Standing on Holy Ground: Choosing God's Side Through Kindness

``And then we get to Jesus and Jesus helps us to understand that some of the things that we learned about God were misunderstandings on our part. There's a beautiful passage called the antithesis, and I think that's in Matthew in the sermon on the mount where he says, you have heard it said, but I say to you. You have heard it said, love those who love you but I say to you, love your enemy. Right? So he's reinterpreting their understanding of God making it even bigger. So that in God's love, God's love is big enough to hold both our enemies and us in that same divine love. [00:45:01] (45 seconds)  #LoveYourEnemy

Because you see, I know that you just left Westborough Baptist Church and I am a gay man and I wanted to show you a kindness. And that little tiny bit of kindness began breaking open Zach's heart and he began reexamining everything that he had been told. Everything that that he thought he was doing for for God. He thought that God was on their side and yet here was someone who was kind to him, who offered him this simple kindness in response to all of the hatred that they had thrown on him over the years. [00:51:58] (44 seconds)  #KindnessOpensHearts

So what is it about this sense of, taking off your shoes? What does that symbolize? I think for one thing, it symbolizes that you're gonna take your time. We don't take off our shoes if we're getting ready to run. We take off our shoes if we're getting ready to slow down. When we go into a home and we're gonna stay a while, we'll we'll kick off our shoes. Right? And so there is this sense of slowing things down. And I think that's hugely important when we have these kinds of conversations is to slow down the rhetoric and the conversation so that we can think more about what it is that God wants. [00:38:43] (43 seconds)  #SlowDownAndListen

However, I believe that as we're called to be on God's side, that kindness, seeing people as human beings will go a long way in helping to have those conversations. There's something about being recognized as as human, that really allows us then a safety to examine our own beliefs. And until we feel that sense of like psychological safety, we will always dig in our heels. We will always believe that that we're the ones with reason and that the other side is wrong. [00:56:41] (41 seconds)  #KindnessCreatesSafety

And what happens when we stand on holy ground? When we recognize that God is there, then we begin to change our attitude about things. When we are trying to discern what God wants us to say, one of the best things we can do is try to bring the other person with whom we have a disagreement onto that holy ground with us. Because when we're standing there on holy ground with this person that we might consider our enemy, there's something about the power of God's love that invites us to do a little more reflection. [00:40:12] (40 seconds)  #StandOnHolyGround

So when when you first read Genesis, you find out that god is the god of Abraham. So god is a family god. And then when, you know, you get to, Israel and the 12 tribes of Israel, god is the god of those tribes. So it's gone from just a single family to a little bit more to those tribes. And then when those tribes go into exile, they struggle to understand, that, you know, god wasn't just the god of their nation, but god would be present even when they were taken somewhere else in the world. And so they had to recognize that God was the God of the whole entire world. [00:44:20] (41 seconds)  #GodOfAllPeople

And so we come to this beautiful passage from Joshua where Joshua is, comes upon a man who has drawn a sword and he says, are you one of us or are you one of our adversaries? And he said, neither. I am the commander of the lord's army. I love that sense. Neither. I'm not on your side. I'm not your adversary. I'm on god's side. And then he invites Joshua to to take off his shoes because he's standing on holy ground. [00:37:43] (37 seconds)  #ImOnGodsSide

One time when Bo and I were traveling in Japan, we were in the navy long before kids, and we went up to a mountain and there was a beautiful, Buddhist temple there. And when we went in, we were told that you're supposed to take off your shoes. And we did, but it was freezing cold. And so we took our mittens and we put them on our feet to keep our feet warm. And people thought that was hilarious. Everyone was pointing at us and laughing. Didn't matter what language they spoke. We thought, you know, we want our feet to be warm but we wanna honor this tradition of standing on holy ground. [00:39:32] (40 seconds)  #HonorHolyGround