Participating in Holy Love

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD. You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18

This is the Word of God.
Thanks be to God!

By participating in communion with one another, we actually participate in communion with God, because God is not lacking in any regard in being ever oriented in the posture we call Love. As such, God is the source of the Love shown by God's people: the People of God love because God is the LORD: the holy, ever-faithful covenant One who enters into relationship with God's people, making them holy.

The Latin text, Ubi Caritas comes to mind. Here is a beautiful musical setting by Ola Gjeilo, superbly interpreted by Charles Bruffy, conducting the Phoenix Chorale:

Here is the Latin text and an English translation:

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.

      Where charity and love are, God is there.

congregavit nos in unum Christi amor.

       The love of Christ has gathered us together.

Exultemos et in ipso juncundemur

        Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Timeamus et amemus Deum Vivum.

         Let us revere and love the living God.

Et ex corde dilagamus nos sincero.

         And from a sincere heart let us love one another.

Amen.

         Amen.

Perhaps you could read the Latin text as saying that wherever you see expressions of what we call love, then those expressions must be from God. Or whenever we feel attraction to other persons, then however we act on that attraction--what many people call love--is a True expression of Love, is godly, and healthy.

I think this interpretation is faulty. Or at least it falsely equates Love with desire and acting on desire in and of themselves as Love. I think the Truer meaning of the text is that charity and love are the signals of God’s presence, the source of True Charity and Love. Love is not an emotion. God's essence can be described as being Love, and we embody the Love of God as God moves in and through us to Love God and Love each other truly, for the glory of God.

Congregavit nos in unum…

We do not come together to make love, but rather, Christ has called us together—regardless of our differences and misunderstandings—with His love. And we are to rejoice and be glad in this gathering, this Love that is outside ourselves and calls us outside of our selves. And when we rejoice in this true Love, this God, we cannot but revere and love this Love, our Living God, who creates in us a sincere heart from which we can truly participate in the Love of Christ, by the Spirit’s power, one to another, as this Love—bigger than us and bigger than our particular culture and our false definitions of love—gathers us together into God’s Self of Love.

I would ask your forgiveness for my inability to describe someone as ineffable as God, but that would be silly.  Could my writing be better? Yes, absolutely. We'll have to see if any future editing I do of this post actually gets any closer to approximately refering to reality, but until then, I pray I've gotten as close as I can at this moment.

God, draw us into Yourself and for Yourself.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Christmastide 2011-2012: Clueless Righteousness

This is the manuscript to a "Spoken Meditation" I shared with my church, First Baptist-Morganton, NC, on the first Sunday after Christmas, which also happened to be New Year's Day, as well as the celebration of The Circumcision and Holy Name of Jesus, The Holy Family, as well as the Solemnity of Mary, God-Bearer.

The Scipture lessons for the service that morning were:
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Revelation 21:1-6a
Matthew 25:31-46

O God, you make us glad by the yearly festival of the birth of your only Son Jesus Christ. Grant that we, who joyfully receive him as our Redeemer, may with sure confidence behold him when he comes to be our Judge; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (from The Book of Common Prayer, a collect for Christmas)

As I was listening to the passage from the Gospel of Matthew yesterday, something caught my attention that has never caught my attention before. Not only did it change the direction of this homily slightly, but it also changed the way I understand, or do not understand, this story.

“What? There’s nothing puzzling about this story!”, one might say. “You feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit those in prison. If you do, you get to be called ‘righteous’ and are sent to eternal life. If you don’t, well, you just get sent to ‘eternal punishment.’”

I do not think this assessment shows evidence of a fair hearing of this story. That summary might be what we expect to hear. It is a pretty popular image: the sheep and goats divided at the end of time when the Son of man comes in glory, the righteous and unrighteous dealt out their just, eternal rewards. And of course, we are the righteous ones in the story.

Now, what I had planned to do was try to drive home the point that we are failing to live up to the standards Jesus speaks of: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting those in prison. Because of course, we all—or at least most of us—fall short. We fail to do the most basic of things that this story tell us Jesus will be checking off his list at the end of time. And I was going to try to encourage us to recommit ourselves to doing those most basic of things, looking to the baby in the manger as the perfect example of how Jesus really was God’s self made into a vulnerable, hungry, thirsty, alien, naked, frail, outcast of a human being: “the least of these.” The least of all.

So hopefully, we would have gone out from this place ready to seek out those in need of ministry and minister to them as ministering to Christ. Seeing Jesus in every full, hydrated, welcomed, clothed, cared for, visited person to whom we ministered.

But the funny thing is, (and this is what I realized yesterday) if we would do exactly that: go out--strategically, intentionally “on mission,”—serving Jesus in the least of these, all of a sudden, we are nowhere to be seen in this story.

Because when Jesus tells the righteous—the sheep—that they have indeed been ministering to him when they minister to the least-of-these, their response is one of cluelessness: “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food?” They are just as clueless as the ones who failed to minister to the least-of-these, who say: “Lord, when was it that we did not take care of you?”

They are all clueless. And that’s what I realized yesterday.

So I also realized that I could not encourage us all to make our lists of what to do, entitled ‘how to serve Jesus in the least-of-these’, and then go about strategically building the Kingdom of God. At least not on the basis of the scriptures we have read this morning. So. What do we do with this Gospel reading?

***

About those other scriptures.

In Isaiah, the prophet exults, rejoices in God and in God’s promises of hope. Even though the fulfillment is not here yet. In fact, he admits that things are not yet what they should be, but also says that he will not keep quiet, he will not rest, until things are made right and salvation shines like a burning torch.

And if you go back and look at that prophecy, the righteousness and praise are not manufactured or performed out of duty by the faithful. Rather, they organically spring up…like a garden causes the seeds planted to spring up. You also see evangelism in this text: all the nations see the righteousness and praise of God. There is also clothing going on in the Isaiah text. But this time, it is God who is clothing God’s people with righteousness. Isaiah doesn’t make his own robe of righteousness. He also doesn’t lose hope because God’s promises haven’t all been fulfilled yet. Rather, he rejoices in the hope that consummation is coming…

That’s what I see in the Revelation passage: the consummation of God’s promises. Jesus, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, of the Father’s love begotten, brings what was started in the manger and on the cross to completion. No tears, no death, no mourning, crying, nor pain, “for the first things have passed away.”

But we’re not there yet. We’re somewhere in the middle: between Isaiah and Revelation. We’re here with this story from the Gospel of Matthew. I think this story is telling us, among other things, how God is inviting us to be involved as God moves all of Creation from Isaiah’s prophecy to Revelation’s fulfillment. Point A to point B. But the text is more descriptive than prescriptive. It doesn’t really tell us how to get from point A to point B. It tells us that at the end, there are those called “righteous” who enter into eternal life, and those who are not, who enter into eternal punishment. But it also tells us that the righteous (just as much as the unrighteous) were clueless about the fact that in serving the least, they were serving Jesus Christ. They were clueless to the fact that they were being righteous.

So, what are we supposed to do with that? How do we minister to the least-of-these, and in so doing, serve Jesus, all the while without knowing it?

I don’t think I have an exact answer.

But I guess what I’ve learned by meditating on these Scriptures is that I don’t think you can treat the Gospel and the life inside God’s kingdom like a system where you check off your list and certain things happen. The Christian life is not a business, not a system to be governed by a board…of any kind.

I guess Mary figured something like that out too…that with God, you can’t expect the expected…sometimes you have to let the Spirit overshadow you and say “yes” to what God is doing inside of you.

It’s a good thing that our spiritual life doesn’t end when we walk out these doors. Because I think we all need to be wrestling with what these Scriptures call us to do, and who these Scriptures call us to be. And just maybe, while we’re wrestling with these Scriptures, celebrating the inconceivable mystery of the Incarnation, and the Holy Spirit is shaping us to be people who love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, just maybe, we will end up being righteous…and we won’t even know it.

Amen.


Come dearest Child into our hearts and leave your crib behind you.
Let this be where the new Life starts for all who seek and find you.
To you be honor, thanks, and praise for all your gifts this time of grace!
Come conquer and deliver this world and us forever! Amen!
-Fred Pratt Green, 1986

Twelfth Friday after Pentecost: The Naughty Psalms

I guess as good Christians of the New Covenant we're supposed to blush at all of the Psalmnodic pleas to God to crush our enemies and bash their babies' heads against rocks and so forth. But sometimes I wonder if those who consistantly bash the Psalmists for honestly pouring out their hearts to God have ever been truly hurt themselves. If you've ever been hurt--I mean really stabbed in the back--by someone you loved and cared for deeply, or've been slandered by someone to whom you thought you could turn in time of trouble, or've been devastated by a situation that was out of anyone's hands but God's just when you thought you were striking up major divine brownie points with the big Guy upstairs...then...read one of those naughty Psalms; the tears will start flowing.

Names, and faces--multiple faces--will vividly fill your imagination as you read desperate lines pleading with God to save you from "their" malicious talk, "their" evil ways, and "their" devious plans to ensare you. You will start to sob uncontrollably when David speaks of his eyes giving out from having searched for God so long...to no avail...and of his tear ducts drying up from crying so much it hurts.

And then right in the midst of your angst session..."forgive me, LORD, and I shall be white as snow." Your anger has been allowed to draw back the curtain of your heart to reveal the deep-seated blackness of hatred, envy, and pride. You realize that God is God, no matter who your "enemy" is, whether it is your former best friend or the hatred welling up inside of you. Then comes the repentance, and the rejoicing. Oh, the rejoicing! There's nothing quite like a good, joyful ending to an otherwise depressing Psalm.

Not all of them are like that, mind you, and they shouldn't be. Far from all of our human experiences of depression and angst turn to Joy within the forty seconds it takes to read a Psalm...but one thing is always present in these "naughty Psalms:" God.

The Psalmist never forgets that ultimately, God is, whatever the temporary circumstances might be. God looks on as the poor, broken creatures that we are, spewing poisionous, hateful venom out of deep, painful wounds of hurt, ceaselessly pointing our fingers at others as a reaction against our own sinful state, buck up to The Almighty with shouts of "Where are You?" "Don't you care?"...God is God enough to hear us in our pain...and simply be God.


God, who lets us be angry, be despairing, be hopeless.


God, who then gives us a reason for rejoicing--actually, the only reason for rejoicing--God's Self.




Peace be yours;
we have a solid Rock,
ever-present regardless
of all else. May you
feel the Presence
drawing you towards
the Rock, and find the
Welcome that is always
in the Rock's cleft.

In Welcome's Name,
"Amen."