Ephiphany 4C - Love, love, love

“So that they might hurl him off a cliff”. Poor Jesus. They tried to hurl him off a cliff. Not chastise him, or yell, but throw him off a cliff? That’s pretty harsh. What did he do to deserve such treatment?

He showed love, and perhaps more challenging, he reminded the people of God about something they’d forgotten, that God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had always shown love, and shown love to everyone. Elijah was sent, not to the widows in Israel, but to the widow at Zarephath in Sidon. This was a community in modern-day Lebanon, so Jesus is saying that not only did God not respond to the Jews, he saved their sworn enemy. Jesus continues adding that Elisha wasn’t sent to the people of Israel, God’s chosen, but to the lepers – the unclean people from Syria. God had sent Elijah and Elisha to the outsiders - the lowest class, to the enemy of the state, rather than to God’s chosen people.

Put yourself in that situation. Or rather, let’s put Jesus in ours. We get a new supply preacher named Jesus. He comes in and is talking about the kingdom of God, about love. We’re all aglow. Then Jesus says that God has passed over our place and instead comes to and performs miracles for the Islam extremist. He has allowed our suffering to continue and heals the mentally ill meth addict. The message we hear is that God passes over us and people like us, and instead goes to the outsider. Tough to hear, and hard to understand. This was equally hard to hear for them. To hear that God doesn’t reward chosen-ness, or special-ness, or us-ness, but rather sometimes heals the sworn enemy, or the ultimate outsider. Tough stuff. And true.

This was a problem for Jesus, and it’s a problem now.  Just this week, a picture made its way through social media of Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly gay man consecrated as bishop of New Hampshire and author of the book, “In the Eye of the Storm”.  He said,” It’s funny isn’t it?  That you can preach a judgmental and vengeful and angry God and nobody will mind, but you start preaching a God that is too accepting, too loving, too forgiving, too merciful, too kind… and you are in trouble.” 

So where’s the good news in that?

Bear with me, because we’ll get there. It really is good news. It’s precisely that God looks to the outcast, or the person seen as a sinner. This is what that tells us - that God’s love really is radical, all-encompassing, and non-judgmental. And while that may be harder to embrace when you’re thinking about the other, haven’t you ever felt like the outcast? Or felt like the sinner?  Sure, we all come here in our Sunday best, and put on our Sunday morning persona, but inside, all of us have moments of doubt and sin and badness. God’s love is bigger than all of the labels and negative self-talk we can possibly come up with. God loves the outcast and the sinner. Even when that sinner is me.

God’s love is also eternal. As God tells Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I consecrated you.” Or in other words, God made Jeremiah holy and sacred before he was born. God makes us holy and sacred before we are born – sight unseen. That’s some crazy love.

God loves us in an incomprehensible way. We 21^st century westerners have a hard time understanding God’s love, in part because God is bigger than we can understand, and partly because we don’t have the language. We have one word for love, where other cultures and languages have many. Greek, for example has at least four definitions. This isn’t designed to be a Greek lesson, but suffice it to say our little word for love is flat-out inadequate. Even if we could begin to understand God and God’s love, our language fails us.

The people of Corinth had a hard time with this concept, and Paul’s letter to the Corinthians tries to explain by offering numerous examples of what love is, and what it isn’t.

This reading, “Love is patient, love is kind”, is most frequently associated with weddings, as it’s frequently read at weddings. At a wedding, when we hear it, we immediately think of the love between the bride and groom, or perhaps between ourselves and our partner. And like our little word for love, this is an incomplete picture.

Paul is talking to a divided Corinth. A church with different factions, a community with insiders and definite outsiders, and he’s trying to tell the people what God’s love is. Hurl off a cliff those notions you have about this being a romantic love between people, and listen to this. Think about a divided community, a world with outsiders and select, about the Episcopal Church, Eugene, US Politics.. The arenas are endless. Pick one where you relate to the division, and now let’s talk about God’s love in that setting.

Love is patient. Love is kind.

God loves us patiently and kindly. Regardless of our foibles, or defiance, or hate. God loves us regardless of our uncharitable thoughts, our calloused deeds.

God’s loves all things, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Wow. Bears and endures all things. No exception. No caveats. No limited warranty. All things. All ways. Period.

And God’s love never ends.

There are times when I have acted or not acted, said or not said, thought or not thought something that cause me to question God’s love for me. More often though, I see the actions of someone else, of the other, and am certain that was unforgivable. God didn’t really mean all things, didn’t mean never ends. But yes, I’m here to tell you that the good news is that God’s love never ends.  In the other, and in me.  

Paul continues in his explanation of what love is by describing what love is not. This list is a list I’m familiar with. Of love that is boastful, envious, rude, irritable or rude. I have seen that love. I have received that love. I have offered that love. Or how about a love that rejoices in someone else’s wrongdoing. I’ve done that one too.

We all have seen, received or offered that love. As humans, sometimes it’s the best we can do.  And while that unfortunate list of traits is inescapable with human love, it is not God’s love.

The good news is that despite my human shortcomings, God’s love does not meet my irritability or rudeness, my boastfulness with the same. Rather, God’s love is eternal, kind, patient.

This is great news! God loves you regardless. Unconditionally. Patiently. Kindly.

So back to Jesus and the unfortunate cliff. If God’s love is so great, why did they want to throw him off the cliff?  I think part of it is that their understanding of God and God’s reign was so constrained by their human vision and human language and human love that they truly believed that as God’s chosen people, they had the key to God’s action and providence. Surely God would love them, heal them, prefer them. As humans, their love of God was human. Boastful. Envious. Irritable. Rejoiced in someone else’s wrongdoing. Jesus gets crosswise because he reminds them that God’s love has always been expansive and not judgmental. And for this, they want to throw him off a cliff. 

There are two parts of God’s love that are really hard for us. So hard that it made them want to throw Jesus off a cliff. This big, judgment-free patient love extends to all. To the extremists, the addicts, the homeless, those who disagree with me, those who thwart you. All. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been quoted as saying, “God loves you, and God’s love is so great, God loves your enemies too”. That’s hard for us when we think we’re doing the right thing, and if we’re doing right, they must be doing wrong. God loves the wrong doers too. Even when it’s someone we dislike, or when it’s ourselves.

And here’s the really hard part. God asks us to do the same. God asks us to love our neighbor. Love, not a romantic feeling, but a way of being. Love your neighbor in a kind and patient way. Bearing all things, enduring all things, hoping all things. Love your neighbor without boasting, envy, rudeness, or irritability. We cannot always succeed at this. But we cannot stop trying.

This weekend, I was privileged to attend a clergy pre-Lenten retreat. Our speaker, Mr. Jack Kennedy invited us into silence and prayer in the Ignatian tradition. One thing he said struck me as helpful, when thinking about God’s love, and Paul’s attempt at describing it. He talked about the difference between a goal and an intention. A goal, he said is something that you strive to do in the future, something you hope or aim to achieve. An intention, on the other hand, is something you do now. It’s how you live each moment.

For me, that's how I hear the invitation to love my neighbor in a patient, kind, nunjudgmental way.  It's not a goal to achieve in the future. It's an intention I need to adopt.  Today, with every interaction and with every person.  It's our interactions at our upcoming Annual Meeting, while driving at work.  It's how you frame every action, every decision, every thought. 

So the Good News is in fact that God’s love bears all things, endures all things, is eternal and blankets the insiders as well as the outsiders. With a love like that, we need to step into the world, with our humble, human, and imperfect intention to love.

Proper 11B - God in a box

Today’s Old Testament reading sounds a little like a sitcom riff.  David says, “God, I’ll build you a house”, and God says, “No you won’t, I’ll build you a house”. At least that’s what it sounds like to our modern ears.

But there are some linguistic nuances here that make this a very important passage both to the Israelites and to us. The word house that’s used in this section of Samuel has several translations. The first use is what David’s talking about.  “God, I’ll build you an abode, a building.  I live in a building, and our understanding of where you are, the arc of the covenant has been in a measly tent.  No, you need a house.”

 God rebuffs this notion.  God says that God has been with the people through all of their travails, “I have been with you wherever you went”.  I will be with you wherever you go.  God is telling David that he doesn’t want a house, and certainly doesn’t need a house.

It’s a little odd that David thinks God wants a house? That God is going to have a front door, a bedroom, a sitting room, a place to make meals?  But it’s human nature, isn’t it, to want to put God in a box, to put God in a box of our making. We want to contain God, to make sure God’s with us, in our box. We humans have been doing that throughout history and throughout the world. Whether it’s the grand cathedrals in Europe, the thousands of pagoda temples in Burma, or church buildings in Oregon. We make grander and nicer boxes for God to reside.

We build houses of worship at best to honor God, and at worst to try to define the container within which the true God is kept. We compete with others based on our God-box. Their God-box is nicer, or larger, or has better whatever.  We try to contain or define God in spaces we understand and we construct.  Maybe it’s our way of grasping the unknowable.  In any case, God tells David that he does not need any kind of structure.  Does not need an honoring building. Will not be contained.  God will be with the people, wherever they are. Period. This was a novel idea for the Israelites, with their notion that God was contained in Ark, which they carried with them everywhere, during their 40 hear trip wandering in the desert, around Jericho, was captured by the Philistines, and its recapture by David was in part what caused David to dance with all his might, that we heard about last week.
Enter the second definition of Hebrew word house that’s used in today’s Old Testament reading.  The other meaning of house is like a dynasty, the group of descendants of a person. Think the Ming Dynasty.  In this sense, house doesn’t mean David’s residence, but rather his descendants.

So let’s go back to the dialogue. David says, I’ll build you a house. God says, no, I’ll build you a house. Here’s what it really means. David says, “I’ll build you a residence, a container, or a spectacular place where we can come worship you” and God says, No, I’ll give you a dynasty and lineage.”

Not only does God not want an abode, as David envisioned, but God is willing to enter David’s messy world of humanity and descendants.  This, plus the comment that God has always been with the Israelite people is God telling David and the Israelites that God is willing to be with us.  Wherever. Whenever.  David’s lineage, his dynasty or the story of his heirs, is a very human, very messy story.  It’s our story.  God is with us in our story.  We understand this further from God sending his son to be with us as a human.  But in David’s time, this was novel indeed.

So although it’s brief and doesn’t sound like much on first hearing, this is an important passage because it attempts to dissuade us of the two notions: God neither 1) wants large monuments or structures, or 2) that God can be contained.  God also tells us that God will be with us, in the human muck of our lives. Willingly.  And always.

Fast forward a few thousand years, and we hear Mark’s stories about Jesus.  Today’s reading takes place after the disciples have been sent out for the first time, and are now returning to their teacher to tell him of their successes, challenges, failures.  They’re telling him about their first days out in the world.

Jesus’ response is tender and one we all need to hear.  The Gospel tells us that the disciples were so busy, they didn’t have time to eat. That sounds familiar to my world sometimes. In response to them telling him about their day, Jesus says, come away and rest.  Just reading that response of Jesus makes me breath a sigh of relief.  Isn’t that a lovely notion?  Come away and rest?

But alas, it was not to be. As they were crossing over the sea by boat to the deserted place to rest, the crowds recognized Jesus, and ran on foot and met the boat on the other side. So their deserted place wasn’t deserted.  And their restful retreat wasn’t restful. Jesus looked with pity on the crowds gathered to meet the boat, which looked like lost sheep without a shepherd. In response, he shepherded.

Hearing this response to the offer to come away and rest, I feel tired for them, or maybe tired for me. They are offered rest, but it doesn’t come.  Instead, they are met with lost sheep and must respond.
After they’re done teaching, they return to the boat. Again, Jesus is recognized and the crowds meet the boat on the other side and “people rush about, bringing the sick to the marketplace”.  Again, no rest. I’m getting tired just thinking about this.


Today’s lectionary reading skips some choice actions of Jesus and the disciples that make the lack of rest even more exhausting. What we miss, in chapter 6, verses 35 to 52 is nothing less than the miracle of the feeding of the 5000.  Feeding 5000 with sufficient resources would be exhausting.  The challenge of living into the miracle of feeding 5000 through faith sounds exhausting and daunting. This choice section is skipped between the two times the wearied disciples are met on shore by needy people.

All of this activity comes after Jesus’ invitation to “come away and rest”.


What are we to make of this thwarted invitation, of the elusive rest?

First, given my visceral reaction to the offer to “come away and rest”, I think we need to offer that rest and retreat to each other.  Come away and rest. It sounds trite, but a simple invitation for a retreat can feel like a drink of clear cool water.  An evening walk.  A moment of sitting before a meal or before bed.  If you see someone who is so busy they don’t have time even to eat, make the invitation and make it real.

Second, I think this story tells us a lot about human need.  Despite Jesus’ understanding that the disciples needed a rest, the human need was too great. They were pressed into service, into teaching and into healing. And in the part we skipped today, into feeding.


Finally, I’d suggest that maybe they had a respite after all.  When I am most stressed and busy, sometimes what I really need is a good bit of service to others. I’ve heard this sentiment from volunteers who read to kids, knit hats for children, or cook meals for Rahab’s Sisters. Service can provide that respite, even though it’s still doing something. Making 500 cups of coffee on a Saturday morning might my feet tired, but through being of service to another person in need, my soul is indeed refreshed.

It’s odd and definitely counter-intuitive to think that respite comes from service.  I think it works that way because of what we learned in the Old Testament reading.  God is present in our humanity. God is at the Mission, God is with the people who are helped by Heifer International.  God is at Rahab’s Sisters, or at the Community Breakfast.  God is here in this place. God is with us everywhere.  And because we are knee-deep in our messy human lives, offering service to others sometimes lets us see God, lets us see the face of Christ in those we serve.


Last week, at the community breakfast, I was talking with a regular guest, Jeff.  He is 58 years old, has long straggly brown hair, hazel eyes, a gentle soul and battles a heroin addiction, which keeps him on the streets. I found myself telling another volunteer that he looked like Jesus. Then it struck me. He looked like Jesus Christ.  He looked like Christ, because God is present in that human messiness. He is the Christ we seek to serve in others.  

God is present in the House of Court.  The House of Barbara.   The House of David.  If you are experiencing the difficulties that happen to all of us who are human, God is there.  God is willingly and constantly there. And although human need is sometimes too great to sit and rest, sometimes respite comes in the service to others. Because God is there too.

It’s a good thing we can’t put God in a box.