Where all Families are Holy

By Reverend Katherine Elsner

When I read today’s scripture, I found that LOVE is the theme: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We hear this theme often in our scripture readings. My first thought was “what can I say that hasn’t been said regarding Jesus’ instructions about love?”

I found this little book in my possession that someone gave me.

I’d like to introduce you to the author, Brian Doyle, who published this book in 2014, called the Book of Uncommon Prayer. I knew the title rang a bell from history, and of course Bob reminded me that the title is similar to the Book of Common Prayer, compiled in the 16th century and is still used today in revised forms in the Anglican Church.

The book surely includes uncommon prayers (100 prayers in fact). I’m going to read one prayer that he wrote about the Catholic Church. Even the title is uncommon. Here is the long title of the uncommon prayer:
“Furious Prayer for the Church I Love and Have Always Loved but Which Drives me Insane with Its Fussy Fidgety Tin-Eared Thirst for Control and Rules and Power and Money Rather Than the One Simple Thing the Founder Insisted On”

And now for the uncommon prayer.
[Granted, it’s a tough assignment, the original assignment. I get that. Love—God help us, could we not have been assigned something easier, like astrophysics, or quantum mechanics? But no—love those you cannot love. Love those who are poor and broken and fouled and dirty and sick with sores. Love those who wish to strike you on both cheeks. Love the blowhard, the pompous ((ass)), the arrogant liar. Find Jesus in each heart. Preach the gospel and only if necessary, talk about it. Be the Word. It is easy to advise and counsel and suggest and lecture; it is not always so easy to do what must be done without shrieking. Bring love like a bright weapon against the dark. The Rabbi (meaning Jesus) did not say build churches, or retreat houses, or secure a fleet of cars for general use, or convene conferences, or issue position papers. He was pretty blunt about the hungry and the naked and the sick. Jesus was not reasonable; we forget this. The Church is not a reasonable idea. The Church should be a verb. When it is only a noun, it is not what the Founder asked of us. Let us pray to dissolve the arrogant thing that wants to rise; instead we ignite a counter-cultural thing called love that could change life on this planet. It could, you know. Let’s try again. Amen.]

What a prayer!

I believe HF fits well into the countercultural activity that Brian Doyle talks about in this prayer. That is, HF is a church that treats the word LOVE as a verb, and CHURCH as an action, both as something we do. We love our neighbors as ourselves through the many ways we reach out to help others. We love our neighbors by welcoming everyone at church, and everyone is welcome to the table.

Do you ever wonder how our institutional churches got from Jesus talking and eating with tax collectors and sinners, to the huge institution with numerous rules and regulations that we see today? By the time Jesus was 30 years old, he had learned to see all people as equals in God’s eyes. He went about speaking with and touching lepers who were outcasts. He went about doing good, lifting up the poor and speaking the truth. He was shunned by the Pharisees for speaking the truth, and they orchestrated his death. Jesus even talked with women; he collaborated with them in his ministry.

I think a difficult part of following Jesus is that it continually invites us to re-imagine how the whole process of life and faith works. There can be no compromise when it comes to the scripture message from Paul: “love your neighbor as yourself.” But of course the meaning of “Love your neighbor” has changed for us over the years. When we were 13, what did following Jesus mean to us? Maybe going to church? obeying our parents? donating for pagan babies? going to confession often?

At our age now, whatever that is, we realize that to follow Jesus is a decision that requires courage, determination and continued reevaluation. For many of us, or maybe for everyone, joining HF perhaps cost us separation from friends, or family, or from activities that we loved.

We can’t change the past, but we have changed the here and now and maybe the future. We continue to reread the same passages in scripture with new insights, with new awareness; to love as Jesus loved means that we can always come to a new awareness that we have never known before. It’s about listening to the Jesus story with open ears and a fresh heart each time the topic crosses our path.

What about the well-known lines in Matthew that we heard today?

“If two or three gather together in my name, I am there among them.”

Matthew’s gospel was probably written in the 80s to 90s A.D., although much discussion continues about this and other dates of scripture writing. Paul’s letter that we heard in the 2nd reading was written before the passage from Matthew. By the 80s to 90s time in the early church, Matthew had died and others continued writing on his behalf. As time passed, more disagreements were taking place about how to move forward in the communities that wanted to follow the teachings of Jesus. Thus we come to this well-known phrase “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them”. These were the words from Jesus that communities used to guide them in making decisions.

The value of putting these two readings in succession never occurred to me before. First, Paul’s summary of “love your neighbor as yourself” provides the value of Jesus that Paul wanted to pass along to posterity. Then when disagreements arise, the way to resolve them was recorded in Matthew. That is, people would come together to discern what to do about their disagreements. So they used these guiding words: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there with them.”

Some scholars believe the gathering of two or three refers only to the process of church discipline and community conflict resolution. Others believe that Jesus promises to be with those who gather in his name, no matter what the size of the group. Since there was no organized Christian church in the first century, it seems reasonable that Jesus shared his wisdom with his followers to be used in whatever way they could. As followers of Jesus in 2026, I think we have relied on Jesus messages from scripture as we gather together every weekend at HF. We realize Jesus’ spiritual presence is among us, as well as his guidance for our community, and our consistent effort to treat the word LOVE as a verb, and CHURCH as an action.

And let’s continue to do what we heard in Brian Doyl’s prayer:
Preach the gospel and only if necessary, talk about it.

Amen, Holy Family!