Luke 7:11-17
May the Words of my
mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight oh God our
strength and our redeemer.
I feel that I would be
remiss if I didn’t, before anything else, mention the events of yesterday. Steve and I in the company of 9 others in
this diocese, and many more around the country, were blessed with the privilege
of devoting our lives to the service of God and to the Church. The journey leading to the events of
yesterday has been long and challenging, in so many ways, and I want to thank
you all for the support and Love that this church has offered us, and continues
to offer us as we take our ministry into the world.
“God Loves us just as
we are.” This is a statement that I hear
people say quite a bit, it is meant to bring comfort and security in times of
pain and doubt, and it is a true statement, God does Love us just as we are. But I must admit that it is a statement that
has always bothered me, I think, because it stops short of saying something
truly substantive about God’s action in our lives. Again I want to emphasize that the sentiment
is not wrong, but As a statement of God’s Love, it is incomplete.
So what does it mean
when we say that God Loves us? On one hand, Divine Love defies definition, to
try and define what God’s Love is like would be to try and define the
unknowable, incomprehensible essence of God.
Still, as Christians we
believe that in Christ we encounter, and are able to comprehend, the true and
living God, and by that God’s Love for us.
And today’s Gospel passage tells us something about what God’s Love
actually looks like.
In today’s Gospel
reading we are able to see what it means when God, in Christ, meets people
where they are. The widow of Nain, her
dead son, even the gathered crowd, all of their lives are surprised, and
brought up short by their encounter with Christ.
When Christ meets this
woman at the city gates, the scripture says that he has compassion for her,
this compassion is not some passive feeling that Christ has inside, it is an
active reaction to the suffering he sees in front of him. And he acts, he does not pass by on the other
side of the road, Christ meets this widow and her son where they are, in their
darkest moments, in the midst of their pain, their despair, in the midst of
death, Christ reaches out and with a mere touch brings the entire procession to
a halt. He restores to the widow the son
which she thought she had lost.
There is a freedom to
this miracle; it does not require faith, or even understanding on the part of
the widow or the crowd. None of the people in this story went looking for
Christ’s help; none of them thought that their lives were going to be
completely changed that day as they went to bury the poor widow’s son.
Christ does not give
the widow back her living son and then burden them with loads of expectations,
no, out of Love and compassion Christ gives freely to those he sees in need,
regardless of their faith.
In many ways this story
is a microcosm of the entirety of God’s work through Christ in the world. We are not different from this funeral
procession. Just as Christ met this
crowd as they walk towards the grave, so too Christ meets all of humanity in
the midst of its descent into darkness, breaking the hold that death has over
us, restoring our hope and illuminating the glory and wonder of God in our
midst. We are all the widow in need of
hope and compassion, the son in need of new life, and the crowd in need of good
news. And in all of this, Christ does
indeed Love us the way we are, but the amazing thing about that Love is it does
not leave us unchanged.
Christ Loves us - humanity
- without any assurance that his Love will be returned, and it is a Love that
will not be removed no matter how many times we may turn away from it or reject
it.
Still, this Love that
is freely given and never removed is a Love that calls us as well. It calls to something deep within us, covered
over, perhaps even forgotten, but always there.
You see, through the incarnation God reveals to us both the perfect
image of God and the perfect fulfillment of humanity, which itself bears upon
it God’s image.
There is a Russian Theologian
named Vladimir Lossky, who wrote a book called The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, and if you want to
better understand the breadth of theological thinking that has influenced the
Anglican tradition, this book may be a good place to start. In this book the imago dei is presented as a
central component of theology. According
to Lossky the very nature of humanity is the image of God. Through sin this image has been mutilated,
cut up and misrepresented, but it is always there, part of all of us – all of
us together.
Love, Divine Love,
calls to itself within us, urging us to respond by actively following
Christ. The image of God in us is that
very Love that is given freely, Love that expects nothing, but changes
everything.
God Loves us as we are,
a true enough statement, this is certain, but it cannot end there, because the Love
of God does not leave us where we were found, Divine Love urges us out of the
rut of life, the spiraling downward with our vision on things of this world:
reputation, wealth, power. God’s Love finds us and will change us, if we let
it. When we choose to respond to Divine Love
we allow the image of God within us to be restored and we are better able to
see that image in others, because that image does not belong to us as
individuals, but to all of us as humanity. According to the incomparable
Eastern theologian and mystic Maximus the Confessor, “Love gathers together
what has been separated, binding human beings to god and to one another.”
God does indeed Love us
as we are, because we are, in our very essence made in God’s image, and are in
our true nature truly lovable. God sees this
Love in us; we need only see it in ourselves, and each other.
Amen.
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