Midweek Faith Lift
September 23, 2026
“What Jesus Taught-Part II”
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Daily Good
September 12, 2026
Wendell Berry spent 92 years insisting that the largest problems in the world are answered, first, in the smallest gestures -- a seed planted, a field tended, a pencil drawn across paper. The writer and farmer from Henry County, Kentucky, authored more than 50 books without a computer, was arrested twice for environmental protests, and still resisted the urgency that defined the movements he stood beside, believing that apocalyptic thinking missed something essential: "the world had no end and no beginning."
As his friend and scholar Jeffrey Bilbro observed, Berry understood that "our hands are all dirty, and we're making these compromises, and it's better to be honest about the necessity to do so and try to do what we can to live right, even if we can't attain the purity that we might wish." What Berry left behind is less a set of arguments than a way of seeing -- one in which tending a handful of soil and fighting for a mountaintop are not different acts, but the same act at different scales. He trusted that a person who truly learns to belong to a place will naturally want to protect it, and that this quiet belonging is where lasting change begins.
Berry believed that "in coming into relationship with the smallest handful of earth, you can understand what it means to fight for change almost too enormous to fathom," and that shift in scale is itself a kind of action. Let this moment of attention be the beginning of something, even if you never see its end.
"It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."
— Wendell Berry
This passage about Wendell Berry is a perfect entry into “What Jesus Taught, II” as described by Emmet Fox in the first chapter of The Sermon on the Mount.” Last week, our journey was through a whole lot of what is NOT in the Bible, specifically “what Jesus didn’t teach!” What Wendell Berry, a naturalist, philosopher and farmer left us, is a way of seeing the world. According to Emmet Fox, that is also what Jesus offers us: a new way of seeing our world and the realization that what we have thought, said and done has created what we now experience. To come to a place where we no longer know what to do is to begin our spiritual journey.
Scripture contains Spiritual Truth and Fox says “Divine Wisdom” is the author; it’s irrelevant who recorded this Wisdom. Discerning this Divine Wisdom in the teachings of Jesus is our spiritual path. Jesus demonstrated the power of prayer in following this spiritual path that asks us to take responsibility for our own lives. The stories of miracles and healing are meant to inspire us to possibilities of prayer for our own lives and how we inhabit them. Prayer is both a science and an art, according to Fox, and understanding this is how we develop our spiritual capacity to change our lives. He challenges his readers to “overcome all superstitious literalism” that limits our deeper understanding of the real message and teachings of Jesus.
We are to grasp at a deep level the true power of our thoughts to shape our reality, the deeper nature of what we experience. The truth is that what exists in the world is neutral; it just is. Fox says it this way, “The outer world….has actually no character whatsoever of its own, either good or bad. It only has the character we give it by our own thinking.” (p.13) That is a powerful statement that challenges us to look carefully at our own thinking, which is that small starting place that Wendell Berry mentioned. We feel sad, painful and difficult emotions that are just part of what is, part of life. Allowing them to be there is our spiritual and emotional journey, our healing journey. Last weekend, Barb’s celebration of life service was just that sort of experience. When we allow the feelings, we allow the healing.
Jesus never promised that there would no longer be difficulties or challenges or fear, sadness, sickness or death. What he demonstrated was how to be truly present with those conditions. When people asked for healing, his ability to be truly and fully present was no doubt part of the miracle experience. How we are present to our own lives is that handful of soil, that place where we begin to make a difference, to make positive changes in what we plant in consciousness and what will grow in our outer experiences. And it begins in each one of us, individually, nowhere else. That is both awful and awesome at the same time because it means we cannot blame something or someone. Likewise, we cannot expect to be rescued by someone or something outside ourselves. That is the essence of the teachings of Jesus, according to Fox.
It is simple, but it is not easy. It requires us to tolerate ambiguity, paradox, complexity, and contradictions as we navigate our lives. It requires self-reflection, brutal honesty with oneself and finally surrender to that which is greater than we are: the power of Love, the energy of God, of the Universe. I have not always enjoyed this process, but I cannot imagine my life any other way. Looking at my thoughts and how they have impacted my choices and decisions, well that has been quite a journey and not always very pretty for sure.
I have been punished by my sins….the one where I colluded with my first husband to pretend that his being gay wouldn’t really matter. That was a big one with significant consequences. We did it together, not with malice, but with ignorance and willfulness that we could make things be the way we wanted them to be. That does not work and in time we were proved wrong as he had to really be true to who he was. There is that brutal honesty which is essential to emotional and spiritual maturity! The gift of that process is that I found Unity, a huge blessing for me. There are always blessings in the lesson when we are willing to lean in and learn the lessons. That is the message of Jesus…lean in and learn.
Emmet Fox reflect on this by noting that all day long we have thoughts which occupy our minds, our “secret place” as Jesus calls it. These thoughts mold and shape our experiences for good or ill. Fox says this on p. 13:
Now we can choose the sort of thought we entertain. It will be a little difficult to break a bad habit of thought, but it can be done. We can choose how we shall think—in point of fact, we always do choose—and therefore our lives are just the result of the kind of thoughts we have chosen to hold…We have free will, but our free will lies in our choice of thought.
Fox says that this is the essence of what Jesus taught. We have free will, but our free will lies in our choice of thought. And our thoughts shape our lives. We have feelings and emotional reactions to what we experience because we are human. What we think about our feelings, where we choose to put our energy and attention, that is what shapes our lives and where our true power of free will is exercised. Fox says this Truth shines through in the Scriptures if we encounter them with spiritual understanding. The life and teachings of Jesus illuminate Spiritual Truth which never changes. Our journey is to apprehend this Truth at ever deepening and widening degrees of clarity. Again, simple, but not easy!
The bottom line is that we grasp this Truth, one thought, one aha awakening moment at a time. It is kind of like Wendell Berry’s observation that we effect change in a small scale, not knowing what the long-term impact will be. When we can finally admit that what we have been doing so far isn’t giving us the outcomes we want, then we have begun our real journey. Accepting this spiritual Truth about our thoughts is a good first step. It doesn’t really matter, however, until we have proved it by doing it in our own lives. Then it becomes ours! And we do that one small fistful of dirt at a time. What is one small thought that you can see? The one small thought that impacts your daily life? That is where you begin, the one little niggly thought over which you trip all the time.
Again, this is simple, but not easy, and Fox says just that. You can’t do it for someone else, you can’t by-pass it with prayer or distraction. You can only see and embrace it with prayer and humility. Then true change is possible, transformation is possible, one small thought at a time.
Richard Rohr said it this way in his Sept. 15, 2026 Blog about St. Paul”:
But neither Jesus nor Paul is especially concerned about order, niceness, or social control. They are concerned about transformation of persons and history and about using the very disorder of people’s lives to bring them to God. That is why both of them called it good news, and why it is a surprising and joyful discovery for any of us who are honest about our state.
What we largely have in Western religion today is bad news, an attempt to superimpose an impossible order on a world that God allows to be disordered, and in which God even uses the disorder to bring us all to Love. How could we miss or avoid such utter good news?
And to this we say, AMEN!
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb