When we say, "Never forget," we must ask: Who are we remembering? Who gets counted as American enough to deserve justice? Until we, as a country, live up to the values of love, unity, and equality that are supposed to bind us together, justice will remain an unfulfilled promise.

You and I are survivor trees, too. To whom are we giving shade and rest? Where are we planting our roots? To what stars are we stretching out our branches?

Jesus had no barriers, but churches certainly do, and that fact is well-known in our society. So well-known that it can be played for laughs.

The parables of Jesus are embedded in the life of the hearers, even as they are at the ready to lift up the Reign of God as the work of God, not humanity, in breaking into the mundane and sin-fractured world we know all too well.