The Revelation of Perpetual Love

The collect for today begins with the petition: “O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name.” In other words, we pray that God will create us continually as people who have perpetual love. Various dictionaries have various definitions, but in general “perpetual” means something along the lines of “ceaseless,” “everlasting,” and “continuous,” and I would suggest the term means all of these things mixed up together. So what would be “perpetual love?” It would be love that is outpouring from us, it would be outpouring love that is ceaseless and ongoing and everlasting. If we understand that love is not just a warm feeling, but rather is the giving and doing of respect and value, the soulful embrace that heals—if we understand this then we see that perpetual love is the healing action of God’s creation.

Where do we see perpetual love at this moment in time?

We see perpetual love in the now daily protests in cities and towns and villages and households all over the world. In this ongoing ceaseless outpouring of respect and demand for justice by the everlasting soulful embrace intended to heal humanity from the sins of exclusion that destroy lives we see the action of perpetual love. We see God’s children embracing God’s children and insisting by their perpetual love on the valuing of all life, of all humanity.

We see perpetual love in the now constant care we give to each other as we hunker down to make it through this pandemic, a whirlwind of death that is just a few droplets away. We see perpetual love in our citizens masked to prevent our infection, in our shopping mates standing apart six feet or better to prevent our infection, in these and thousands of other ways we see the perpetual love that is the soulful embrace that can heal even in this time of trial.

God has, indeed, made us all to have perpetual love.

In Genesis 21(8-21) we discover God hearing the voices of all of God’s children wherever they are. We see God’s embrace in the voice of the angel bringing the message “do not fear.” We learn (as indeed, we already know from our own lives) that God hears our voices just where we are, in all situations, that God opens our eyes when we are not afraid, and that God brings salvation to those who have perpetual love for God and for God’s children and God’s creation.

In Romans 6(1b-11) we are reminded that we are like infants, perpetually in the love that brings the newness of life we experience if we are together with Christ. We learn that we are grown together with Christ, like intertwined limbs we live in the soulful embrace of healing. God hears our cries where we are. Our constantly renewed life is without sin, which means that our new life is full with connection. It is the absence of disconnection that makes us continuously newborn and it is in this perpetual love that comes from the embrace of Christ that we discover the promise of the healing that is being “alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

In Matthew’s Gospel (10: 29-31) we are reminded that God has counted all the hairs on our heads, metaphorically or parabolically, every child of God is valued and respected and loved by God and is to be valued and respected and loved by all of God’s children. This is the meaning of perpetual love, that we must bring justice to all of God’s children by living with the perpetual love, the soulful embrace of healing, that God has given to each of us in our creation in God’s own image.

Newness of life, especially the perpetual newness of life that is the gift of salvation—this newness of life comes from total perpetual love. This is what Jesus means when he says (Matthew 10: 39)” “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Perpetual love requires rebirth into a new life that is perpetually apart from disconnection. Perpetual love requires life that is full in vulnerability, full in trust, full in the outpouring of emotion and full in the soulful embrace of healing.

Perpetual love is the revelation of God’s work in the world on this day.

  

Proper 7 Year A 2020 RCL (Genesis 21:8-21; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17 Inclina, Domine; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10: 24-39)

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.