By LISA HALL
A sermon delivered May 31, 2026 at Haydenville Congregational Church

I just want to say from the start that I’m not a theologian or an authority on anything really.  What I’m saying here is just some thoughts, borne out of readings and experiences I’ve had this winter.  May my words today carry something of God’s love to you who hear me, and may it be only goodness that you receive.

I recently was camping next to a group of four middle aged men, who kindly welcomed me to their campfire.  They met in their college’s freshman dorm and have been friends ever since, meeting up from time to time to take a trip together.  Around the campfire, they spoke about what was on their minds and hearts.  One man wondered aloud, “How can I love my neighbor? – as a Christian I want to, but it’s hard.  How do I do it?”  This was clearly a question that had weighed on him for some while.  

The question stayed with me, and I think the answer starts with asking, “If I’m going to love my neighbor as myself, how do I love myself?”  Do I love myself conditionally – only when I stay on my diet, pay attention to my toddler, or have patience with the elderly aunt who drives me crazy?  Or can I just    love    myself.  Because that’s how God loves us – just as we are, all the time, every one of us.  Our culture doesn’t encourage us to love this way.  Our culture is built on competition and superiority.  How can I “be better and better every day, in every way”? Too often we perform the best version of ourselves for everyone around us, and even when we look in the mirror – pouting our lips, or brushing our hair just so.  That leaves us terrified we will be found out – what if someone saw who we really are, warts and all?  Would they still want to have me as an employee, a friend, a lover?  Or would they turn away in disgust?  And so we lie about who we are, to ourselves and to those we love.  Not a great foundation for true relationship. 

If we can love ourselves just as we are, the way God does, then could we love our neighbor that way?  Could we be understanding when our neighbor runs his leaf blower loudly on Sunday afternoon while we’re trying to nap, knowing it’s the only time he has to work in his yard, because he works all week and coaches Little League on Saturday? 

Could we love our neighbor even when we don’t know why they act the way they do?  Just because they are also a child of God.  Even if we can’t see the spark of God within them, God does.  And we all carry that spark. Is there a way for us to just walk with them a minute, listen to the stories of their lives written in their hands and faces, wonder what it is like to live inside them?  Could we be relieved of the need to rate them, to feel inferior or superior to them, to judge how they spend their money or how they raise their kids?  Could we just be two children of God doing the best we know how?  Can we love our neighbor as ourself?     That’s what Jesus tells us to do.

And then comes the even tougher question:  Because Jesus doesn’t just say love your neighbor, He says love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you.  How can I love my enemy? Pondering this question, I remember when a wise friend said, “You don’t stop loving your child when they do something awful:  you might hate what they do, but you don’t stop loving them.”  It was a revelation, to go on loving someone fiercely, and also really dislike, even hate, what they are doing.  

I once went through a long and difficult forgiveness project after a family member hurt me badly.  Forgiveness is sometimes misunderstood to be an erasing of the harm that was done, which it is not.  The harm was done and it will always have been harmful.  The question becomes, how to go on living with them, knowing that the harm was done?  It helps to understand how that person became someone who could do that to you.  What happened to them to shape them able to hurt you like that?  My dear friend Marian says, “Only a frightened dog will attack.”  What hurt or trauma did the person who hurt you experience that still has them so frightened they could attack?  

I recently heard a Native American woman talk about her meditations on the witch hunts that took place for several hundred years in Europe.  Many women and some men were burned at the stake for “heresy”.  This Native American woman says this was the death of European indigenous culture.  She had a vision of a witch burning, and was horrified to see the dead eyes of the soldiers performing atrocities on these women.  She understood that these soldiers, these men, were deeply traumatized by previous experiences of not being able to protect their own women and children.  This was such a deep wound, they had to become numb to survive.  I believe this deep wounding and trauma is still stuck in the norms of our culture for what it means to be a man, brought across the ocean to this country.  That’s why boys are raised not to feel their emotions, to be tough, to be hard.  

Women in our culture, over the last decades have done quite a lot of work to liberate ourselves.  We have come to embrace the wholeness of who we are — emotional and smart, creative and entrepreneurial, practical and spiritual, loving and enduring.  I’m sorry to say, I believe our men as a whole have not grown and deepened in the same way.  Of course there are wonderful men who transcend any generalization, but I think there are many men in our culture who are stuck being little boys who have been traumatized.  

In our culture, how is a boy to learn what it means to be a man?  When I was in nursing school, I worked in the Head Injury Unit of a rehab hospital.  There were always a couple young men there who had severely hurt their head while engaging in some form of risky behavior — in one case bull riding in a Christian rodeo, the young man was kicked in the head by the bull; in another, competing in an in-line skating race, a boy rammed his head against a wall.  These young men had hurt themselves so terribly, they would never be the same again, physically or mentally.  They and their families were grappling with a future of total disability, and loss of the bright lives they had imagined.  Why are young men drawn to such risky behavior?  I think one reason is they are trying desperately to prove they are real men.  They think they can prove it by being the most daring, by taking the biggest chances.

In many cultures, at a certain age, boys are taken aside by the older men for initiation, which might include stories embodying life lessons, experiences of trial and endurance, of spiritual deepening, of dreaming and discerning a life purpose, of learning to know the wholeness of who they might become.  In some cultures, young men who have gone through this initiation then join a group of other youths, lead by older men, in fulfilling certain roles in their community.  In one Plains Indian tribe, when the people were on the move in a long column, these young men would ride up and down, helping anyone who needed it, scooping up a lost child and returning them to their mother, repairing a travois that had broken, and going out to hunt game to feed the people each night.  In this way, they learned what it meant to be a stand up guy – that a real man is the one who cares for the women and children and elderly, who takes care of his community.  In our culture, how can a boy learn this?  Some men are fortunate to have a Dad, a coach, a Scout leader, or some older man who takes them under his wing.  Many are not so fortunate. Many don’t even arrive at early manhood able to be mentored because they have been abused, mistreated, neglected and traumatized so badly, that their hearts are shut tight and their spirits twisted.

I’m afraid there are many very old little boys like that in our country.  I think our President is one of them.  What happened to him as a boy to shape him into the man he is today, capable of caring only about accumulating power over others, and not caring what happens to anyone but himself?  

I heard a story about two men who were discussing their businesses.  Finally one says to the other, “Well, you’ll never be Bill Gates.”  His friend replies, “Yes, but I have something Bill Gates will never have.”  “What could that be?” his friend asked.  “Bill Gates can buy anything he wants.”  And the other man said, “Yes, but I know I have enough.”

Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and a lot of other billionaires will never know they have enough.  Can you imagine living like that, driven always to accumulate, accumulate – wealth, power, control?  I am deeply grateful I don’t have to live like that.  

Because, what is enough?  I once heard an affirmation, “I have enough.  I am enough.  I do enough.”   Meditating on this, it was easy to feel I have enough.  In my life I can only think of one mealtime when the kind of food I wanted wasn’t available.  Certainly that isn’t the life experience of most of the people in the world, and even of everyone in this congregation.  At least for me, though, I have enough.  

“I am enough” is more difficult, and yet, if God can love me just as I am, just as I was created to be, how can I not feel I am enough?  

“I do enough” is the hardest for me.  There is so much I can see that could be done in this world.  I could spend every dime I have and every hour of the rest of my life on any one of a multitude of issues, and it might not make any difference to the rest of the world.  I finally concluded there is no enough when it comes to doing.  I do what I can, I do my best.  I believe everyone is just doing the best they know how to do at the time.  Who can ask you to do more than that? 

And so how can we love our enemies, as Jesus asks us to do?  Can we start by seeing them as people, as children of God, as women and men shaped by life experiences and traumas, and a culture that isn’t helping us love each other?  Can we love the spark of God that is in every one of us, even when we cannot love and we must condemn what they are doing?  Can we work to build a different world, where every child has a chance to grow into the fullness of who they might become, nurtured and loved, at least by someone?  Can we plant seeds of love wherever we go, just by how we live our lives?   

Can we pray for those who wield power over others, that their hearts may be opened to remember that we are all in it together on this small planet — all of the people, all of the more than human world, together with God?

May these questions live with you awhile, and may you come to your own answers together with God.  Amen