I hated history in high school and college.  Maybe it was the monotone, no-nonsense droning lectures.  Maybe the classes were during my most-of-the-day sleepy period.  For whatever reason, I grudgingly studied the subjects and made B grades.  Fast-forward to age 40 in seminary, and history began to make sense.  I don’t know what happened.  Having lived through civil rights, the Vietnam war, the sexual revolution, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and more, history was at once, entertaining and frightening.

Reconciliation   noun

We come together as a community out of mutual love, respect, caring for one another and compassion.  In open, honest conversations, mistakes are made.  The challenge lands in our lap immediately.  When we are the recipient of a remark or action that we interpret as rude, thoughtless, careless or even hostile, what action do we take?  Do we go to the offending party later in private to work things out?  Or do we hang onto the ugly feelings and let it out by counter-attacking, gossip or leaving the church?

Scarcely a week goes by lately without one person telling me that they are full of hope and optimism for the future … that their world has never been better.  And often, in the same week of hearing such cheerful perspective from one person, I hear the exact opposite – that others are full of dread and gloom.  For them, the world appears to be headed downhill, fast.  I am proud of our parish that we can embrace a wide latitude of perspectives, but when our collective sense of hope seems to be bipolar, what should our spiritual response be?

In last week’s Theology Pub, we discussed how the Romans viewed Christians in the first and second centuries.  After the mad Emperor Nero blamed the Roman Christians for setting the fire that burned most of Rome in AD 64, he began a series of persecutions such as letting wild animals attack and eat groups of Christians in the arena as public entertainment.  He also had them burned alive as illumination for the circus maximus.  I won’t go into any more detail, but the depravity and sheer inhumanity staggers the mind and depresses the heart.

It was a very busy twenty years.  First you had the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD.  Somewhere in the Roman Empire at that time, the Gospel of Mark was being written while, elsewhere, Paul was founding churches and writing letters to them.  The blaze began on the 19^th of July (our modern calendar) in 64 AD.  It burned for six days until it was brought under control.  Emperor Nero blamed the fire on the Roman Christians which led to the first of many imperial persecutions of that growing religious body.