We are living in a very strange time; one might even say a paradoxical time. As I seem to say over and over, there is the constant cognitive dissonance of this beautiful early summer, on the one hand, and the horrific threat of Covid-19, on the other. There is the cognitive dissonance of ongoing demonstrations by millions for equality, on the one hand, and other millions clogging bars and beaches despite the need to distance to avoid the virus, on the other; and the churning of these two dissonant vortices is itself a source of cognitive dissonance. Then, too, there is the threat to social liberty—after decades of work at gaining equality for gay and lesbian people we find that everything we have worked for is threatened, not alone by the usual oppressive forces, but also by the threat of the virus, which requires a different expression of individual liberty to embrace life but at the same time leads to social requirements like stay-at-home orders that are critical to preserve life itself.
But here we are.
I love with all my heart every day, or at least I try.
Do you?
I hope so.
It is the only way. We must all love, meaning we must all give love. Which means we must all feel love. We must all embrace God’s love, feel it in our hearts, and give it to each other with acts of justice and respect and grace and, of course, affection.
Today’s scripture all points to the conclusion—the eternal revelation—that God’s love, which is eternal, is eternally given to us through the small things that make up everyday life. In Genesis (24) we have the end of the saga of Abraham and Sarah, which in turn is the beginning of the saga of Isaac and Rebekah. It is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham in acts that are turning points in human life. God’s love is complete, God’s love is eternally given, and God’s love is the miraculous action of a woman bearing a child, a child growing into adulthood, a woman with a water jar, a blessing, a camel mounted and ridden, a marriage—miracles of everyday things.
Paul (Romans 7) struggles with the everyday paradox of disconnection—sin—aligned with connection—faith. The eternal battle we all take up in every waking moment between the chatter in our heads that occupies our feelings and prevents us from experiencing the love that is all around us, and the very expression of God’s eternal and eternally promised love that is the tonic that fills the soul like water filling a tide pool when we allow ourselves to feel love. Grace again.
Jesus (Matthew 11) interprets the paradoxical clutter of social forces experiencing that same battle over love. Jesus recites a hymn of thanksgiving that god’s promise of eternal love is complete in the epiphany of Christ, he reminds us that love is best embraced by those closest to God’s gracious will, the “infants” of God’s kingdom. We are (as we learned last week too) the “infants” of the kingdom when we quell the noisy paradox and embrace God’s love fully and purely. It is in this embrace of love that we receive the “rest” Jesus offers to all of us who “are carrying heavy burdens.” He tells us to take his yoke—the mantle of love—and from it to learn to be gentle, humble, gracious, affectionate and just.
In other words, take on the yoke of love and you will find rest. The rest Jesus points us toward is the grace of God, the salvation of creation, which is always and only and eternally the embrace of love. Love is always the answer.
For we who are God’s lgbt disciples, for whom our very identity is the expression of love, the job of life is to embrace the love that is within and all around us, to share it with each other, and in so doing to reveal the march of the miracles of love in everyday life. Life each day is a miracle of God’s love.
Proper 9 Year A RCL 2020 (Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Psalm 45: 11-18; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30)
©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 