In response to why the Apostles were disobeying their strict orders, Peter tells the high priests: “We must obey God rather than men…We are witnesses of these things, as is the Holy Spirit whom God had given to those who obey him.”

As I sat with these readings, the word that kept surfacing for me was Love.  When Jesus asked the disciples what the greatest commandments were, they told him it was to love God with all their heart and all their being and to love their neighbors as themselves.  As followers of Jesus, what if we did that?  What would our families, our communities, our country look like if we were obedient to the greatest of all commandments?

My 90-year-old father is probably on his last lap, but only God knows for sure what’s going to happen. As he has gradually declined, it has been very difficult for him to adjust to his ever-changing reality.  One night he was railing against all these people in his home. My dad was confused, upset and frustrated. Instead of trying to help him understand that his 60-year-old plus children needed help to keep him home as we had promised our mother, I just listened.  It was not easy to hear the pain, the fear, the anger. But at 2 in morning, it was all I could do.

As he wound down, I told him he had never had to die before and that his kids had never had to navigate this process with him. That we were going to make mistakes, but that we had to keep talking and remember that all of us had the same goal.  With that he calmed down and was quiet.  After a while he said, “I need to be obedient to God”.  He didn’t say he was going to like it or that it would be easy, but that as a faith-filled man, he was going to be try and be obedient to God. It was a holy moment.

Later that day as I listened to the news, I heard about numerous rules and laws around the country being enacted that seem to be more about restricting people’s behaviors than fostering the common good.  What is behind these laws?  What would happen if we all just listened to each other? Could we get beyond the anger to find out why people are so afraid?  Why are reading certain books, voting and being true to who you are so fear inducing?  How do we help each other learn that being loving towards each other doesn’t diminish us or our communities?  That it actually enriches us, reminding me of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s web of mutuality: “I can never be who I ought to be until you are who you ought to be. And you can never be who you ought to be until I am who I ought to be.” 

Then I remember my dad at 2 am saying he had to be obedient to God. What if we were all obedient to God?  Would we then be able to hear ‘the cry of the poor’ from today’s psalm?  Would we be able to act on that love to diminish the overwhelming suffering of our world? I pray we can.

So, during this Easter season, I am going to sit and think about being obedient to God.  And, if truth be told, probably dream about who we could be and what our communities and world would look like if we all obedient to God’s law of love.