Sunday, Feburary 28, 2010
Second Sunday of Lent - “Holding on and letting go”
Texts: Psalm 27 and Luke 13:31-36
God is love.
The may be one of the most frequently
spoken, sung, and prayed claims about God.
God is love.
With all of the expressions of church in the world,
and the many different confessions of faith,
it may be one of the few theological
statements that most believers can give assent to.
God is love.
Contemporary theologian, Geddes MacGregor once noted:
“One of the most breathtaking affirmations
in the Bible is that God is love.”
Macgregor quickly adds, however, that
“it is also the most misleading thing we say about God.”
It is misleading if we leave such a statement unexamined,
and risk letting it become a sort of vague, warm and fuzzy
affirmation about God - a God of all things bright and beautiful,
a God of all things lively and colorful,
a God of Xs and Os at the bottom of letters,
and a God of healing, birthing and comforting things.
The God who is Love may indeed be all of this,
but as we know from our limited human experience
love is far more deep and wide than these comforting things;
therefore, we might presume that God
is far more deep and wide than this.
I think this short story from Luke’s gospel,
Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem,
invites us into such an expanded understanding
of the God who is Love.
When Jesus speaks his lament over Jerusalem
it almost sounds like he is quoting a psalm or poem:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets
and stones those that are sent to it.
How often have I desired to gather your children together
as a hen gathers her brood under her wings . . .
It is an image of both tenderness and fierce protection.
Jesus has already called Herod a fox.
So, here he extends the metaphor,
as if to say, “The fox may be in the coop,
but God seeks to be the mother hen who
offers protection for the small chicks.”
Jesus is speaks with a prophet’s voice.
He isn’t just speaking about the few times
he has been to Jerusalem, but he is speaking
from a much broader perspective
that encompasses centuries,
that encompasses the timelessness
of God’s own desire for the people.
God is love.
God desires all that gives us life,
and desires our response, our gathering in love.
Then comes the next phrase of the lament:
. . . but you were not willing.
It is a simple statement that points to
a very profound reality in our human existence:
we are free.
You have a free will, and with it you can make choices
about what you will do,
where you will go,
what you will believe,
whether or not you will choose to love.
God is love also means that God relinquishes control,
and does not pull strings to force
us to recognize, or believe, or return God’s own love for us.
This freedom is one of the greatest gifts we are given.
And sometimes, in our great freedom,
we are not willing to receive, or acknowledge,
or share in the love of God.
And this is the very thing that Jesus laments,
and that he later weeps over as he stands on a hill
looking over the city of Jerusalem,
the place of his own death.
And then comes the final and maybe
most difficult statement of Jesus’ lament:
See, your house is left to you.
What does this mean?
Does it mean that God turning God’s back?
Is the message to Jews of Jerusalem,
“Well, you’ve made your bed
and now you’ve got to sleep in it”?
This has often been interpreted
as a statement of God’s judgment.
But I wonder if an alternative reading is possible.
See, your house is left to you . . .
Perhaps this is an expression of deep anguish.
Perhaps these words represent another great and
painful letting go of God - not abandonment,
but a letting us be in our freedom.
Love wouldn’t be love if it were forced.
God still remains, and God still loves, God still desires.
Have you ever loved someone,
and wished the best for them with all of your heart,
and honored their freedom to make their own choices,
and then felt pain and and anguish
when that person made choices
that were hurtful to themselves, or to others, or to you?
And did you still love them?
This is the love of the parent
who releases a child into the world, as all parents must.
Then, as that parent, you feel anguish when your child
makes choices that you cannot understand or condone,
choices that seem harmful and damaging.
Yet, you still remain in love.
This is the love of the friend who companions
someone through the darkness of an addiction.
As that friend, you tell your loved one
how much you love him,
how much you desire his freedom
from all that is binding him and harming him.
In the end you must release your friend
to make the choice for healing on his own.
And even if he keeps diving toward rock-bottom,
you still remain in love.
There is suffering inherent in love.
Not the suffering that comes when our
own feelings get hurt or expectations get thwarted -
that is the sort of suffering love asks us to let go of.
The suffering of love is the suffering
that comes when we experience life as shared,
when we know our life to be inextricably linked
together with the lives of others -
and with Life in its fullness -
and when we find that the joy of our beloved is our joy
and the sorrow of our beloved is our sorrow.
Though it exists in such deep connection and union,
love also requires of us such freedom.
Loveasks us to surrender and let go -
of control, of expectations, of judgments.
It asks us to seek the life and well-being
of the other without any assurance
that our love will be returned.
This is what makes love
so free and so powerful,
so able to heal and redeem.
God is Love.
There a depth of meaning in this claim
that we will never fully plumb.
But we can give thanks
for a God who loves us enough
to let us go,
to set us free
so that we might freely choose a life of love.
And when we choose a different path,
God loves enough
to feel sorrow, to know our pain,
to remain,
and to redeem.
Blessed is the One
who comes in the name of Love,
and shows us Love's Way.
AMEN
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