Orpah, John Oliver, and Jesus of Nazareth

Text:  Luke 7:36-8:3

Theme:  “Oprah, John, and Jesus”

4^th Sunday after Pentecost

June 12, 2016

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, TX

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

36 When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. 37 A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. 38 As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

40 Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

41 “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii,[a] and the other fifty. 42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

43 Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

44 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. 47 Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

48 Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

49 The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

50 Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, 2 and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; 3 Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.

Here’s a fact.  I just haven’t figured out if it’s a “fun fact”:  I sold Nissan automobiles for nearly three years.  I liked the product:  I drove a 350Z, a Maxima, an Altima, a 4-door Frontier pick-up truck, and a Nissan Pathfinder SUV.  It was quite an experience, and I’m still trying to weigh the pluses and minuses of that little venture in sales.  Unless a customer came in with piles of money and paid cash for a new car (which was rare but did happen), most people financed them.  That meant, among other things, we had to, as they say in the business, “pull their credit.”  If you had an 800 credit score on TransUnion, Equifax, or Experian (one of the three credit bureaus), you were golden; you were bullets.  We could put you in a new Nissan in no time flat.  But if your credit score was under 600, there were going to be some issues.  If you were in the high 400s or 500s, we could probably get you in a car.  But it would be in a pre-owned vehicle at an incredibly high interest rate.  Could we get some folks with bad credit into a car?  Yes, we could.  But it might require bi-weekly payments of around $700 for a car that was close to ten years old, with high mileage, and was valued just high enough to be able to finance at all. 

Most people would come to trade-in a vehicle for a new one.  The issue we faced in that scenario was that quite a few folks owed more on their trade-in than it was worth.  They were “upside down”; they had a problem with “negative equity”.  When they realized the kind of money it would require upfront, that was bad enough.  When they saw the monthly payment, they stormed out the door. 

Debt is not pleasant.  I did some research this past week only to discover that American households are collectively in debt to the tune of over 12 trillion dollars.  436 billion dollars are over 90 days past due.

Twelve years ago in September, Oprah Winfrey started a new season of her famous TV show.  On that season opener, Oprah gave away 276  brand-new Pontiac G6 automobiles.  Every member of the studio audience received one.  There was pandemonium on the set.  The people fortunate enough to be there that day were laughing, jumping, crying, and going into hysterics. 

But there was some fine print that sort of killed the buzz for Oprah’s fans that day.  The audience members would have to pay a tax on their winnings – just like any prize.  It amounted to about $7,000.00 out of pocket.  At the end of the day, the audience member could do one of three things:  keep the car and pay the tax, sell the car and pay the tax with the profits, or forfeit the car.  Things aren’t always what they appear.  Still, it was an incredible gesture by Oprah.

That brings us to an event that took place as recent as last Sunday on a brand-new HBO television show called “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”. 

Now Oliver is an Englishman – a very funny and very smart Englishman.  He knows that American debt has actually spawned a new industry:  the debt-buying industry.  Individuals or companies buy the right to collect outstanding debts.  They’re collection agencies.  It really doesn’t cost all that much to buy one.  Well, John Oliver did buy one.  He bought nearly 15 million dollars worth of medical debt from approximately 9000 people.  (By the way, medical debt and outstanding student loans, in my experience in car sales, showed up first on the credit report.  If you had outstanding student loans or medical bills gone to collection, good luck financing a piece of gum.)

So Oliver buys this collection agency.  But, instead of starting to collect, he simply wipes the slate clean and forgives the debt of these 9000 people who owed nearly 15 million.

All due respect to Ms. Winfrey, but this gesture by John Oliver made the car giveaway like small change.

Talk about debts and debts being forgiven figures prominently in today’s Gospel.  We pick up with the Lord Jesus as He is on his way to dinner at a pharisee’s house.  Jesus was not one to decline a gracious, hospitable invitation – even from a member of a religious group that was covertly and overtly antagonistic toward Him.  The pharisee’s name was Simon, and he was throwing a dinner party.  We are told that Jesus “reclined at table”.  “Reclining at table” meant more than just, as the millennials say, “chillin’”.  It made a statement.  It was a gesture of free people.  It implied a common bond between the host and the guest.

Into this scene comes a woman who “had lived a sinful life”, reports Luke.  She had not obeyed the laws of God and country.   The implication is that these were not easily dismissed misdemeanors.  It was the kind of situation, with her, that would NOT involve paying a fine and being placed on probation.  It could very well have been infractions of law that could have gotten her stoned to death.

I quote Luke directly: 

So she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.  As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

Allow me a personal paraphrase of this.  Simon says:  “If this Jesus were all that He was cracked up to be, He would never have allowed this piece of human debris to get within ten feet of him – much the less touch him.  He would know that we -- the kind of people who recline at table, the folks who have reached a kind of religious and social cachet -- do not associate with riff-raff of any kind.  We circle our wagons and have fellowship with people that are like us.  Let the sinners eat cake or the crumbs that fall from our private dining table.”

Here is the reply of our Lord: 

, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

 “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii,[a] and the other fifty.  Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.  You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet.  You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.  Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

 Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Folks, a denarius was one day’s wage.  50 denarii would be a little over a month and a half of minimum wages.  500 denarii would be well over a year and a half of minimum wage.

Oprah made 276 people happy.  John Oliver made 9000 anonymous people supremely happy because massive debts were wiped out.  Who of the two in Jesus’ story to Simon is going to the happiest?  The one who had six weeks of wages restored or the one who had a year and a half of salary restored?

The woman in Simon’s house, for all kinds of painful reasons, had a debt in her heart she could never repay.  It was the kind of debt that only a Jesus – not an Oprah or a John Oliver – could repay.  She believed that Jesus had made her slate clean, and she loved him for it.

If you and I have only a little moral tidying up to do – perhaps like Simon the pharisee, we only need a little forgiveness.  But, as Jesus said, the one who has been forgiven little loves little. 

A friend of mine told me the other day how he thought the problems we face in this country are political.  I replied:  “Our politics are fine.  Maybe a little fine-tuning here and there is needed, but otherwise they’re fine.  The problems, in my view, are far deeper than political.  They are spiritual and cultural.  I fear that they will require a transformation that we the people cannot bring about.  When more and more of us think that we are 99.9% right while everyone else is wrong, you get the idea.”

If we can be forgiven for the .01% of us that is wrong, that would be nice.  But, if Jesus is right (and I believe He is), we will love little. 

My friends in Christ, we all need big love and not little love.  And how big is that love?  Look at the symbol of that forgiving love behind me.  In the six years I’ve served here, in good times and in bad, that cross and the message it conveys has always been here. 

If we are truly aware of the debt that we owe and the forgiveness of that debt we’ve been given through the gospel message, we would give ourselves away.  We would live in faith toward God and love toward our neighbor.  None of the faith and love would be little.  It would make Texas look small.  It would be big!

Amen.

The Widow at Nain

Text:  Luke 7:11-17

Theme:  “The Widow at Nain”

3^rd Sunday after Pentecost

June 5, 2016

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, TX

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

11 Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. 12 As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. 13 When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.”

14 Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” 15 The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.

16 They were all filled with awe and praised God. “A great prophet has appeared among us,” they said. “God has come to help his people.” 17 This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.

It is not as though they didn’t warn us.  In a graduate school, the professor – and I can all but picture him saying it from the chapel pulpit – declared:  “You will be called upon to do a considerable number of funerals.”  That didn’t exactly meet with a rousing response from the seminarians gathered.  Besides, there’s nothing in the Bible that insists that elders and pastors conduct funerals, memorial services, or committals.  All of that came later in the history of the liturgy that, it could be argued, is also the history of pastoral care.

 At Princess Diana’s funeral at Westminster Abbey in September of 1997, no one remembers who or what clergy officiated. (They were likely higher-ups in the Anglican communion.)  But they do remember that Elton John sang “Candle in the Wind” and they recall what a whopper of a eulogy Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, gave.  At one point, he declared:

She (Diana) talked endlessly of getting away from England, mainly because of the treatment she received at the hands of the newspapers.  I don’t think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down.  It is baffling.  My own and only explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum. 

Man, oh, man!  Did that rattle a few cages!  Yet, at the end of the day and with the circumstances in mind, the clergy did what the liturgy gave them to do.  Death is the great equalizer; it comes to princesses and paupers alike.  The mortality rate holds steady at 100%.  “The clock of life is wound but once, and no one has the power to tell just when the hands will stop – at late or early hour.” And yes, ministers are called upon to do a considerable number of funerals.  I once asked my friend Bill DeBerry, of Deberry Funeral Directors just down the road here, how business was going.  I was only making small talk, and I realized, too late, that it was a rather awkward question given his line of work.  “How’s business?”  He replied, “Steady.”

My first attempt at conducting a funeral was in 1984 in a little town called Pipestone, Minnesota.  I had been there only a week on a summer assignment.  An elderly lady died, dear loved in the congregation, and I remember standing there at the committal service.  I was at the edge of the green tent, and I was wearing my gown.  Big drops of rain began to fall, and then it started to pour.  I moved in closer to the casket to get under the tent.  The kindly funeral director, sensing that I would get wet, covered me with an umbrella.  “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” and the ground was muddy. 

Pipestone is a farming community of about five thousand people.  The population of Nain, mentioned in today’s gospel, has, nowadays, a population of about one hundred fifty.  And Nain is about nine miles south of the town of Nazareth where Jesus grew up.  Apparently, it was a gated community – perhaps an ancient and miniature version of Robson Ranch or something like that.

Jesus and His entourage draw near to the gate.  What do they see?  A dead person is being carried out of the gate – presumably for burial.  “You will be called upon to do a considerable number of funerals.”  The funeral liturgy is in progress.  The body is carried in procession, and a large crowd of mourners follows it; the chief of which is the mother of the deceased.  She was no stranger to death.  We are told she was a widow; she had lost her husband.  Now, she is about to bury her only son. 

What does one say to a woman like that?  I recall another funeral setting early in my ministry.  I had performed the wedding ceremony for a young couple in the summertime.  Only three months later, the new bride, in the middle of the night, found her husband on the living room couch.  The husband, the picture of physical fitness, had died of a heart attack while sleeping. 

Days later, at the visitation, I stood next to the grieving widow.  One lady, a member of my church at the time, came up to extend her condolences.  She struggled to find the right words.  She said to the woman, “Well, he’s in a better place.”  The grieving widow replied, “Yes, but we had a pretty (expletive deleted) nice place here for three months.”  Sometimes, dear friends, the best thing to say is nothing.  Your presence is enough. 

The grieving widow, who had lost her husband and was now about to bury her son, did not see Jesus.  Part of the good news here is not that she saw him but that He saw her.  More than that, it says he “had compassion” on her.  The Greek word for “compassion” is tough to put adequately put into English.  Compassion is that feeling of care for another that is so intense that it is as if your guts are being torn up on the inside.  In that kind of compassion, Jesus says to her, “Don’t cry.”

Goodness, that sounds just as bad or even worse than “He’s in a better place.”  “Don’t cry.”  “Good grief, Jesus.  Tell me you have more tact than that.  Don’t you know, Jesus, that if there’s any place where it’s okay to cry it would be at a funeral.  Are you not aware, Jesus, that about every psychological study that has come down the pike suggests that tears are therapeutic and that grief and tears go together?”

Just as the poor widow was trying to process this, Jesus disrupts a perfectly good funeral.  Where were the police to block traffic to the cemetery?  He takes it (the funeral) over – and acts as though it belonged to him.  He touches the bier, and the pallbearers stood still.  They don’t know what to do.  But Jesus does.

He says to the dead person, “Young man, I say to you, get up!”  Revivified, the dead man, no longer dead, sits up and speaks.  What did he say?  We are not told.  We are told that Jesus gave him back to his mother. 

Jesus interrupted and disrupted a perfectly good funeral.  He did the same at His own funeral, for He was raised from the dead by the glory of His Father.  We believe that, at the day of the resurrection of all flesh, He will do the same for us.

Yet, as we so well know, there is more to being a child of God than going to church and paying premiums on an eternal life insurance policy. 

Remember that the widow at Nain was facing a time of transition.  What would become of her?  Her husband and son were gone.  She likely felt, herself, as good as dead.

People, institutions, and even churches face times of transition every day, and trying to change the subject by talking about politics at the water cooler doesn’t helpt.    A dearly loved member moves on or dies; the resources dry up; the prospect of the doors being closed is very real.  What do do?  Where to go?  We don’t know.  We look down; we grieve.

The good news is not that we see Jesus but that He sees us.  More than that, He is filled with compassion.  His person, His work, His words, His Gospel promises, although they may appear to interrupt and disrupt, are the constant.

“You will be called upon to do a considerable number of funerals.”  In nearly six years of being your minister of Word and Sacrament, I have found that to be true.  Those services were good only insofar as the words and promises of Jesus carried the day.  “All things (including grief and times of transition) work together for the good of those who are the called according to God’s purpose.”  The word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Consider the Centurion (who may -- just may -- have sported a "Co-Exist" bumper sticker on his chariot)!

Text:  Luke 7:1-10

Theme:  “Consider the Centurion!”

2^nd Sunday After Pentecost/Memorial Day Weekend

May 29, 2016

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

When Jesus had finished saying all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum. 2 There a centurion’s servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. 3 The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4 When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, “This man deserves to have you do this, 5 because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.” 6 So Jesus went with them.

He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. 7 That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. 8 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

9 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” 10 Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well.

Consider the centurion!  Today’s Gospel tells of a centurion.  A centurion was a military officer in the Roman army.  He was in charge of one hundred or more soldiers that were called legionnaires.  Second in command to the centurion was the optiones.  If you, as a centurion, moved up the ranks you might be named a primi ordines; that would put you among the first cohort of centurions – the “cream of the crop”, you might way.    If you continued to progress, you may even have become the primus pilus and be able to participate in war councils with the emperor himself. In America, that rank is something akin to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

About the centurion we are introduced to in our text, we are not told how far up the “food chain” – or the Roman military hierarchy – this man had gone.  That doesn’t seem to be that important.  The picture that does emerge, though, is that this centurion was a gem of a man – a “class act” if there ever was one.  Yes, he had a servant he could order around.  Perhaps the servant was an optiones; we are not told.  What we are told is that the centurion’s servant was “highly valued” by the centurion. 

Archibald Butt was the name of the military aide who served American presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft early in the twentieth century.   When Roosevelt and Taft began to have stark differences of opinion, Archibald Butt was caught in the middle – he had a painful sense of divided loyalty -- and became depressed over the situation.  President Taft ordered him to take a vacation.  Archibald Butt did take that vacation, and part of his trip itinerary was to book passage on the RMS Titanic.  He boarded the ship in Southampton in the United Kingdom on April 10, 1912.  As the story goes, he was playing a card game in the men’s smoking room on April 14^th when the Titanic struck an iceberg.  Two and a half hours later, the ship sank.  Over 1500 lives were lost, and the body of Archibald Butt was never recovered. 

On May 2 of the same year, President Taft eulogized Archibald Butt at a memorial service.  Among other things, he said this: 

Everybody who knew him called him Archie. I couldn't prepare anything in advance to say here. I tried, but couldn't. He was too near me. He was loyal to my predecessor, Mr. Roosevelt, who selected him to be military aide, and to me he had become as a son or a brother.

At a second ceremony three days later, President Taft broke down and wept.  He could not complete his eulogy.  Archibald Butt, as we have seen, was highly valued.

So was the servant of the centurion in today’s gospel.  But the relationship between the centurion and his highly valued servant was near the end, for the servant was “about to die”, we are told. 

One great mark of the centurion’s character was that he had the capacity to highly value another human being.  He was not so far gone, so narcissistic, closed-minded, ego-driven, or self-centered that he had little regard for anyone else but himself and his own kind.  The servant wasn’t a widget, a pawn, a tool, means to someone else’s end, or a cog in someone else’s machine.  He was a human being, and he was highly valued, period. 

There is more.  Another mark of the man, this centurion, was what he did with the time he had.  He was beneficent; he was philanthropic.  He was involved in the surrounding community and not given to just hanging out only with his one hundred legionnaires.  He didn’t just cut a check and call it a day.  We are informed that he actually built the synagogue in Capernaum.  Luke tells of the Jewish people who reported that he, a ROMAN centurion, loved the JEWISH nation.  Maybe he was a proselyte; we are not told.  What we are told is that he highly valued his servant.  There was more to it than just the hierarchical pecking order.  And he loved a people that were not his own and a nation that was not his own.  If you’re offended by “Co-Exist” bumper stickers, you’ll likely be offended by this story.  But then again, the gospel itself is offensive; it’s a stumbling block.

Were this centurion to live in another time and at another place, I’m sure this centurion would be numbered among those who paved the dirt roads in parts of Denton where people of differing ethnic background lived in the late 60s and early 70s.  And to think that it all started with an interracial group of mothers who simply valued one another and their children.  It wasn’t the race or the religion, but, rather, that “We Are Broncos!”

The centurion was who he was, and he did what he was able to do.  But there is one thing he couldn’t do, one thing that it would take a Jesus to do.  He could not restore the health of his highly valued servant.  Some Jewish friends tell their centurion friend about Jesus, and the centurion, in turn, sends a delegation of Jewish elders to ask for help from Rabbi Jesus.  Those elders gush about who this centurion was and the remarkable things he had done for them. 

Jesus didn’t hesitate.  “He went with them,” Luke reports.

Nearing Capernaum, that lovely little fishing village on the northern short of the Sea of Galilee, the Lord Jesus is met by a second delegation.  Some of the centurion’s friends come to Jesus, only minutes away from the house, and speak the words they were given by the centurion to say: 

Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof.  That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed.  For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, “Go,” and he goes; and that one, “Come,” and he comes. I say to my servant, “Do this,” and he does it.

Lord, help me get this straight:  he highly valued a person of lower rank; he loved and served a people that were not his own, and now we learn of his very genuine humility.  “I don’t deserve to have you come…I’m not worthy.  Just say the word.  You know how it works.”

Jesus is stopped dead in his tracks.  Our Lord is stunned at this and amazed at what he heard.  He turns to His entourage and declares:  I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.

There is no way of knowing that Jesus even met this centurion.  Yet nevertheless, when the centurion’s friends returned to the house they found the servant well.

This is what the Gospel – the message of the dying, rising, redeeming love of God – does for people and within people.  It enables us to highly value another human being or human beings – ones that often are different than we are.  Second, it enables us to love and serve people that are not our own.  I have a friend who is a chiropractor.  He is a practitioner of the Bahai’ religion.  When we lived at Sundown Ranch, he and his family were across the street.  A couple of years ago on Christmas Day, his entire family came across the street bearing a plate of Christmas cookies for us.  He knew how important the holiday was.  What would happen, say, if we would take the time to learn about special observances in other traditions – even non-Christian ones – and then help adherents celebrate?  We don’t do it because we believe everything the way they do; we do it simply because we are loving people.  Third, the Gospel engenders a genuine – as opposed to fake – humility.  You know a little about how the world works, and you know, for sure, that you’re not the center of the universe.  Even if you built a thousand churches, you’re not the center of the universe.  That spot, of course, is reserved for the Lord whom we do not have to serve.  We get to serve.

Memorial Day is a day of remembrance.  We remember those who gave the “last full measure of devotion” to protect our country. 

Finally, I’m honored to share a couple of quotes that reflect the centurion’s story and the essence of Memorial Day.  First, here are the words of Methodist minister, Roger Wolsey:

Some 40% of homeless males in the U.S. are veterans of military service. Many homeless people die alone on the streets due to exposure to the elements and due to the toll on their bodies of years of drug abuse due to PTSD. Vets who die homeless out in the elements and/or due to alcoholism (a way to self-medicate untreated PTSD), or suicide are *every* bit as much victims of war as those who died on the battlefield. They just took longer to die. Something to remember on Memorial Day.

We pray for them – as we do for the military and first responders every Sunday.  Taking a leaf from the centurion, we can also highly value them, love them, and in genuine humility serve them.

Here, to conclude, are the words of Episcopalian priest Barbara Brown Taylor:

The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.

Just say the word, Lord, and we shall be free.

Amen.