Tag Archives: love

What Is Love?

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What is love?

In our world, “love” can mean anything from attachment to admiration, from affection to attraction. For some, “love” is a painful word, carrying the trauma of past abuse.

Christians talk a lot about love, but we all know Christians whose “love” doesn’t look much like Jesus. What is Jesus’ way of love?

Jesus says the greatest commandment in the Torah is to “love God”—a command that has been used to justify all kinds of things. But Jesus pairs “love God” with “love your neighbour”: we show our love for God most purely when we love our neighbour as if their needs were our own.

And then Jesus goes on to define our neighbour not only as “those who are with us, those who are like us,” but as anyone we come across in need, even if they are “stranger” and “other.” Indeed, we may be surprised to learn that the “other” often shows neighbour love to us.

But Jesus pushes this further, commanding us to “love your enemies“—not simply those who disagree with us, but those who actively oppose us, even wishing us harm. We do this, Jesus says, by treating them with kindness even as we nonviolently resist the evil they perpetuate.

Love in the way of Jesus is open-armed and open-handed. It approaches another person as a child of the Creator, welcoming them in peace. It is generous with others, especially those who have a need we can meet. Their needs are as our needs.

Love in the way of Jesus, then, pays special attention to those who are considered “least” or “lost” or “last” in this world: the poor, the sick, the outcast. It seeks out these beloved children of God. It stands with them even in suffering, even in shame, even unto death.

Love in the way of Jesus is attachment, it is affection. It is all that is good in the love that we know in the world. But it is also action, an active, dedicated compassion on behalf of the other, for their good and for the common good.

Love in the way of Jesus, then, leads to the pursuit of justice—especially on behalf of the poor, the widow, the stranger, the outcast, the sick, all those most vulnerable to harm by the powers-that-be. As Cornel West says, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”

© Michael W. Pahl

Digging Deeper into Love

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Will Braun’s three-part series in the Canadian Mennonite, “The Sweet Solace of Polarization,” is an important reminder of our calling to love one another even through our strong differences of opinion. Walking in humility, listening patiently, being gentle with each other, showing compassion—loving one another, in other words—is crucial if we truly want to live into the unity of the Spirit as the body of Christ (Eph 4:1-2).

We do have a tendency to view things in binary terms. But life is complex. Humans are complex. Human societies are complex. The church is complex. There are few if any true binaries.

As one who has been outspoken about the importance of COVID vaccinations and protections through the pandemic, I have had to learn this lesson myself. Conversations with vaccine hesitant folks have reminded me that it’s important for individuals to consult their doctor about any medical prevention or intervention. They have reminded me that behind alternative opinions are real flesh-and-blood people who have many of the same hopes and fears that I do. They have reminded me that Christians indeed share a common desire to love our neighbours, even if we don’t always agree on the best way to do that.

Nevertheless, there are more questions we should ask each other, more conversations we should have. While humility, patience, gentleness, and compassion are foundational aspects of Christian love, there is more of love to discover. We need to dig deeper into love.

At the time I write this, over 46,500 people have died in Canada because of COVID. In my province of Manitoba, one out of every 625 people has died because of this virus. COVID has disproportionately affected the elderly, racialized persons, and the immune-compromised with severe outcomes. Statistics Canada estimates that 15% of Canadians who have contracted the virus have developed “long COVID,” with symptoms lingering from a few months to potentially years after the initial infection. Some of these long-term symptoms are relatively mild, but for some people they are debilitating.

Major health-governing and research-collecting bodies like the World Health Organization continue to conclude that COVID vaccines are safe, with extremely low risk of health complications from the vaccine (a far lower risk of harm than COVID itself presents). While vaccines have not provided the “bullet-proof immunization” many of us hoped for, they do reduce the forward transmission of the virus and they significantly reduce severe outcomes for those who are vaccinated. When good masks and ventilation are added into the mix in indoor spaces, the risk of virus transmission is lessened considerably.

All this should prompt us to ask more questions of each other, to dig deeper into love.

How do we relate to “experts” as we make ethical decisions? Which “experts” do we trust, and why do we trust them and not others?

How do we relate to our “governing authorities,” to use Paul’s term in Romans 13, especially as it relates to the only debt we should owe, Paul says there, the debt to love our neighbours?

How do we balance a concern for the common good with a concern for individual freedoms, again especially as it relates to the call of Jesus to love our neighbour as if their needs were our own?

If we do accept the reports noted above regarding COVID’s impact on the most health-vulnerable in our society, what does it mean for us to love these neighbours, and how do we weigh that against any potential harms we may be concerned about from vaccines or other public health protections?

Love in the way of Jesus requires a particular posture toward one another, yes, a posture of humility, patience, gentleness, and compassion. But that is not the totality of Jesus’ way of love. His is a devoted love of God expressed pre-eminently through loving our neighbour as if their needs were ours (Matt 22:36-40). And as we see from Jesus in the Gospels, the neighbours we should pay special attention to are the sick, the poor, the stranger—all those most vulnerable to harm.

May the fullness of this love drive us forward as we navigate the complexities of the ethical decisions we face.

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This article was published in the Canadian Mennonite (Nov. 28, 2022) as “A biblical case for vaccines.” Not only is that title inaccurate, it encourages readers to see the piece as arguing for one side in a polarized debate, and thus badly misses the point of the article. That title change was an editorial decision.

Following Christ into Catastrophe

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We seem to be constantly on the verge of impending catastrophe. COVID. Climate change. The collapse of Twitter.

That last example is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but there’s some truth in it. The collapse of Twitter (if it happens) would have significant negative impact on some people’s livelihoods, health supports, advocacy networks, and more. But it’s also true in a different way: the way people are responding to Twitter’s demise reveals some of the social dynamics at play in the larger catastrophes we face.

It seems to me there are two unhelpful responses to these catastrophes.

One is to get swept up in the tidal wave of fear and despair—the hysteria—that accompanies any perceived catastrophe. There is even a kind of “culture of catastrophe” at work in some segments of society, where our way of being in the world, even our identity in society, is determined in relation to whatever the current catastrophe is. We are required always to be in a heightened state of anxiety and urgent action—a sure-fire recipe for mental ill health and societal conflict.

The other unhelpful response, though, is to downplay or even ignore the seriousness of the problem. Catastrophes do happen. To suggest otherwise is to be naïve, or even to betray our historical or geographical privilege. Catastrophes have happened in history, and they are happening around the world. COVID and climate change are real problems. Injustice and inequity, bigotry and violence, disease and disaster, in all their forms, are real problems.

So what should we do? In particular, how should we as Christians follow Christ into catastrophe?

Well, we have some good guidance from Jesus himself in the Gospels. After all, Jesus predicted a catastrophe, and gave instructions for his followers on how to walk in that catastrophe. Let’s give a glance at Jesus’ “Apocalyptic Discourse” (yes, that’s what scholars call it) in Matthew’s Gospel.

David Roberts, The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem, Wikimedia Commons

In Matthew 24-25, Jesus describes the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, a catastrophe which happened roughly 40 years after Jesus. (For a few historical-critical thoughts on this, see below.*) Jesus sets this catastrophe in the context of even wider catastrophes: wars, natural disasters, famines, plagues, and the like. And then Jesus gives some guidance for his followers on how they should walk into those catastrophes.

One word of guidance from Jesus is especially highlighted through chapter 24, summed up in this phrase: watch and pray.

“Stay awake,” Jesus says, be watchful. Be aware of what is going on, pay attention to the things that are happening and what they mean. Be ready for God’s deliverance when it comes. And pray. Pray as Jesus taught us (Matt 6:9-13). Trust in our loving God for our daily bread. Pray for salvation from the time of trial and deliverance from evil. Hope in God’s good future on the far side of the apocalypse.

Take seriously what’s going on. But don’t get caught up in the hysteria; don’t get swept up in the fear and despair. Don’t let the unfolding catastrophe determine your way of being in the world, your identity in the world. Watch and pray.

Another word of guidance is especially bought home in chapter 25, summed up this way: care for “the least” among us as the worst unfolds around us.

Jesus calls his followers to use what God has given us to invest into God’s kingdom, God’s reign of justice and peace and life. Feed the hungry, Jesus says, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, heal the sick, care for the imprisoned. In other words, continue to “seek first God’s reign and God’s justice” (Matt 6:33).

Don’t give up on this world; and especially, don’t give up on those among us most vulnerable to harm by evil forces in times of trial. Care for “the least” among us as the worst unfolds around us.

Some of us as Christians are good at not getting caught up in the hysteria of COVID or climate change or any other impending catastrophe. But then we’re often not as good at being aware of the reality of the problems, or at focusing on the most vulnerable through those problems, and those vulnerable people get harmed.

Others of us are good at being aware of the problems and, sometimes at least, centering the most vulnerable in the midst of those problems. But then we’re often not as good at prayerfully trusting in God for our present, or prayerfully hoping in God for the future, and we walk in unhealthy anxiety and inflame conflict with others who are not our enemies.

May we take Jesus’ words to heart, and follow Christ into the catastrophes of our time, walking always in faith, hope, and love, especially for those most often deemed least in our world.

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*Here’s my take on the Synoptic apocalyptic discourses. There’s such a strong memory of Jesus’ predicting a future calamitous end, and even specifically the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, that I think it likely Jesus did indeed predict this. That memory is preserved not just in all four Gospels (Matt 24; Mark 13; Luke 21; John 2) but also in other NT passages (e.g. 1 Thess 4-5). And there were certainly enough signs in Jesus’ day that things were not going to end well for the Jewish people in their struggle against Roman imperial power. A Temple destruction in some not-too-distant future was also on the minds of others (see accounts in Josephus).

I also think it likely that Jesus believed the end of the age and the dawn of the coming age, the fullness of the reign of God, would come at the time of the Temple’s destruction. In this Jesus was wrong. However, the Gospel authors, all writing after the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE (Mark as a possible exception to this), still saw value in Jesus’ words. Yes, they embellished Jesus’ predictions to make them fit more directly with recent historical events (especially Luke in Luke 21:20-24), but they didn’t substantially change the tradition they had received (so they believed) from Jesus. Why is that?

One reason, I think, is simply that it confirmed Jesus as a prophet. He had predicted the Temple’s destruction, and look, it happened. But I think there’s another reason: they saw in Jesus’ words continuing guidance for them in the midst of the wider “catastrophes” he highlighted. Wars, natural disasters, famines, and plagues continued, along with false prophets and false messiahs and opposition and even persecution of Jesus’ followers. While Jesus’ return and the fulfillment of God’s reign was transferred to some unknown future, we still live in this “time between the times” where all these calamitous events take place. We need Jesus’ guidance on how to live in these ongoing days of evil.

My Faith Story

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On September 4, 2022, I shared my faith story with my congregation as part of the process of transferring my membership from my previous congregation. Here is what I shared.

If I were to sum up my faith journey in a phrase, it might be this: “Pursuing Jesus who first found me.”

I grew up in a conservative evangelical environment, nominally Anabaptist. I knew my Bible. I knew about Jesus. But I didn’t know Jesus.

In my university days I went on a spiritual quest. I checked out other religions—Hinduism and Buddhism fascinated me for a while. I actively participated in a different church every year of university: Pentecostal, United Church, Lutheran, Baptist. I was baptized in that Baptist church.

Along the way I had a profound spiritual experience that pushed me back to the Bible. I read it like I’d never read it before, in huge chunks: all of Isaiah in one sitting, all of Luke and Acts in another, all of Genesis in a morning, all of John in an afternoon, Romans before bed. I gorged on Scripture.

And that’s how I first met Jesus. I read the Bible and I found Jesus. Or rather, Jesus found me, and I’ve pursued him ever since.

Later, when I was teaching through the New Testament at a small Christian college and working on my Ph.D., I had an epiphany: this Jesus-centred reading of Scripture had made me into an Anabaptist. By reading the Bible to follow Jesus I had become committed to Jesus’ way of nonviolence, his way of just peace, his way of community, his way of love.

And so, when I left this nondenominational college to move into pastoral ministry, it made sense to serve in a Mennonite congregation, one that was thoroughly Anabaptist.

That was 13 years ago, and our journey since then has brought us from Alberta to Ohio to Manitoba, and now into my current role as Executive Minister of Mennonite Church Manitoba, and member of Home Street Mennonite Church. I’m grateful for this congregation, for its commitment to pursue Jesus who first found us.

Last week Ingrid shared about developing a centred-set approach to church instead of a bounded-set approach. I’ve also taught that concept since first coming across missionary anthropologist Paul Hiebert’s use of this idea. And this, to me, is at the centre of this thing we call “Christianity,” and this thing we call “church”: Jesus, and Jesus’ way of love.

Jesus of Nazareth, crucified Messiah and resurrected Lord, and Jesus’ way of devotion for God expressed through compassion for others, especially those the world deems “last,” “least,” or “lost.”

We gather around Jesus and his way of love like people gathering around a bonfire on a cold, dark night. We draw close to Jesus and his love for light and warmth, and as we do so we find ourselves drawing closer to each other.

Around this fire we tell our stories, we sing our songs, we pray our prayers, we share our bread and wine. And we commit ourselves to following Jesus and his way of love as we go out into the world, carrying our candles lit with the fire of Jesus’ love.

As we go we proclaim the greatest revelation Jesus has given us: God is love. We should know this from Scripture, we should know this from observing creation around us, but in Jesus this is confirmed and clarified: God is love.

God always loves. God cannot not love. Everything God does is motivated by love and enacted in love. This means that anything we experience that is not of love is not of God. God is not the author of evil or suffering or harm.

Love is the essence of God in a way that God’s other attributes are not. God’s holiness is a holy love. God’s justice is a just love. God’s wisdom is a wise love. God’s power is a powerful love.

All is being moved by love towards God’s good purposes. Love is stronger than injustice or violence. Love is stronger than every other power. Love is stronger than death. In the end, love will win, and all will be well.

Jesus, and Jesus’ way of love, pointing us to the God who is love.

This is indeed good news.

What does it mean to say that “God is love”?

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It’s one of the foundational beliefs of Christianity: “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). But what does it mean to say this? Here are a few thoughts.

“God is love” means that God always loves. God cannot not love. Everything God does is motivated by love and enacted in love. This means that anything we experience that is not of love is not of God. God is not the author of evil or suffering or harm.

“God is love” means that love is at the heart of who God is. The Bible says that “God is holy,” but it never says that “God is holiness.” Love is the essence of God in a way that God’s other attributes are not. God’s holiness is a holy love. God’s justice is a just love. God’s wisdom is a wise love. God’s power is a powerful love.

“God is love” means that all has been created in love. As all things exist out of the overflow of God’s being, so all things exist out of the overflow of God’s love.

“God is love” means that all is being moved by love towards God’s good purposes. Love is stronger than injustice or violence. Love is stronger than every other power. Love is stronger than death. In the end, love will win, and all will be well.

“God is love” means that all that is not-love is not-God; it is anti-God. This, then, is “sin”: thinking and acting and speaking out of apathy or antipathy, causing harm to others, ourselves, or other creatures, and thus grieving the God who is love. And this is “death”: dying, or even living, in the consequences of this non-love.

“God is love” means that you are beloved by God. This is your most basic identity: God’s Beloved. And this is true of each and every person, every creature, all of creation.

“God is love” means that when you are at your lowest, or your loneliest, you are never alone. There is a Presence always with you, embracing you in their love.

“God is love” means that when you are at your worst, and you know it, or when you have done your worst, and you know it, there is One who is already moving toward you, to forgive you and restore you, to make you whole.

“God is love” means that God is calling us into a Beloved Community, a society of friends where peace with justice prevails over violence and injustice, where love and trust triumphs over fear and hatred. It means that, ultimately, God is moving all things toward a Peaceable Kingdom, God’s vision of true justice and lasting peace and flourishing life for all creation.

Then God, who is love, will be all in all.

© Michael W. Pahl

Following Jesus Is Not Enough

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Okay, let me start by saying I really do believe following Jesus is “enough,” in the sense that “following Jesus” nicely sums up what it means to be a Christian. Following Jesus in his teachings and way of life, united with him in his death and resurrection, and so being conformed by the Spirit to the image of God’s Son—this is what being a Christian means.

But here’s the problem: “following Jesus” can so easily be used to mean whatever we want it to mean.

We pick and choose which teachings of Jesus we think are really important. We make morality solely about inward intentions or private sexuality. We make the cross about an individual transaction with God. We view the resurrection as something still to come, no bearing on the here and now.

And then we can go on amassing our possessions, condemning “sinners,” ignoring the poor at our gates, and otherwise living in stark contrast to the way of Jesus.

It’s a well-worn path, a broad road even, this individualizing and privatizing and genericizing and spiritualizing of “following Jesus,” so we can justify our comfort and privilege, maintain our sense of piety and morality, and otherwise feel good about the life we lead.

It’s a path I find myself on often.

And so we need something to help us focus what it means to “follow Jesus,” to be “united with Christ,” to be “conformed to the image of God’s Son.”

Here’s where I’ve been helped by Black theologians like James Cone, by feminist theologians like Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, by liberation theologians like Gustavo Gutiérrez. Here’s where the practical theology of people like Martin Luther King, Jr. has been important to me.

It’s from these followers of Jesus and others like them that I have learned of God’s “preferential option for the poor.” This is not that God loves the poor more than the rich, but that, because God is love, God pays particular attention to the poor.

Ferdinand Hodler, The Good Samaritan

“The poor” in biblical context does not simply refer to the financially destitute. The phrase is aligned with “widows” and “orphans,” “aliens” and “strangers.” Jesus used words like “last” and “least” to refer to these children of God who were left at the bottom rung of society. “The poor” is often used, then, as a kind of cipher for all who are impoverished in power—economic power, yes, but also political power, social power, the power to change one’s circumstances for their wellbeing.

“Remembering the poor”—in the sense of “paying attention to those who are impoverished in power”—was at the heart of Jesus’ ministry. It was a crucial emphasis of his teaching. It was the way he lived. It gives greater meaning to the cross as God’s solidarity with the powerless, the evil-oppressed. It brings Jesus’ resurrection, God’s life-giving liberation, into the here and now.

This divine attention to the impoverished in power is the lens that can help us focus what it means to “follow Jesus.” When we “remember the poor” as we follow Jesus, we begin to see the world through Jesus’ eyes. We pay attention to those marginalized or even oppressed by powerful forces beyond their control, both spiritual and material. We see the ways we might be complicit with these powerful forces, whether by circumstance or by choice. We are Spirit-prompted to repent of this complicity and to walk in solidarity with the power-impoverished, even if it means a cross.

All this recalibrates our love of God and neighbour. It realigns our sense of morality and our ethics. It reforms our theology and heightens our worship. It draws us more closely to the way of Jesus. It unites us in practical ways with Christ in his death and resurrection, revealing us to be conformed to the image of Christ.

“Remembering the poor” helps us to follow Jesus. And this is indeed enough.

David and David’s Son on Love and Power

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In this coming Sunday’s lectionary texts there’s quite the juxtaposition between the Old Testament reading and the New Testament epistle.

On the one hand there’s 2 Samuel 11:1-15. The headings in the NRSV describe the story as, first, “David Commits Adultery with Bathsheba,” and second, “David Has Uriah Killed.” More accurately, these should be “David Rapes Bathsheba” and “David Murders Uriah.” This is Israel’s favoured king, the king who would form the template for the Messiah to come. But instead of walking in righteousness and establishing justice through self-giving love, David’s lust and abuse of power leads him to rape and murder.

“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Carl Bloch, “Healing of the Blind Man”)

On the other hand there’s Ephesians 3:14-21. This is a prayer of Paul (or a Pauline disciple) for power and perception, but not the kind that David displayed. This prayer is for spiritual power, to be “strengthened in our inner being” by the presence of the risen Christ and to “know the love of Christ” in all its multi-dimensional fullness. This is a power that walks in righteousness and establishes justice through self-giving love. It’s the power of Jesus the teacher and healer from Nazareth, crucified and risen. It’s the power of the Son of David, the Messiah who surpasses the expectations of his template.

In these days of #MeToo and #ChurchToo, of #EveryChildMatters and #CancelCanadaDay, David’s story is a cautionary tale of what happens when we wed ourselves to earthly power and then abuse that power for our own selfish ends. Paul’s prayer points to a different way: living in the infinite love of God, the Jesus-love that compels us toward justice and peace and joy in the kingdom of God.

The Trinitarian Gospel of Paul

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“When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:15-17).

I love Paul’s angle on the gospel here. This is good news for a prodigal child, as we all are in some way. It’s good news for one who returns thinking they’ll live as a slave, only to have their Abba run out to meet them with a full embrace and insist that, not only are they a beloved child, they are a full heir. Bring on the music and dancing! Let the angels rejoice!

You might think the whole “suffering” theme puts a bit of a damper on this party. But when we read on we find that this suffering is the suffering of Christ as he joins in solidarity with the suffering of the world, even all creation. Jesus in his life and death walked in solidarity with the most wounded of sufferers and outcast of sinners. We are invited to join in this suffering in solidarity with the world, so that all people might one day recognize the truth of their belovedness as God’s children. Cue the music once again! Look at those angels dance!

This, then, is the Trinitarian gospel of Paul in Romans 8: we who walk in suffering and sin are beloved children of God the Father, joint heirs with Christ the Son, birthed of the Holy Spirit. May this good news prompt us to praise and stir us to step out in faith and hope and love this week.

The Not-So-Nice, Not-So-Safe Spirit of God

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We have walked with the resurrected Jesus to his ascension and exaltation, and now this coming Sunday we are at Pentecost. Naturally, then, our lectionary texts for this Sunday are filled with references to the Spirit.

Mennonites haven’t been entirely sure what to do with Pentecost, I’d say. To be honest, we haven’t always been sure what to do with the Spirit. Yes, we have developed our nice, safe ways of interpreting the Pentecost coming of the Spirit, mostly around things like “God’s presence is with us” and a lot of stuff about “communal discernment” as the work of the Spirit.

But I’m struck by this reality regarding the Spirit in our upcoming lectionary texts: the Spirit isn’t “nice and safe.”

When the Spirit comes in Acts 2, there are tongues of fire and the sound of a rushing wind (in southern Manitoba these days, this doesn’t sound all that safe). There is a cacophony of voices and languages, exuberantly declaring God’s praises (in most of our Mennonite churches, this would be frowned upon).

There is a declaration of the Spirit’s prophetic presence, falling on old and young, women and men equally (it’s dangerous having one prophet, let alone a whole church full of them, crossing gender and class lines). There is a cut-to-the-heart repentance for complicity with state violence, and a radical turn to a generous and simple common life, a life held together by breaking bread and prayers and the teaching about Jesus (in our nationalistic and capitalistic society, these things are far from safe).

And that’s just Acts 2.

Elsewhere in our Scripture texts, the coming of the Spirit brings sudden life out of dusty, dry-bones death (Psalm 104, politicized in Ezekiel 37 as the return of conquered and enslaved Israel from exile). The Spirit groans with us in our deepest griefs and longings—indeed with all creation, groaning under the weight of human greed and hubris—anticipating with hope the fullness of redemption (Romans 8). The Spirit convicts the world of its harmful ways and guides Jesus’ followers into the fullness of truth regarding Jesus and his justice-bringing ways of love (John 16).

It turns out that while the Spirit is unquestionably good, the Spirit is not necessarily safe. While the Spirit does make us secure in God’s love, the Spirit does not guarantee our physical or social security. While the Spirit does bring us comfort, the coming of the Spirit is not comfortable. The wind of the Spirit blows the doors off our categories, it shatters our illusions and self-delusions, it turns power on its head and our world’s values upside-down.

As we enter Pentecost, let’s attune ourselves to the true Pentecost Spirit in our churches and in the world around us: the not-so-nice, not-so-safe Spirit of God. And let’s ask ourselves: how, then, can we support one another as we follow this dangerous Pentecost Spirit into the world?

Dwelling Embodied in the World

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I’m writing this in our new house, looking out at a busy West End intersection. Busy—and it’s Sunday. During a pandemic lockdown.

We’re not in Morden anymore, Toto.

In the first day of our initial “campout” in the new place, I’ve seen ambulances wail by, heard fire trucks head out, watched intoxicated men stumble past, witnessed meth users yelling at their invisible demons. I’ve also seen young moms pushing strollers with toddlers in tow, and couples out for a walk with their dogs. I’ve met our next-door neighbours, a courageous immigrant mother caring for half a dozen friendly children on her own.

Cars whiz by on their way from Point A to Point B, unaware of the menagerie of life on this single block in inner city Winnipeg.

I hear this word from the upcoming Sunday’s lectionary readings, the prayer of Jesus for his disciples: “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one… As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17:15,18).

We aren’t called to whiz by the messy reality of life from Point A to Point B. We are called to live life incarnate, like Jesus, dwelling embodied in the stuff of earth. For us, now, this will mean dwelling embodied in this West End neighbourhood.

I’m also reminded of “the world” we are leaving behind in Morden. It’s no more the “rural haven” many imagine than West End Winnipeg is the “urban blight” everyone thinks it is. Within those immaculate rural homes there are untold stories of domestic and sexual abuse. The quiet streets and friendly smiles paper over the evidence of a toxic mix of unaddressed poverty and racism. And don’t get me started on anti-vaxxer religion.

“The world” is all around us, whether in Winnipeg or beyond the perimeter. “The world”—in all its dappled shadows and light, all its many-hued array of goodness and evil, love and harm. May we have courage to follow Jesus in fully dwelling embodied in the world in which we live, exposing the shadows with grace as we bear witness to the light in love.