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Jesus said to his disciples, “Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one,” (Matthew 6:9-13, NIV).

“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Your will be done…Is there anything more difficult than thwarting our own will, or putting the will of another ahead of ours? In twelve-programs the third step is: [We have] Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. When I pray the third step, I simply say, “I give you my life and my will.” I do this every night before I go to sleep; I pray the Lord’s Prayer, the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God the Father, have mercy on me a sinner), and the first three steps of the twelve steps. In the space of a few minutes, I say to God that I want God’s will to be done, and on the best of days, I give God my will, and then take it back again shortly afterwards. What is the will of God? To love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind, and with all our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourself. That is the will of God – that we love, and as Thomas Aquinas said, to love means to will the good of the other.

Willing the good of the other is incredibly disruptive to my life, especially if the others I am willing the good to are not willing the good of me, like my children. They don’t wish me ill (though I am the worst father in the world, according to at least two of them), but they do demand a lot. Usually, they wait until I sit down, at which point they will ask me for something to eat or drink, or to go play with them in the backyard. I usually try to accommodate them, though not as quickly as they would like. I don’t want to spoil them, but I do want to model what it means to help others. It’s been slow to stick…when asked to put their candy wrappers in the trash, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth, which only increases if we threaten to remove candy from the house. But it’s starting to work too…they both want to help unload/load the dishwasher, sweep the floor, and wash/dry clothes.

Willing the good of the other takes practice; it’s not something that will happen all at once. There will never be a time we don’t need Jesus – we will never become perfect at being selfless. But we can definitely improve from where we are. When I pray the Lord’s Prayer, I want to be genuine – I want to mean it when I say, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s will in heaven is that we willingly and lovingly follow the first two commandments, that when everyone is seeking the good of the other—when everyone is loving one another—then no one is left out. But every day, there is a significant gulf between praying the words and living the words, and it is this gulf that reinforces my need for Christ and his grace.

We are blessed (or cursed, depending on your view) to be able to hold opposing viewpoints in our minds at the same time. Yes, I pray and want to do God’s will, but I do not do God’s will, and because of this, I need God’s grace, provided through the love of God’s son, Jesus. It’s as Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “I do not do the good I will, but I do the very thing I hate.” Recognizing our sin is the first step to working through it. We can’t help everyone, though we may will the good of everyone we see, we cannot make it a reality. But we can pray for everyone we see, recognizing that Christ dwells within all people, and that when we serve one another, we are serving Christ.

The Rev. Jason Shelby
Rector
jason.shelby@stfrancispalosverdes.org

Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an ICE officer yesterday morning in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This is a verifiable fact. She was a mother, a daughter, and a child of God. She was 37 years old. Three of those four things can be proven empirically, while one is based entirely on faith. It is likely that there has been more said about her in the past 36 hours by more people than in the entirety of her life. There are those that are hailing her as a hero and martyr, while others vilify her and say that she got what she deserved. Who deserves to be shot in the head?

If we seek and serve Christ in all people while respecting the dignity of every human being, we cannot say that anyone deserves to be murdered. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famous German theologian, said that if he were able to murder Hitler, he would do it for the good of humanity. But he also said that he was willing to cast his soul into hell for the sin of taking another person’s life. He unequivocally named murder a sin, for which there is no excuse. It’s much easier to say that someone needs to be killed or taken out for the betterment of humanity, and easier still to say that it’s good to remove such people from the world. Does Jesus call the death of any person good?

The most difficult funeral I’ve ever done was for a young man who had struggled with addiction for all of his adult life, until the day he died of an overdose. He was in and out of rehab at least ten times, and his family stuck by him the whole time. On the day of his funeral, it was standing room only in the church. The family was standing in the narthex waiting to process into the church, and they had to squeeze to the sides to make way for the casket. The young man’s mother was wearing sunglasses and standing stone straight as he went by, and as my eyes moved from her to the casket, I crumpled and wept. The young man’s father gave me a big hug and slapped me on the back, then walked ahead of me into the church.

I pulled myself together and walked into the church, the last person in line, directly behind the casket. We lived in a small town, and there was no shortage of opinions, good and bad, about the young man and his family. But there was also an outpouring of love and support for the family; all squabbles and divisions were set aside, and people went out of their way to offer their condolences.

There will likely be a funeral service for Renee Good. I can’t imagine celebrating that service, talking about the hope of the resurrection and the promise of the kingdom to come, all the while knowing that there are people outside the church with loud voices and a long reach saying that Renee Good deserved to die. She will be called many things over the next few weeks (hero, martyr, terrorist, agitator), until her name fades into the background and the next tragedy dominates our attention. But to her children, she will always be mom; to her friends and family, she will always be Renee. They are the ones left here to struggle and find their way, and they are the ones who will bear all of the slights made against the person they dearly loved and lost. If we truly believe that whatever we have done unto the least of these we have done unto Christ, then let us act in accordance and honor our savior by honoring one another.

The Rev. Jason Shelby
Rector
jason.shelby@stfrancispalosverdes.org