In simple terms, the prime directive forbids ethnocentric interference by members of the Federation into the societal norms of any society. But as a Trekker and a pastor, I decided that I would unpack the requirements of the Federation’s prime directive and it drove me directly to the Scriptures to explore the first prime directive—the one given to Moses on Mount Sinai; the one later interpreted by Jesus. According to John, in chapter 15, verse 12 and also in chapter 15, verse 34, the prime directive for us as people of God is simply this: to love one another—to love one another as Jesus loved us. The ongoing mission is the struggle not to go into the far reaches of the galaxy, but rather to go deep within ourselves to hear the still, small voice; to go deep within ourselves to feel the strength of those everlasting arms; to go deep within ourselves to rise to meet the challenge to love when everything else in our society tells us to strike out in fear, when everything else in our society tells us to lash out in hatred or to release anger in a violent manner.

One theologian said: "If you could summarize the Ten Commandments into one phrase if would be ‘to love.’" Indeed, the first three commandments, according to Lutheran tradition, all deal with love of God—having no other God, maintaining the holiness of the name of God, and sanctifying the Holy Day. The other seven deal with how we show love to one another—how we show love to our relatives, our neighbors, and to strangers. Honor your loved ones, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness against your neighbors, and finally, do not covet what does not belong to you. Not a list of dos and don’ts, not unrealistic expectations that looked really good on two tablets of stone, but rather guidelines for how to carry out that prime directive that came from God: to love.

It finally took Jesus to condense it from ten commandments to one: Love one another just as I have loved you—just as I have loved you unconditionally. His followers, His disciples, even on a good day could be described as dunderheads. Sometimes they tried their best to follow that directive, but when He needed them most, they sold Him out and ran away and left Him alone.

But we are here today because Jesus was guided by that prime directive—love unconditionally—even from the cross, even in the garden. Though His final thoughts ranged from recalcitrance to fear, His first words on the cross were a plea to God for forgiveness to those who were doing Him wrong. Ironically, He said for "those who do not know what they are doing," but they did know what they were doing. That word of petition for forgiveness was directed to God, but in His last words to His disciples, he said, "This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you. Love each other as I have loved you."

One Saturday in June I recall being with my grandfather as he was lamenting while raking up the debris from a cottonwood tree that he had in the yard. He had just begun the fourth week of his retirement. He was finally going to do what he wanted to do with his life. And while I was rolling around in the grass, disheveling the debris that he was raking together, he said to me out of the blue, "Don’t raise your children to believe in the tooth fairy." I thought that was odd. I was about fifteen years old. He continued on: "Don’t raise your child to believe in the Easter bunny." I thought that strange and I asked him why. He said, "Because those fantasy untruths get in the way of the real truth, the truth that sometimes cannot be seen." And he said, "If you raise your children to believe in the tooth fairy and they find out that you’ve lied, then what will they think of Jesus?" And I thought about that. Two weeks later my grandfather fell dead from an aneurysm. I recalled his final words—not a prime directive but a directive, nonetheless—and those words have been with me ever since.

But Jesus’ directive is the prime directive, the first directive. Love one another as I have loved you. Jesus loved us even until death and then got up from death to go on and to love us to the end of the age. In these troublesome times of hatred, anger, fear, and war, the truth is not out there. The truth is found in the words of Jesus, the prime directive. The compass needle that guides us in our faith journey is Love one another as I have loved you. Through good, through bad, through stupid and ugly, through beauty and through fun, love one another. Can you go where at least one man has gone before?

Amen.

Lydia Talbot: Barbara, the commandment to love one another is not only central to your message but also to the way you have lived your life. Take us back. When was that commandment first revealed to you?

Barbara Berry-Bailey: Having been the product of five generations of Lutherans, I attended Lutheran day schools in Detroit. The scriptures were open to me and presented to me at a very young age. But in terms of me looking at it as being the prime directive, the needle that guides us, I should say that my son and I came to the conclusion that this was the prime directive not too long ago. I have a twenty-one year old son and we talk a lot about the scriptures as any pastor’s kid would do. We were sitting in a church meeting. We were not paying attention during the meeting, passing notes back and forth. I wrote, "What is the prime directive according to Jesus?" and I passed it to him. He wrote back, "Love." He knew love and as a parent I thought that I must have done something right because he does know love. Then he wrote a question mark. And then I wrote it would be to love God, to love your neighbor, but if you want to condense it down into one phrase it would be "to love." That is picked up again in John and Jesus. To have been raised in the scriptures and to have been rooted in the scriptures as a very young child, the seeds were planted at a very young age.

Talbot: What is your son’s name?

Berry-Bailey:  My son’s name is Darrin.

Talbot:  He must have a true religious sensibility, attending church meetings with his mother! What has been his response to growing up in the church?

Berry-Bailey:  He went to Lutheran schools and day schools as well. When he hears this he will call me long distance! I believe he is fighting the call. Someone asked him upon my graduating from seminary if he will be going to seminary. And he said, "Well, I already went to seminary. The whole family went to seminary!" He has a love of the scriptures and he wants to study the scriptures in their original language. Now I don’t know if he’ll go on to become a pastor of a congregation, but even now he tries to wrestle with Greek.

Talbot:  How has the commandment, love one another, been important to you, Barbara, as you have struggled as an African-American and as a woman in ministry? Have there been moments along the way in your journey when that commandment has been a tough one?

Berry-Bailey:  That is why I say it is a directive. It’s the needle that points you when it is so easy to get lost and to go somewhere else. I’ve had very bad experience in my life when I had a previous career in public broadcasting. I met with fierce racism at a station where I worked not only among people that I worked with, but with the entire arts community, which was less than excited that I was the leader of this station. I remembered the story of Joseph when I left the town, which I will not mention. I left the town and then moved to Philadelphia, where within eighteen months after leaving, I went to seminary. I remember Joseph saying, "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." So those things were planted. I cannot say at the time that I left that town that scripture was on my mind. But in retrospect, just like the children of Israel in the wilderness, it isn’t until you are standing and looking over into the Promised Land that you can then look back and see how God has moved you through the wilderness in your life.

Talbot:  The pain of racism, then and now. How did it manifest itself? What were the signs in day-to-day work activity that let you know that was what was going on?

Berry-Bailey:  Well, there were no signs. I was just told point blank, straight out. It was not covert in any sense. I was told by a woman that I was not the image that they had for a person who works in the arts community. It wasn’t very hard to get me out of the arts community in this town. I was finally exonerated and I triumphed, but at the end of the process I didn’t want to stay.

Talbot:  What was the connection between that moment in your life and then your leap into seminary?

Berry-Bailey:  I had always wanted go to seminary but could not because I was in a branch of the Lutheran church that still does not ordain women. Having moved to Philadelphia where there is an ELCA seminary, I lived six blocks from the seminary and my route to work always took me by the seminary. There was a t-intersection at which I would stop daily. The light would always be red and I would sit there and I would look at the sign that said "Lutheran Theological Seminary." After about eighteen months of that, I finally couldn’t pass that sign any more. But the challenge came, I remember, when I started to think about forgiveness and love and about really trying to forgive in spite of the things that had been done. I remember saying to a friend that the challenge for me was overcoming one of my biggest nightmares, which was the person who had wronged me would now come to my communion rail for communion. That’s a recurring nightmare that I have, the struggle to forgive when something hurts you so deeply. As a matter of fact, I recently shared this story with an Episcopalian friend who said, "What would you do now?" And I said, "I think I would have my communion assistant come in!"

Talbot:  So reconciliation is still in process?

Berry-Bailey:  No, I think I am there now. That was ten long years ago.

Talbot: You said that from the time you were ten years of age, you knew you wanted to be a Lutheran pastor, but life was not easy. Did you lose your parents at an early age?

Berry-Bailey:  I lost my father in a very tragic accident. He was coming out of a restaurant and someone tried to steal his wallet and they shot and killed him. My mother passed away about four years ago in a very untimely accident in a hospital. She picked up a staph infection that they did not realize she had and they sent her home with it. She collapsed and died within a week. It was very sudden.

Talbot:  You mentioned your grandfather in your earlier message. He must have been extremely important in forming the kinds of values that you have today.

Berry-Bailey: Yes. Both of them—my paternal grandmother and grandfather. I would visit them every Saturday and spend time with them. I was a candy striper in a hospital that was about five blocks from their house so I would go there and I would do my laundry. I would sometimes spend the weekend with them. They were not Lutheran, they were the Pentecostal side of the family. But between the Lutherans and the Pentecostals, I got a great grounding in the scriptures and in the liturgics in the Lutheran church. I used to think, like most children do, that my grandfather was the wisest man. He just knew so much. I remember asking my dad what college did he go to. My father laughed and I remember him saying that you will find that it is not college that makes a person wise, it’s the experiences that they have.

One story with my grandmother: I remember I was sitting at my grandmother’s house watching the moon landing when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. My father and I were watching television and my grandmother was in the kitchen. She came out, stood in the doorway of the den and said, "Bill, I owe you an apology. I’m very sorry." And then she walked out of the room. We looked at one another and we got up and went into the kitchen. He said, "What are you talking about?" Well, evidently when my father was a very young boy, he said one day man will walk on the moon and my grandmother said that he was a silly boy, that it would never happen, and it was utter foolishness. And she apologized for that. She recalled that he said that would happen one day.

Talbot:  Take us back now to Germantown, Pennsylvania. You are Senior Pastor of the Trinity Lutheran Church in Germantown and there are certain challenges in conveying the biblical message in that community of faith.

Berry-Bailey:  It’s an historic congregation—one hundred sixty one years old—that at one time was in Germantown. But now in 1998, I think the only thing left about Germany is the name Germantown! The neighborhood has changed. A lot of our leadership, Lutheran leadership, left the city to move to Chicago. We have people in our community now who have faint memories of church and we have adults who have never set foot in a church in their lives. So our struggle —our challenge—is to try to tell the old, old story in a new way, to use the language of the people, and to use the imagery that people have. Not to reinvent the wheel, but to use the wheel in a new way to get people to the scripture.

Talbot:  Give us a taste of some of that language and some of that imagery that you would preach on Sunday morning.

Berry-Bailey: I’ll take you back to one that I did a couple of weeks ago: the Emmaus story. It is easier to do it with narratives when you want to talk about and explore why Jesus looked so different and why the people on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognize Jesus. When we do the Emmaus story, we do it in colloquial expressions and we do a drama. We have Jesus walking up to the disciples and saying, "Yo, what’s the 411?" And they say back to him, "Where have you been? Have you been under a rock? How could you not know of the things that have taken place in Jerusalem?" So we have fun and we communicate the story to people in the language of the people.