From the Pulpit: Celebrating Cathedral Day

Former Cathedral Dean Nathan Baxter returned to celebrate the Cathedral's 117th birthday, and challenged his audience to really think about what love means and looks like.

Dean Baxter — who went on to become the Bishop of the Diocese of Central Pennyslvania — preached from the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus tells his followers to “enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

He put it this way:

“We can disagree with what God loves, but we cannot disrespect the dignity of what God loves. In all we do, we are called to do so in ways which do not disrespect the human dignity of others. That’s different than what we think of as how love feels, or amour love; there are just some folks I just don’t wanna skip down the aisle with.

But my faith calls me to never lose respect for their human dignity. I do not have to agree or refer to the position of the other. But in my engagement with my interlocutor, my soul depends on how much I look into the eyes of that person and say, “But this is God’s child,” and what I say and do. If my purpose is to destroy them, then I am not living faithful to my calling. The world needs to hear that.

It’s a hard way, it’s a narrow way, to live in that tension of the concerns for justice, rightly so. And yet at the same time to understand that in my witness, I am called to respect human dignity. So often I have seen those who have been consumed by the passion, the fire of their passion. God calls us to speak truth, but always speak it with a godly respect.

He continued, drawing on John 3:16:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” All the hate and the bitterness, the uncertainty, the the sense of hopelessness. It is causing us to perish. Our spirits are perishing. Our communities are perishing. Our politics is perishing. Our religions are perishing.

But if we recognize how much God loves the world and gives us power to respect our human brothers, sisters, and siblings in the work and the witness of ministry, he said we would not perish but have everlasting life. And what is everlasting life?

Heaven’s my home, but I ain’t homesick. But I do know that everlasting life is life with the everlasting. … In this life I am blessed to walk with the everlasting one, to receive the grace and the love and the comfort, to feel the urgent call to do the work of God, to feel the warm embrace that I am loved, even as I make my mistakes. This is life with the everlasting.

And so therefore, I am seeking to share the witness of God’s love with the world that God loves, understanding that we can know God in this life and therefore trust God for the life to come.