In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost. Amen. When I was growing up in the First Assemblies of God church in Choutea Oklahoma, I desperately wanted to be a good Christian. So I read the Bible, daily and attentively. The older I got, the more I concentrated on the Gospels, memorizing long passages like the Sermon on the Mount. I figured that if I did my best to follow the direct teachings of Jesus, I couldn’t go wrong. I noticed that all three of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) contain a passage called “The Great Commandment.” It’s recited at the beginning of almost every Mass here at St. Mary’s: “Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” The remaining Gospel, John, contains a version called The New Commandment: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.” Today’s Epistle reading from First John can be read as a commentary on the Great Commandment and New Commandment. Even more, it can be read as a guide to love as the central Christian practice. As a teenager I realized that while other parts of the Bible, even the Gospels, might sometimes be difficult or obscure, THIS was a teaching that was simple and clear. It’s a standard by which all the rest of Scripture can be interpreted. St. Augustine said, “Whoever thinks he understands the divine Scriptures in a way that does not build the love of God and love of neighbor does not understand it at all.” In today’s reading, the First Epistle of John says, “Beloved, let us love one another.” In last week’s sermon, Fr. Sean told the story of heroic love shown by St. Maximillian Kolbe, who exchanged his life for that of a fellow inmate in Auschwitz. Fr. Sean also talked about the love we can show in small ways in our everyday lives. This simple, smaller way, this “little way” of expressing love and living out our Christian calling was advocated by St. Therese of Lisieux, a patron saint of St. Mary’s whose relic is on the altar behind me. She wrote that something as simple as “a word or a kindly smile, will often suffice to gladden a wounded and sorrowful heart.” This is so simple, yet, as you’ve probaby experienced, so very difficult. Many of you know that I’m a barista at the Nelson Atkins Museum. Before I open the coffee shop, I like to duck into the back room, cross myself, say an Our Father, a Hail Mary, a Glory Be, and then pray, “Oh my Jesus, please help me to love you more and more every day. And please help me to show your love to everyone I meet.” Then I open the shop, and, during the course of the day, I proceed to fail spectacularly. Invariably, I will be annoyed by someone, I will be irritated by someone else, someone will walk up to the counter five minutes before closing and order four hot chocolates, a 16 ounce caramel chai, and a 12 ounce half caf vanilla lavender, oat AND almond milk latte, extremely hot. “You know,” they’ll say, “hot enough to scald my tongue.” And while I may remain professional, I’m not sure that in that moment I’m a shining example of the love of God. Trying to live up to this ideal, and failing, on a daily basis, might be discouraging, but we are enabled to keep trying, day after day after day, not by the success of our efforts. Our ability to practice love comes from the fact that God loves us. The Epistle says, “We love, because he first loved us.” This passage is full of images of the magnitude of God’s love. “So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” God’s love is big enough that we can live in it. We can make it our dwelling. We can rest in it. The passage makes clear that love isn’t just “of God”, an attribute that proceeds from God. God IS love. Love is the Godhead’s very being and essence. In classical theism we say that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Love is omniscient. It know everything...about you. Love is omnipresent. It is everywhere. It is vast enough to live in because there is nowhere else we can live. Love is omnipotent. No power in the universe is stronger than its power. These sound like abstract ideas, but God’s love was shown to us, in the flesh, in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus. The Epistle says, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be an expiation for our sins.” Jesus poured forth his love for all humanity on the Cross. His heart was wounded by the centurion’s spear, providing all humanity a certain shelter. This image of dwelling in Christ’s wounded heart has been widely used in Christianity since at least the medieval period. “Establish your dwelling in the amiable Heart of Jesus,” one saint wrote, “and you will find unalterable peace and strength to carry out your good desires And just as Jesus offered himself entirely to us on the Cross as an expression of his infinite love, offering his own heart as a dwelling place, he offers himself to us in the Eucharist at every Mass. St. Peter Eymard declared, “The Eucharist is the supreme proof of the love of Jesus.” In it, Jesus comes to us in a form that will allow him to physically and literally dwell in us. “He who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” We make this a reality at every Mass. Jesus offers his wounded heart to us in the Eucharist, in the bread and wine. We offer him our wounded hearts, our sorrowful, our confused and troubled and angry and lonely hearts. We offer “ourselves, our souls and bodies.” And in this mutual offering, we , in the words of Eucharistic Prayer One, are “made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.” The image of us dwelling in God and God dwelling in us is found throughout the Gospel and Epistles of John. It’s in both of today's Johannine readings. When we dwell in God’s love, and God’s love dwells in us, we are free to attempt to offer that love to others, to succeed AND to fail, and over and over and at the last, to return to God’s infinite love for us. Of this, St. Therese wrote, “[It makes] me think of a little child that is learning to stand but does not yet know how to walk. In his desire to reach the top of the stairs to find his mother, he lifts his little foot to climb the first step. It is all in vain, and at each renewed effort he falls. Well, be like that little child. Always keep lifting your foot to climb the ladder of love, and do not imagine that you can mount even the first step. All God asks of you is good will. From the top of the ladder He looks lovingly upon you, and soon, touched by your fruitless efforts, He will Himself come down, and, taking you in His Arms, will carry you to His Kingdom never again to leave Him.” Leave a Reply. |
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To the Glory of God and in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary
St. Mary's is a parish of the Diocese of West Missouri, The Episcopal Church, and the Anglican Communion.
Address1307 Holmes Street
Kansas City, Missouri 64106 |
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