In our gospel for today, the Pharisees were divided in their opinion of Jesus. Some of them thought that the law of Moses prohibited healing on the Sabbath, the day of rest, and that meant Jesus was a sinner. Others, accepting the testimony of the man who had been born blind, considered the logic of his healing showed that Jesus could not be a sinner. They convened an investigation to determine who was right, who would be the winner of the argument and who the loser. Is that the kind of action the Holy One expects, desires, hopes for from God's children? I don't think so; Jesus tells us that we, each and all, are called to love God and our neighbor, accept and get along in spite of all the differences we find in the world around us. Division, separation--the mark of Pharisees in Jesus’ day--is not the way of Love, the way the Beloved has prepared for us.

We don't have to look far for stories of the consequences that result from divisions. They scream at us from the headlines of print media, the TV, our computers and cell phones announcing the latest horror story of how division wrecks our society, our workplaces, our schools, our politics, our churches, our homes, our lives. Our gracious and Holy God wants us to live in communion with one another, to recognize that we all are interconnected with one another and with all creation, to accept wholeheartedly those who look, sound and/or think differently, to forgive those by whom we feel attacked or from whom we feel alienated, and to love them into a harmonious relationship with us individually and in community.

How can we here and now begin to heal the divisions that have caused the breach in our immediate milieu? None of us can do that on our own. It takes opening our hearts to the Holy One and trusting the Beloved to transform us from within, to be the glue that holds us together as Divine Love is being made manifest in us moment by moment, day by day.