heart
Jesus said, "The first commandment is this: Hear, O Israel:
The Lord your God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: Love
your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment
greater than these." Mark 12:29-31
The new youth pastor of a church in Palo Alto spoke to a group of high school students gathered at Mount Hermon Camp and Conference Center in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and drawing on Romans (somehow) made a diagram with his hands and forearms, showing a triangle whose points (self, others, God) drew closer together: as you become closer to God you become closer to others; as you become closer to others you become closer to God. I have not forgotten that in 49 years, though that preacher is long retired.
But I would submit, today, an addition to his chart: as we become closer to God or one another we also become closer to our selves - our true selves, anchored in Grace, visible or invisible, sought or not. For as every Southerner knows...
[On the causeway between Daphne and Mobile Alabama, in the middle of Mobile Bay, is a good old diner that serves breakfast. I ordered ham and eggs, and sure enough when the waitress brought me breakfast there were grits on the plate. "But I didn't order grits." - "You don't have to, honey. Grits just come."*]
... grace just comes. It is inexorable as the love of God and we might as well admit it. And if we do -
[Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke at the Trinity West conference at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and said that like many preachers he had only one sermon: his was "God loves you." But the implications of that ...]
- if we do admit the unbreakable unfathomable inexorable grace of God, there are implications for our behavior, toward God, others, and even ourselves.
We can no longer be party to the hate we have absorbed in the past. We must work toward healing, of ourselves, yes, but not through a Ministry of Self-esteem: through the experience of love in action.
Giving and receiving, noticing, acknowledging, practicing, experiencing, love in action: grace.
And that grace we experience in and through our fellow creatures.
The famous situation-ethicist Joseph Fletcher summed up his message in a single phrase, which makes more sense now, in light of what we've covered above. He wrote: "Love God in your neighbor."
Because love in reality, though harsher than love in dreams, is indeed grace: it is the proper working out of the good news of Jesus Christ in the world. The beloved community he calls us into - beloved by God, first of all, with all else to follow - is not yet but already being fulfilled in the world.
Love in action is the work of the Holy Spirit, grace working in us, doing more than we could hold in our own arms, do with our own hands, embrace with our own minds: except God is always at work in us.
Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:20, 21
It is not always easy to see. In the midst of crises - pandemic, political foolishness or uproar, climate worries, cancer or other personal tragedies - that seem to come upon us in waves or from ambush, it is not always easy to see the love of God at work.
In the misadventures of our lives, the misanthropy of our fellow humans, the profound or casual discourtesies we experience in interactions with strangers - or loved ones, the cruel moments in our lives, it is not always easy to see God's love at work.
We have to build on it. On what we can see - and what we cannot - as we follow the way of love. That is the pathway blazed by the Patriarchs, emboldened by the Kings, laid wide and straight through the wilderness of mercy by the power of God. It is the door opened by the saving action of the life of Jesus Christ. And it is the way trod before us by millenia of believers, of the saints - of all the saints and souls we celebrate this coming All Saints and All Souls (El Día de los Muertos) weekend.
We remember those who love us - and those who cannot. We remember those who remain unloved and unknown - except by God.
Let us then remember more than those we know - and make our behavior bend toward grace, toward the working out in the world of that grace, experienced and received, through love in action, collective, common, individual or corporate.
Let us look at crises of our day with new eyes, and new will to win through to the kingdom of grace. Let us look at blessings with new eyes, receiving and giving and loving together, in the light of God's love.
And let us not forget: that every time we grow closer to God we grow closer to each other; every time we grow closer to one another, in the love and grace of God at work in the world, we grow closer to God.
And in that gathering unity in the heart of God we come to know truly ourselves.
soul
Looking at the first reading for this coming Sunday, October 25, 2020, I see again that the Shema begins with an admonishment to holiness. Before there is even a command to love God or your neighbor there is the invitation, be holy, for God is holy and you are the people of God.
Well how about it? What does that mean?
It means love in action. It means knowledge that we can act upon (actionable knowledge) : knowing that God loves us - first - gives us call to respond to that inexorable love with our own inadequate but willing and blessed love in turn.
It means embodied faithfulness. That is, not just words, "Lord, Lord" - but deeds. Love in action.
Our faith in God, our steadfast love (chesed), is shown in how we live and how we pray and how we treat one another (and ourselves). So to love your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength, as Jesus summarizes the law, is to embody that first loyalty in how we choose to live.
As is pointed out more frequently these days that means not just individual but collective choices, and individual choices that feed the common good.
Wearing a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic is an action for the common good; it is embraced faithfulness. The mask protects those around me, pretty well, along with the other precautions - social distancing, frequent hand washing, testing and tracing and treating ... it is not for me alone.
So much for rugged individualism! We need to work together, with God and our neighbor, for the love of God and neighbor and self... that is how embodied faithfulness works.
mind
In his keynote presentation Saturday to the convention of the diocese of western Washington, indigenous ministries leader Bradley Hauff said some things about love.
The Jesus Movement of which we Anglicans & Episcopalians are an integral part emphasizes
loving
liberating
life-giving
on our way to becoming the Beloved Community that Martin Luther King Jr described as a diverse community embodying "a global vision in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth."
Bradley Hauff - an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux - reminded us that all things are our relatives - not just people, all creation.
And that means that the double commandment Jesus proclaims in the gospels - love God and your neighbor - extends beyond traditional limited understanding of neighbor as fellow Israelite or even sojourner in the land, to other nations, other creatures, and indeed to all of creation.
"Brother Sun, Sister Moon" is no longer merely a metaphor or a nice song. It is for real: we are all related - in God's love. And as God is love that love is all encompassing, all embracing. While we experience separation from others and from God, and a need for redemption and reconciliation, we believers know that 'there is no better redeemer than Christ'.
We are all relatives, thanks to Jesus, and we are striding toward right relationship with God, humanity, and all creation.
Jesus responds to his Pharisaic interrogator by quoting Scripture, from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, for the first and second commandments he articulates. And when he says heart and soul and mind - and strength - he draws on all aspects of human nature. Heart: the more responsive and emotional reactions of a human being; Soul: the vitality and consciousness of a person; Might: the powerful and instinctive drive in our nature; and Mind: the intelligent and planning qualities of a person.
When we hear that we are to love God with all of ourselves, we are called into a transformation, a conversion, a taking of responsibility for the growth and development of all aspects of ourselves, as persons, in heart, soul, mind, and strength, and as the people of God's love.
Let us not then as we go forth into the new world of love's redeeming work that it is the love of God, source of all being, eternal Word, and holy Spirit, into which we are called to live; and on that love we draw in our embodied faithfulness, our love in action, toward friend and stranger, and all of creation.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all evermore. Amen. 2 Corinthians 13:14
Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:20,21
For St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Tucson, the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost, 2020.
https://www.earlpalmer.org/
http://edgeofenclosure.org/proper25a.html
*Apocryphal southern story - except for the meal. The grits were excellent.
The call to love God is the heart of faith, and yet it is not disembodied. Loving God manifests itself in love of neighbor. (Diana Butler Bass, The Cottage, October 24, 2020)
- Bradley Hauff’s Keynote video: https://youtu.be/dHzxvJrIbJY
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