Continual Mercy

August in the Pacific Northwest is beautiful. Summer is fully ours, everything is green, the sky is blue, the sun is warm, the blessings of creation are constant and continuous—never ending, reliable, trustworthy. I guess those three terms also describe just about all of my close relationships these days. We are all a bit more dependent on each other than we are accustomed to but there is comfort in the backstop we have in each other—we share love that is never ending, reliable, trustworthy—continuous. We are now in month six of the pandemic that we were told would last a few weeks. Relying on the continuous love of those with whom we are close is the most important comfort these days. And the warm sun, I have to admit, the caress of creation when I wander in my garden, is delightful.

Jacob’s story is continued in today’s reading from Genesis (32:22-31). Jacob gets up at night and takes his whole household and all of their possessions and moves out. In the middle of the night, in the middle of the journey, they cross a stream and Jacob gets into a physical struggle with a stranger. The struggle is intense and the stranger is persistent but so is Jacob who will not give in nor will he let go. Of course, the struggle in the night is something with which we all are familiar, and we know that the stranger with whom we struggle is both God and a manifestation of our own soul. Of course we do not give up—neither do we give up our soul nor do we let go of God—and thus the struggle goes on and on, because neither does God let go. In the story, at daybreak, the struggle ends and Jacob is blessed by God for his faith. Jacob is blessed by God for not yielding his soul and for not letting go of God.

Letting go of God is the only true sin, and as we know, since God is love, that means that the only true sin is letting go of love. In Romans (8:35-39) Paul cries out “I am speaking the truth in Christ.” The only and utter truth in Christ is that Christ is the human manifestation of the love that is God. It is in Christ that we see and feel and hold and comfort and nurture and yes, struggle, not to let go of love. As we learned already, and keep learning over and over, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ—this is the truth Paul cries out to all of us. God is love, and love is continuous.

In Matthew’s Gospel (14:13-21) we have this week the story of the feeding of more than 5,000 on the banks of the sea. Like the story about Jacob this story begins with movement–Jesus withdraws by boat, moving away, to “a deserted place by himself.” But the crowds follow him on foot. When he arrives he finds them gathered on the shore. He has compassion for them—he shows them love, his love heals. The story is familiar to all Christians—it grows late, the crowds are hungry, the disciples tell Jesus they have only five loaves of bread and two fish. Jesus orders the crowds to sit down—to be still so that they might know that they are in the presence of the love that is God. Jesus blesses the food with his love, gives thanks to God, and in a eucharistic action breaks the bread and gives it to the disciples who give it to the crowds. The bread and fish are abundant, every person in the crowd is fed and there is more left over. Abundance is the yield of compassion. Love is continuous.

The collect in the Book of Common Prayer for today begins “Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church.” Continual mercy, a crucial description of the love we all are learning more and more each day to share. We are living in what the Book of Common Prayer elsewhere calls a “time of trial.” We really are. The love we all are sharing, more and more each day—never ending, reliable, trustworthy–this is God’s continual mercy, given to us in abundance now when we all need compassion more than ever. Mercy is that outpouring of love that soothes and heals all things.

LGBT people, whose families are more likely composed from love than from genetics, are more separated now, and therefore we are more reliant on each other for continual mercy. And God blesses us, especially in the all night struggles, with an abundance of love when, like Jacob, we not only do not give up but we hang on tenaciously to love.

 

Proper 13 Year A 2020 RCL  (Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 17:1-7, 16; Romans 9: 1-5; Matthew 14:13-21)

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

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)