalf before us. That is, perhaps the Spirit is the one who comes to remind us of our identity as children of God, as sheep who recognize the voice of our shepherd, those for whom the good shepherd lays down his life. Because, Lord knows, that can be a hard identity to hold onto, a hard identity to believe is really ours, especially when we are stressed or frightened, unsure about our future and it feels like everything has been turned upside down.”

It is that very advocacy, that comfort, that encouragement that we need in order to keep Jesus’ commandments – in order to love one another. “We love because [God] first loved us” (1 John 4:19).  Jaime Clark-Soles writes, “What appeared to be bad news to the disciples, namely Jesus’ departure from them, turned out to be the best of news for both them and us. While Jesus walked the earth, his ministry was limited to one locale and one person, himself. Upon his departure, his disciples are given the Spirit and moved from apprentices to full, mature revealers of God’s love. And this happens not just to the first disciples, but all those who would come later, those who never saw the historical Jesus. You see, the evangelist [that is, the author of the Gospel of John] insists that present believers have no disadvantage in comparison to the first believers. Everything they were taught and they experienced is available to the same degree and with equally rich texture to us.”

Available to the same degree.  This is stunning, when you think about it. Jesus says, “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:18-19). Wrap your head around that: Jesus is in God, and we are in him, and he is in us. We are included in him and in his ministry. Clark-Soles coined the word “Quattrinity” to describe John’s view of Christ’s believers: “In John, Jesus insists that the intimate relationship that exists between him, God, and the Spirit also includes believers. The believer does not stand close by admiring the majesty of the Trinity; rather, she is an equal part of it. John tries to push at this by grabbing hold of a number of terms and repeating them: abide, love, the language of being “in” (14:17 and 20), and later in the Discourse, an emphasis on “one-ness” (cf. 17:21-23). Johannine believers don’t ‘imitate’ Jesus; they participate in him wholly.”

In a couple of weeks, on Pentecost Sunday, the Church celebrates the Holy Spirit, our Advocate, our Helper, the one who helps us love by assuring us that we are fully loved.  In the Book of Acts, the Spirit comes after Jesus has ascended to God (Acts 2).  In John’s Gospel, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit directly from Jesus that first Easter night (John 20:21).  What matters is not how or when but our experience that the power of God’s love for us in turn empowers us to love.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:

David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2020/05/easter-6-a-spirit-work/   

Jaime Clark-Soles, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-1415-21-2

Abundant Life

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John 10:1-10

It’s an occupational hazard of being a Christian that there are other Christians who think you don’t measure up. One of my favorite cartoons is one of Wiley Miller’s “Non Sequitur” strips in which a man and woman are standing in front of a church, looking at the church sign. The sign says, “The Church of We’re Absolutely Right and Everyone Else Is Wrong.” The man says to the woman, “…And ironically, it’s non-denominational.”

This narrow view of who owns the truth – of who’s in and who’s out with God – has driven many people away from organized religion all together. In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, a precocious child named Adah muses, “According to my … Sunday-school teachers, a child is denied entrance to heaven merely for being born in the Congo rather than, say, north Georgia, where she could attend church regularly… This was a sticking point in my own little march to salvation: admission to heaven is gained by the luck of the draw. At age of five I raised my … hand in Sunday school to point out this problem to Miss Betty Nagy. Getting born within earshot of a preacher, I reasoned, is entirely up to chance. Would Our Lord be such a hit-or-miss kind of Savior as that? Would he really condemn some children to eternal suffering just for the accident of a heathen birth, and reward others for a privilege they did nothing to earn? … Miss Betty sent me to the corner for the rest of the hour to pray for my own soul while kneeling on grains of uncooked rice. When I finally got up with sharp grains imbedded in my knees I found, to my surprise, that I no longer believed in God.”

This passage from Chapter 10 of John’s Gospel seems at first glance to be one of those “I am the only way” texts that people have relied upon to set Jesus up as a hit-or-miss savior. “I am the gate,” says Jesus. “If anyone enters through me, he shall be saved and shall find pasture.” This is pretty unequivocal. Christ is the gate. I think what’s important about this statement, and all of Jesus’ statements to this effect in the Gospels, is just that: HE is the gate. Christ is the gate. We, on the other hand, are not the gate, nor are we the gatekeepers. Back in the ‘80’s there was a nightclub in Manhattan called Studio 54. It was famous in part because bouncers stood by the door with a clipboard, looking over the crowd outside to decide who looked cool enough to be admitted. When it comes to salvation, we are not like the bouncers at Studio 54. It is Christ’s job to decide who is saved and on what basis, and for what reasons. It is not our job. If you don’t remember anything else about this passage, remember that it isn’t our job, it isn’t the job of any human being or group of human beings, to decide or even to worry about who is or isn’t saved.

Perhaps more importantly, though, Jesus doesn’t say what he means by “saved.” The traditional assumption, like Adah’s assumption in The Poisonwood Bible, is that he’s referring to an afterlife; that those who are “saved” go to heaven after they die, and those who are not, well, something else happens. But Jesus isn’t talking about heaven here. In Greek and Roman politics of Jesus’ day, kings and emperors were described as “good shepherds” who promote and provide a life of security and abundance for the empire’s subjects. John consistently presents Jesus as an opponent to imperial rule, so much so that he is killed for his opposition to Caesar. Biblical scholar Warren Carter writes that this description of Jesus in John 10 mirrors the role of the emperor as a ruler who keeps secure borders, a warrior who saves the people from attack or economic harm, and a benefactor who offers provision and even abundance. But unlike the emperor, Jesus is a true good shepherd, one who genuinely seeks to protect human lives from the thieves and bandits in imperial leadership. In the Roman world where 70 to 80 percent of the population was food insecure, protection from theft and the image of a green pasture was a poignant promise. So John’s Jesus offers not heaven in an afterlife, but a critique of the Roman Empire, which claimed (as reported in the writings of Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, and others) to bring wholeness and wellbeing to society, while its structures actually brought sickness and poverty to most of its subjects.

In other words, Jesus means it quite literally when he says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). When imagining Jesus as “the gate” (John 10:7, 9), it’s easy to think of the gate as penning in the sheep and restricting their movements. However, the purpose of the gate is to protect the sheep from those death-dealing forces in the Roman world, and to provides access for the sheep to the pasture (John 10:9). Rather than a hit-or-miss savior obsessed with our eternal souls, this passage shows us a savior concerned with our well-being: our health, our wholeness, our shalom. Not after we die, but here and now, in this life.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Wiley Miller, “Non Sequitur,” in the San Francisco Chronicle, March 15 (year unknown).
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (New York: HarperPerenniel, 1998).
Warren Carter, “Jesus the Good Shepherd: John 10 as Political Rhetoric,” in Come and Read: Interpretive Approaches to the Gospel of John, ed. Alicia Myers and Lindsey S. Jodrey (Lanham, MD: Fortress Academic, 2020).
Laura Holmes, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-101-10-7
Lindsey Scott, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-101-10-5

I Will Fear No Evil

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Psalm 23

“I will fear no evil.” I long for these words to be true for me. Sometimes they are true. Other times they are a hope. Not that I wish I were never, ever afraid. There really is such a thing as healthy fear, as every parent of teenagers wishes kids would remember. Fear helps keep us safe, and we are hard-wired for self-preservation.

But fear can also be unhealthy and unreasonable. Freud said it’s reasonable for a person to be afraid of snakes in the heart of the jungle, but it’s not reasonable to be afraid of snakes under the carpet in your apartment. Unhealthy fears can paralyze us, rob us of joy, make us hide our true selves, and live a diminished life. Fear can also cause us to try to control or dominate others, develop hatreds and prejudices, build up armies, start wars, commit acts of terrorism, and fail to stand up for what we know is right. Rather than preserve us, these fears poison us.

So when the psalmist says, “I will fear no evil,” it’s these fears to which he refers. It’s these fears that not only do not preserve us but actually threaten our safety and the safety of the world. In response to a terrorist attack a few years ago, public theologian and author Brian D. McLaren wrote, “As a first step in protecting our values and safety, we must know who and where our greatest enemy is. Our greatest enemy is not the enemy out there or over there. Our greatest enemy is the invisible army that lives inside each of us and therefore among all of us, camouflaged, hidden, subtle. Within us hide terror cells of fear that tempt us to react in folly rather than act in wisdom.” This enemy within tempts us to respond to evil with evil, rather than seeking to overcome evil with good. It tempts us to build power bases among “some of us” by building fear and prejudice against “others of us.” The ringleader of all these inner enemies, writes McLaren, is pride, both personal and national, that tells us we are better than others and so we deserve special privileges or special exemptions.

How do we figure out which fears are really the enemy inside us? Which are the snakes under the carpet? Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote that more often than not, fear involves the misuse of the imagination. So perhaps a place to begin is with an honest look at our fears. What is true? What is folly? Maybe all our fears have both a degree of truth and a degree of ridiculousness, and the trick is figuring out what’s ridiculous, and then treating it that way. For example, there was a meme making its way around the Internet a while back that said, “Muslims make up 1% of the population, commit .5% of the mass shootings, and account for 10% of U.S. doctors. So if you’re ever at the wrong place at the wrong time and get shot by a Christian, don’t worry. There’s probably a Muslim that can help.”

How do we deal with those fears that have more truth than ridiculousness? The psalmist tells us, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me.” In The Message, Eugene Peterson translates this verse, “Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I’m not afraid when you walk at my side.” The temptation, I think, is to rely on platitudes about God’s presence. God’s presence with us is profoundly true, but how does that become real for us when we’re afraid? We know the psalmist doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be afraid of. The Lord is not a shepherd who makes all the bad and scary parts of life go away. This is a psalm that says there are green pastures but also dark valleys and enemies. It says we can get lost, and sometimes we do. It doesn’t say there’s no evil, or that evil will never touch our lives. It doesn’t say God will intervene to protect us, as much as we wish that were true.

And yet, says the psalmist, in the face of evil, he will not fear. Walter Brueggemann writes, “It is God’s companionship that transforms every situation.” But what good does God’s companionship do when bombs land on a girls’ school or ICE agents murder protesters? I can imagine the response of some might be, “You can keep your God; give me an assault rifle. Or an M-1 Abrams tank.” But then, is that standing up to evil? Or is it capitulating to it? Isn’t that what fearing evil looks like? I agree with William Sloane Coffin, who wrote, “Frankly, nothing scares me like scared people, unless it’s a scared nation.”

Rabbi Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, said, “The Twenty-third Psalm is the answer to the question, ‘How do you live in a dangerous, unpredictable, frightening world?’” That sounds like a lot to ask from a psalm, even a comforting and familiar psalm. But there’s more to it than comfort and familiarity. Besides addressing fear, the psalm talks about revenge. If our first impulse in the face of evil is fear, our second impulse is vengeance. “You spread a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows,” writes the psalmist. The psalmist doesn’t ignore the cold, hard fact that there are people in the world who mean him harm. But as soon as the psalmist mentions his enemies and confesses his frankly petty desire to make them jealous by eating a sumptuous feast right in front of them while they look on with their mouths watering, he moves into a more important confession. He confesses the goodness of God and the bounty with which he has been blessed. The movement in the psalmist’s thinking goes like this: “I have enemies. Man, I would really love to rub their noses in the fact that God has blessed me. Wow, God has blessed me! Surely goodness and mercy will follow me.” And it’s that last thought that carries the day. His impulse to take revenge is short-circuited by the deep awareness of God’s grace and love. The energy he would have spent on retribution is transformed into joyful thanksgiving.

It’s a different way of approaching a threat, isn’t it? Pausing to reflect on God’s love and grace before reacting in fear and revenge? It opens up the possibility of transformation, which might even include the enemy.

It is love and only love that transforms us from people who live in fear and seek revenge into people who choose to end the cycle of fear, hatred, and revenge. It always has been. It always will be. John’s first letter tells us, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:1819). Martin Luther King, Jr., again, wrote: “Hate is rooted in fear, and the only cure for fear-hate is love. … We say that war is a consequence of hate, but close scrutiny reveals this sequence: first fear, then hate, then war, and finally, deeper hatred.” The same sequence causes the hatred we call prejudice. It’s fear – the fear of loss of economic privilege or social status – that leads to the hatred that leads to dehumanizing treatment and even violence, which in turn create more fear and hatred.

We love because God first loved us. This transforming kind of love comes from God, and it takes prayer and practice and community and time – maybe a lifetime – to let God’s limitless love come alive in us. That’s why theologian Karl Barth said, “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”

This poem by Michael Leunig speaks to our time, and perhaps to all time:
There are only two feelings. Love and fear.
There are only two languages. Love and fear.
There are only two activities. Love and fear.
There are only two motives, two procedures,
two frameworks, two results. Love and fear.
Love and fear.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:

F. Emelia Sam, “3 Reasons Why Fear Is Actually a Good Thing,” October 8, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-f-emelia-sam/why-fear-is-a-good-thing_b_8258746.html.
Brian D. McLaren, https://medium.com/@amprog/we-protect-our-nation-s-values-and-safety-by-continuing-to-strive-to-live-up-to-our-ideals-d0ab27b8896e
Timothy F. Simpson, “The 23rd Psalm in an Age of Terror: A Pastoral Response to Boston,”
April 16, 2013, http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/the-23rd-psalm-in-an-age-of-terror-a-pastoral-response-to-boston/
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Antidotes to Fear,” in Strength to Love (Harper and Row, 1963; reprinted as a gift edition by Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010).
William Sloane Coffin, “Loving Your Enemy,” February 6, 1983, in The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin: The Riverside Years, Volume 2 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008).
PBS Interview with Harold Kushner, November 26, 2004, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/november-26-2004/harold-kushner/15271/
Michael Leunig, https://mail.leunig.com.au/works/prayers