We belong because of roots. Many were born here, but many were not. Kathy and I were not. Yet just like the great, old pines that give to this place its name and its spirit, we have sunken our roots into this sandy soil and forest duff along the river. All that is required for those roots to take hold is to be here. To live here. To raise families here. To breathe the air and drink the rain here. And before you know it, you are rooted, and this is home.

Another idea that permeates this place is that of teachers, and teachings. They surround us every day. Lessons on how to bend but not break in a strong wind. On how to respect one another and our different ways of being. How to survive the different seasons with their different challenges. How to grow and blossom in your own way, in your own time. And too many more to count.

But we honor other teachers, too. There was a Teacher from 2,000 years ago whose words still echo today. Many claim to follow him, although their own words and actions say that they do not. His name, Yeshua (Jesus) is venerated above nearly all others on Earth. It is associated with goodness, compassion, justice, and mercy, with perhaps his most famous saying being that we should ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ It does not seem like a hard–or complicated–saying.

It is often thought that the kind and compassionate Jesus never got angry with anyone.But that is not true. When one reads his book, it is clear that he often became angry. With injustice and with cruelty. And when he became angry with someone, there is one word that he employed more than any other. Hypocrite. ‘Thou hypocrite!’ he would exclaim.

Here at the Church O’ The Pines, we feel that that word is extraordinarily applicable lately. Right here in Minnesota. Because of our idea of belonging, and roots. There are those under assault in our state, living in terror, because outsiders and occupiers say they do not belong. Do not belong HERE, where they LIVE. Where their roots are. Where they have raised their families. Where they have their jobs and schools and churches. Where they are our neighbors. When outside invaders say this, when people in pulpits thunder that these people ‘are not like us,’ that they don’t belong here, that their roots are not here–like ‘OURS” are–that is hypocrisy. Through and through. As if virtually all who say it did not themselves come from somewhere else. And Yeshua would condemn it. He would condemn pretending to follow his teaching to ‘love your neighbor as yourself’, and then picking and choosing who our neighbor is. That is not the meaning of the grand story of the Good Samaritan. It is the precise opposite. It is deep hypocrisy. And to pretend to honor a Teacher whose entire teaching was love and justice, mercy and compassion and inclusion, all while cheering on depraved acts of unchecked state power and injustice–why even the condemnation of ‘hypocrisy’ is not enough.

The invaders, and their master, said that they were coming to root out the ‘worst of the worst,’ those who might do us harm. But that was a lie. Most clearly a lie. Instead they are here to harass and root out those whose roots are indeed here. But who look or seem ‘different’. Darker, perhaps. Even those whose darker skin shows that they and their ancestors were here long, long before anyone else. They, too, have been harassed and attacked. For looking ‘different.’

Here at the Church O’ The Pines, we like differences. We celebrate them. We like that the cardinal’s voice is different than the jay’s, than the crow’s, than the owl’s. We like that the pine grows differently than the oak. That the trillium blooms differently than the hepatica or the bloodroot. We like that the deer come quietly alongside the fox. Is everything always perfect? No, we live on planet Earth where many things are good and beautiful but nothing is ever perfect.

But we get along. We make room for each other. We trust each other. No one tells lies about one another. And we –as yet–have no invaders swaggering in, telling us who belongs and who does not. We seem to have very little hypocrisy in our woods. Perhaps your woods is like that, too. Or your church. Your house and your neighborhood. We hope so. Here at the Church O’ The Pines, we wish you safety, and beauty, and peace, and clear-eyed justice. We wish you good neighbors. And we wish you Good Sabbath.

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