Father Lindsey used to give me encouragement and feedback on my sermons. Beyond the usual complaint that I was too quiet his advice to me was “tell them at the beginning where you are going to end up”. So…this is where I want to end up:
You are loved immeasurably. In whatever prison binds your heart, amidst the poverty of your soul, in the blindness of your actions, you are loved with a love that passes understanding. You also hold the Christ of Love in your heart. Your hands, your words – they can be love to the world. You are loved and therefore you can and must love.
Today’s Gospel is fascinating and confusing. The story really begins with what we read last week. Jesus returned to his home town and is teaching in the synagogue. He reads from the scroll of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” Jesus tells the crowd that he is the one to fulfill these words.
At first the people seem very impressed. They “speak well of him” and wonder that such words can come from a carpenter’s son. But then the whole thing goes sour. The Gospel writer doesn’t give us any details about the conversation and what led Jesus to his testy-seeming reply that “a prophet is not accepted in his own country”. Did the people begin to count the cost of the message he was giving? Because being loved as a person in poverty, oppressed by a Roman regime, sounds exciting and good. But perhaps they began to realize the discomfort that will come upon those in the synagogue if Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor to the poor in their own midst. Suddenly a synagogue where only the clean, healthy and those in good standing are allowed might be filled with the stench of beggars, the hands of thieves and the jabbering of the possessed. Worship would look and feel much different if the place must be shared with such people. Old Amos the begger, oy! He stinks. I sure hope Jesus doesn’t mean he can come in the synagogue too! And what about that Zeke? I gave him a coin for alms yesterday and he did not even say thank you. How ungrateful! Must I sit by him to worship?
Then Jesus is clear that not only will this message be proclaimed to the marginalized of the Jewish people, but is a message for Gentiles as well. The thought of their community expanding to include the foreigner is too much.
We cannot know if either or both of these reasons caused the crowd’s response, but it seems that either way their response, violent and angry as it is, is related to fear of change. Will their synagogue look different? Will their entire faith look different? As much as I would like to think that we are vastly different from this group of people, I have to admit that we struggle with the same questions. We are sometimes frightened of, angry at, resistant of those who threaten to bring change. We struggle with the humility to hear the voice of others.
It is so very hard to love – to really love. And before we can even begin to try we need to hear the first part of this Gospel again.
The part where the love, freedom and mercy of Christ are offered to us. For we are the poor, the imprisoned, the blind. Our personal prisons may not have metal bars but addiction, self doubt, fear, anger these all bind us up, tempt us to lock pieces of our hearts away. Daily we stumble in blindness with an unkind word here, an over reaction there. We are each desperately in need of one who comes and speaks love to our most hidden and hurting places and proclaims liberty and the time of the Lord’s favor!
The Epistle reading today is a call to a radical kind of love. A love that imitates the love we receive. Take a moment to be steeped in that love. (These phrases taken from the Message) Love never gives up on you, doesn’t keep track of your mistakes, doesn’t like to see you desperate and groveling for mercy. Love puts up with everything, knows you for the very best that you are, and goes on and on to the end. No prison can hold it out, no poor depravity of spirit can chase it away and no blindness keep it from finding you.
You are loved, deeply loved. And the Christ of Love dwells in your heart and calls you too to love.
This Corinthians passage read today follows a list of different gifts that contribute to the community and the necessity of all parts of the body. The previous passage ends “but eagerly desire the greater gifts and I will show still the most excellent way”. The most excellent way, the gift that is necessary from all of us and necessary for any of the other gifts to have meaning – the only gift that is eternal and does not end – love.
This is not a warm fuzzy description of Love as an enjoyable feeling. It is a down in the dirt, self sacrificing, action oriented prescription that would be a challenge to share with those with whom we also have warm fuzzy kinds of feelings, let alone with those who we do not know or like.
The first place we practice this love outside of our families is in this community.
The community of the body of Christ is a human and messy place. When we commit to being part of the community and pouring out our love on these people and this place we are not signing on for an easy task! We are a varied group of people who come from different experiences, have different hopes, value parts of church life in varied ways. We hold in common the truth that we are loved by a generous and merciful God and are called to live that love out in the midst of this community and in the world. What does it mean to love this community? What would it look like if we could approach the person most different from us in this place with the actions the Epistle describes – to keep no track of wrongs, to remain humble, to always look for the best, to never give up?
What does this love look like as we interact with the world? Daily we are fighting a cultural message that tells us giving is a good thing, but only when the recipient acts in certain, prescribed and “worthy” ways. He must be gracious, be working to better himself, she should not ask repeatedly but be content with one gift. We must resist a cultural attitude that suggests to us that all of the trouble of the poor is brought about because of their own personal failings. An attitude that invites us to overlook systemic issues that contribute to people’s plights, to view people as hopeless and to see those in need as different from ourselves and as having little to offer to our life and community. In what ways does love oppose those messages?
There is a growing discourse that fends off this prescribed way of being, that insists that we give only to the worthy – both in religious and non-religious circles. Love has won out in some ways. But the act of giving and loving is often not the romantic, fulfilling experience people hope it will be. We’ve experienced that here. Giving comes with the smell of alcohol, urine and days of dirt. It isn’t always greeted with a warm handshake and thanks. In recent memory we experienced violence and fear. It means disruption to our days and sometimes discomfort and distraction in our sacred space. And yet love…
Brigid is one who had quite the grasp on the message of love. The list of her miracles is extensive and is overflowing with examples of her extravagant generosity. She goes to milk the cows and make cheese. But as she works many who are in need walk by and she gives each of them some of the cream. When her time for work is over she looks at her supplies and sees that she has given away all that she has gathered and that she has nothing left for her family. She prays and as much cream as she has given away is returned to her. Another time, in trouble for her already extravagant giving, she is being sold to a man in the town. As she waits outside a poor man walks by and having nothing of her own to give she gives away her father’s jeweled sword. At her abbey she encounters a poor man whose clothes are threadbare and wishes not to send him into the cold without warm clothing. Having nothing of her own that will fit him she grabs the beautiful new vestments of the visiting bishop and hands them to the man. Luckily her prayers return a new set just before the bishop comes looking for them! If she had shoes on her feet or a cloak on her shoulders they would be shed at the first sight of someone who had need of them.
But my favorite of the Brigid “giving” stories is when she encounters a crotchety old man who comes to her abbey. He is grumpy and demanding. “You have plenty and I have nothing! Give me food - no not the meager bread, I want a good portion of that meat! You call that a good portion – cheapskate! Is that the softest blanket you have?” Others are offended by his rudeness and think he should be sent on his way with nothing. But Brigid loads him down with generous portions of goods, treats him with kindness and then sends him back into the world.
What went through Brigid’s head each time she gave away the stuff of the world around her to those who were poor? Did she worry where her next meal would come from if she gave away her bread? Did she fret that she would be chastised by her father or bishop or community for sharing their belongings? If she was afflicted at all by fear she found a way to act despite it. The sheer list of miracles associated with her giving things away to the poor paint a picture of a person to whom the love of the poor dominated her being. But it would be a mistake to believe that the choices Brigid made were easy – part of her sainthood and not choices that we too could make. Just like Brigid we are called to this very active, sacrificing kind of love. We may not succeed at chasing away fear as often as she did, but we are compelled to try.
Brigid’s life, too, is caught up in the community she created, a community that was unique, that held a place for women and men, for rich and for poor. I imagine that there was conflict, fear and discouragement in that community as much as in our own community of varied voices. But that is not what her community is remembered for. It is remembered as a place of welcome to the stranger and to the poor. What will we be remembered for? In what ways will love overcome our fear and shine forth to this small corner of the world?
This then is where I end, as I said:
You are loved immeasurably. In whatever prison binds your heart, amidst the poverty of your soul, in the blindness of your actions you are loved with a love that passes understanding. You also hold the Christ of Love in your heart. Your hands, your words – they can be love to the world. You are loved and therefore you can and must love.
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