Beloved

When Jesus rises from the water after being baptized, a voice from heaven says that he is the Beloved. That moment is a small but an important factor in how I understand my faith. The notion is a tapestry of this passage, God loving the world in John’s gospel, nothing separating us from the love of God in Jesus in Paul’s letter to the Romans, the twin commands to love God and our neighbor as ourselves in the Greatest Commandment. All of which is to say that if Jesus is beloved then I am beloved too. And so are you.

Thus I view baptism as this great reminder of God’s grace, new life, and our belovedness. I think to the baptism of both my sons, which I was so fortunate to administer for both. I cannot put a value on how much I love Jim and Liam. Their belovedness is off the charts and I am a finite and flawed parent. Even when they are mean to one another, act like surly adolescents, or are rude to myself or their mom, they are still beloved. I hope that they will always know that they are beloved by God, their parents, and many more people. Seeing ourselves through that lens can change our lives. Seeing our neighbor through that lens can change the world.

I wish to God that man who killed Renee Good paused a second to consider her belovedness. I wish that in the midst of this fear-inducing crackdown that people would understand that our refugee and immigrant neighbors are beloved. I wish the guy in the White House knew that he was beloved as a human being and that the people of this planet that he has so much sway in were beloved too. I wish that we would all pause one second to realize that there is something beloved and sacred about each other.