Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time 'A'

Saturday June 11, 2005

Love As You Are Loved

“Go in peace to love and serve the Lord… ” But don’t go yet!

Life is a series of movements, some more dynamic than others. The birth of a child is a very dramatic moment but it is the culmination of a movement that began with an act of intimacy—a miraculous example of divine intervention through the experience of human love.

Most of life’s movements are subtle. The movement of the universe reflected in the passing of time from sunrise to sunset and from one season to another is a safe metaphor for the growth of human relationships, indeed, the movement of human love.

God is movement—dynamic, life giving, all embracing and infinite.

The sacred scriptures provide a lens through which we at the beginning of the second millennium of Christianity continue to attempt to get a handle on our understanding of the imminence and the immediacy of God’s movement in our lives.

Beginning with the story of creation, the Old Testament is filled with examples of God’s movement toward the universe and ultimately toward humanity in the creation of man and woman. It’s worth reading over again as if for the first time not as a scientific study but as the score of a musical rendition or simply as an epic poem filled with rich metaphorical imagery. God’s mysterious wisdom does not belie scientific truth – it is beyond it.

The Book of Exodus is the solemn recollections of inspired storytellers about God’s dramatic intervention into the life of the Israelites that ended their captivity in Egypt. For the Jews, it’s a watershed document encapsulating their ancestral call and their ultimate destiny.

They considered themselves chosen not because they were better or more worthy than other nations but because of they were a broken people who were not abandoned by God. The Book of Exodus was the Jewish version of Amazing Grace – God reaching out to save them.

They viewed the crossing of the Red Sea as the saving movement of God toward them, a kind of baptism, the proto-type of Christian baptism. They viewed God’s sustenance in the desert as the fulfillment in part of the promise to Abraham that God would make of them a holy nation not for their own sake but for the sake of all the nations. They would be viewed as a people in whom others might seek and find refuge.

In his letter to the Romans, the Pauline version of John 3:16, Saint Paul dramatizes God’s movement of love reminding the early Christians at Rome and us that this same God of Moses “proved his love for us that while we were still sinners [broken], God sent Jesus to save us and to reconcile us to God.”

In Christ, we were made right with God and empowered to be righteous with one another. It’s a good word—”righteous”—because it means that all our relationships have been ordered to truth, justice and love.

It was God’s initiative, not ours; it was God’s love, not our merits which ‘earned’ mercy and unleashed generative love in such a fashion that even human love could become a conduit of divine love.

However, it is the Gospel of Matthew that epitomizes in Jesus as shepherd, the generative nature of God’s movement toward humanity through this holy one we call ‘the Christ.’

Jesus’ life as described by all the Gospel writers is a movement from heaven to earth, from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, a movement from death to life – to eternal life. Jesus engaged his disciples in a dynamic relationship that transformed them.

It was a slow and gradual transformation, one that even the disciples – disparate group, to be sure—were not fully aware of until Pentecost; a movement which ultimately empowered them to go forth and shepherd others as they had been shepherded by Jesus Christ.

“As you go, proclaim the good news,
‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’
Cure the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse the lepers, cast out demons,
You received without payment,
now give without payment.”

It’s a pretty powerful statement about how we are to be part of this movement as individuals and surely as a Church – not because we are better than others but because ‘we were lost but now are saved.’

The greatest indicator or manifestation of God’s movement is the gift of compassion. It’s a good word. Rooted in the Latin word, passio, i.e., passage or walk and cum, i.e., with. Compassion is the ability to accompany my neighbor with passion and enthusiasm, from the Greek words en (in) and Theos (God).

In the words of the contemporary hymn, “We are companions on a journey”—companions not only in the breaking of bread with one another at this table but also in the breaking of the bread of our lives together at the table of humanity.

I came upon these quotes last week in Robert Sloan Coffin’s most recent book entitled, “Credo,” which I recommend highly for your spiritual reading:

“Of God’s love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; and secondly, God’s love doesn’t seek value, it creates value. It is not because we have value that we are love, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement.”

And this one:

“We don’t have to be ‘successful,’ only valuable. We don’t have to make money, only a difference, and particularly in the lives society counts least and puts last.”

And finally:

“I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.”

And that’s how it is with the movement of God. Not only do we get to know God, ultimately we become like God.

Now, “Go in peace to love and server the Lord in one another!” but wait until after the ‘Entrée’ of this important banquet.

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