By the Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan

Today’s readings are replete with phrases that have become central to our faith tradition, almost to the point of being overused: “Take up your cross and follow me,” “Give thanks to the Lord and call upon his Name,” “I am who I am,” and even “Get behind me, Satan!” On the other hand, while we have all heard the directive to assist those in need, how many of us have been told: be kind and generous to your enemies, for by doing so you will heap burning coals on their heads?

Well, that’s Paul for you, isn’t it? St Paul, or the Apostle Paul, or Paul of Tarsus, if you prefer, is one of the most confusing and controversial figures in all of Christian history. He figures prominently in the Biblical text we call the Acts of the Apostles, but other than that everything we know about him we know from his letters. His letters, also known as the epistles, make up more of the New Testament than the Gospels, were written earlier, and provide most of the historical information we have about the earliest days of what became known to us as the holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.

My own picture of Paul has evolved over the decades, from seeing him as an annoying, misogynistic, anti-Semitic rule-keeper to trying to understand him as a flawed and complex human being deeply in love with God, doing the best he knew how to do in the context of his time and place. His letters, we must remember, were written to specific communities in answer to specific questions, problems, and situations; Paul neither thought he was writing Scripture nor attempted to found an institution.

Rather, using the best remote learning technology available at the time, Paul was reaching out to people who wanted to follow Jesus, who wanted to live the way of love, and tried to help them see what that might look like. He was, in short, building a beloved community centered on Christ Jesus, who was all about bringing good news to the poor, binding the wounds of the afflicted, and offering comfort to those who mourned

Although the term Beloved Community was coined by the philosopher Josiah Royce, most of us quite rightly associate it with one of the great saints of the last century, Martin Luther King, Jr.

According to the Episcopal Church website, “The Beloved Community is the body within which all people can grow to love God and love the image of God that we find in our neighbors, in ourselves, and in creation. It provides a positive, theologically and biblically based ideal that orients the work of racial healing, reconciliation, and justice. It is the end toward which the Jesus Movement points.”

You could almost say, and some do, that using the term Beloved Community is just another way to talk about Jesus’ favorite topic—the Kingdom of God.

Rethinking the Kingdom of God in terms of the Beloved Community has several advantages, the most salient of which is that it is obvious that the Beloved Community is always both a “here and now” proposition and something that can only be fully realized in the eschaton, the end times when God will make all things new and dry every tear and the lion shall lie down with the lamb. The Kingdom of God has too often been conflated with heaven, with a place we go after we die. The Beloved Community is a different way to say the same thing as what Jesus was saying when he said the Kingdom of Heaven is within you, within us, available to all, or when he said that he came that we might have life, and have it abundantly.

That’s another great thing about the phrase Beloved Community—it reminds us that salvation and healing and justice are not personal, private matters. We don’t each get our little kingdom, or even our own little slice of the pie. We don’t “get” anything at all. We become something—a community beloved by God, not flawless, but real and alive and working toward something better.

Which brings us back to Paul. In this passage from the Letter to the Romans, Paul advocates for how to become the Beloved Community.

He is clearly someone who knows that community is hard work. It is more than polite chit chat in coffee hour or occasionally doing a good deed for your neighbor. It is about the kind of genuine interconnection that makes what is happening to you so important to me that it is, in some sense, happening to me as well.

“Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep” means that practicing deep vulnerability and empathy are key parts of becoming beloved community. This is a vision of mutual affection, patience, and perseverance. It is a vision of a community at prayer and at service, caring for one another and reaching out to strangers. And it is not a vision that it is impossible to achieve.

In case you still find the idea of becoming the Beloved Community daunting or a little too idealistic, I will close with the words of someone I personally consider a saint, the Marin writer Anne Lamott. In her book Traveling Mercies, she writes,

It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox, full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty, bent old tools – friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty – and said, Do the best you can with these, they will have to do. And mostly, against all odds they’re enough.

We all have these same rusty, bent tools at our disposal, even in times of multiple pandemics, wildfires, and the rest. Being honest with ourselves and one another, persevering in prayer, listening to the voice of conscience within and of justice for all—we can do these things. And mostly, against all odds, it will be enough.