Let Anyone with Ears Listen!

Weekly pandemic rant: My Dutch friends are going out to dinner. My Canadian friends are going out to bars for drinks. In The Netherlands and Canada, new cases of COVID-19 are in the hundreds per day. In the US they are in the tens of thousands. In sane parts of the world contact tracing and masks have eliminated the death threat. In the US it is still too dangerous for me to see my buddies let alone hug them.

Whose idea was this?

In seminary I became enamored of the writings of St. Paul, who is vastly misunderstood. Reading today’s translations of letters (epistles) that were intended to be read out loud to a congregation and thus were written in an oral style (like poetry, full of elements that help listeners grasp and remember the content) is tricky all by itself. Pile that on top of the cultural differences across millenia and it makes the texts into a bit of a puzzle sometimes. But not today. In today’s reading (Romans 8:12-25) Paul writes/says: “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.”

I hope so.

My heart hopes so.

Glory about to be revealed.

Well, that would be love.

We know love in our hearts but we often are weak at giving love outward. It is actually hard work to remind ourselves to set self aside and let our love flow outward. It is only when the love flowing from our hearts builds in community that we can achieve the glory Paul refers to, the revelation of the meaning of the “children of God.” This phrase “children of God” is a metaphor, not as we imagine for naiveté or innocence but rather for the condition of pure love that children possess. God wants us to recover that condition, to live lives in love with life and with God and with each other.

But God’s compassion is not only powerful but also omniscient. Our weaknesses are known and loved and forgiven so long as we keep trying to love. The psalmist reminds us (139) that God searches us out and knows our hearts, even our restless thoughts.  It’s a good thing!

In the story of Jacob’s ladder from Genesis (28:10-19a) we encounter an example of the glory of love, which comes as a surprise for Jacob, who stumbles upon it. “Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place …. ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’” Jacob has not before seen the power of the flow of love, but when he manages to shift his awareness into love’s dimension he is utterly transformed by the vision.

It seems we experience awakening from the sleep of self to find we have arrived in the realm of love, surrounded by the field of love, and in that awesome love we see the messengers of God’s love. Signs that are always all around us become manifest and we understand.

The Gospel parable from Matthew 13 is that of the good seed, or, we could say, of the good seed sown among the weeds. The essence of the story is not that some seed is good or that weeds exist, but rather that the good seed is protected by the loving action of God’s creation so that even when it is sown among the weeds it still can thrive and produce manifest love.

God’s love is like the pollen, constantly falling and constantly sowing the earth where it lands. Some of it falls in good places; some of it blows away; some of it falls among weeds. In the end it is the existence of love that matters; the love-pollen sows more love and not even the weeds (the absence of love) can push it out. Love triumphs.

So it is that our job is to find the dimension of love and do our best to live there, to dwell in love, to walk in love, to produce enough love to slow a pandemic, even among the weeds.

A frequent theme of this blog is the idea that we as lgbtq people are born as children of God’s love. We take our identity as created in God’s image from the ways in which we love and from the ways in which we live out our loves. We struggle at once for equality and equilibrium as “just folks” and at the same time for recognition and pride in the love we hold and share and give. We are living in a critical moment then, because in the pandemic we are certainly brought into equilibrium with everyone. But we have the love in our hearts to foil the weeds, to heal creation.

Jesus says: “Let anyone with ears listen!” He means: “Give love.”

 

Proper 11 Year A RCL 2020 (Genesis 28:10-19a; Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23; Romans 8: 12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)