a vowed life

Shalom Mennonite Church

Sunday, June 16, 2013 – I Bind My Heart

Text: Colossians 3:1-17

Eric Massanari

“a vowed life”

[meditation preceded by singing WB#411 I bind my heart this tide]

I bind my heart...to the Christ who died for me.

I bind my soul...to the neighbor far away and stranger near at hand.

I bind my heart...to the God, the Lord of all, and the poor one's friend.

I bind myself...to peace.

“I bind my heart...my soul...my being...”

This is the vocabulary of vows.

I've been thinking about vows recently,

vows and those long-term commitments

that indelibly shape and transform our lives.

These thoughts have been sparked by this season of transition,

and by recent celebrations in our community life,

including our celebration of baptisms today.

A few weeks ago there was a gathering here at the church

for Luella and Vernon Lohrentz who were celebrating

60 years of married life together.

That is a phenomenal milestone!

60 years of sharing and bearing witness to life together

within the unique bond of a human marriage.

Last week Austin McCabe-Juhnke and Alyssa Graber

embarked on a marriage together.

They stood before family and friends,

under looming Kansas storm clouds,

and offered their vows of commitment.

After their ceremony I signed papers to make

their marriage “official” in the eyes of the state.

That paper made them legally married.

However, in my mind, the most important

act of getting married happened during

that time of worship and covenant making.

And the most important part of remaining married

will be their renewal of their vows each day

as they commit to abide in love with one another.

These celebrations of marriage led me to wonder,

'Where else are we invited to make vows in our life?'

Even if it's not in such a formal way,

like a wedding ceremony,

where and when are you and I invited

to give clear expression of the deepest

commitments of our lives?

To whom or to what do you bind your heart?

To what do you bind your soul?

Perhaps that language sounds a bit strange,

maybe even a bit repulsive:

the binding of my heart, my soul.

Who wants to be bound?

We live together in a culture that

doesn't exactly encourage such profound commitment.

We North Americans are a people

who like to keep our options open.

We don't like to get locked in to any one thing

because the next really good thing

might be just around the corner

or just over on the other side of the fence.

Ours is a a culture that

prizes innovation far more than tradition,

personal rights and self-realization more than

yielding to something beyond our

full understanding or control,

such as life in community with others.

Don't hem me in.

Don't pin me down.

We don't tend to do covenants or vows much in this culture.

We do contracts, contracts that usually

have special clauses and “outs”

to protect our rights in case something goes awry.

So, even when it comes to something

like the commitment of a marriage,

we make sure we have possible

escape routes—prenuptial agreements—

just in case we wind up unsatisfied.

In the realm of faith,

there is a growing reluctance to commit to any one

tradition or community because to do so

would be, perhaps, to miss out on something

that might be better for us somewhere else.

“I'm spiritual but not religious,”

has become a popular way of putting it.

We may fear that to “bind ourselves” to one person,

or to one path is to be too limited, too diminished;

and we may fear that it is, in a sense, to die.

And we would be correct.

To make such deep vows in faith—

to bind our hearts, souls and beings in love—

is, in a manner of speaking, to die.

As Paul describes it to the Colossians,

to bind one's heart and soul to Christ

is to allow certain parts of ourselves to die.

It is to die to patterns of self-interest and self-involvement,

and it is to die to patterns of living that

have done harm to ourselves and others.

It is to release those things in our lives

that we once thought were so vital

and then came to find out were

sapping us of our life.

The wisdom our culture often misses

is that this is precisely the dying away

that leads to deeper and more expansive life.

Jesus was once asked what was the greatest commandment.

And he replied with two commandments, actually:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,

and all your soul, and with all your mind.”

“The second,” he said, “is like it:

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

In these words is the invitation of Christ to any who would follow him:

an invitation to live a “vowed life,”

to vow to live your life, as fully as possible

according to these great commandments to love.

And what allows us to do this is the awareness

that we have first been loved so completely by God.

To use Paul's great metaphor, we can “clothe ourselves” with love,

literally “put on” and bind to ourselves to the love of Christ

because we accept that we have been forgiven and freed by this love.

The young people we baptize here today

join the many in the Body of Christ throughout history

in making this great vow to both accept

and to clothe their lives with the Great Love that is of God.

They join in this binding of their hearts to the Christ

who has revealed this love so fully.

In doing this they make their vows to discover

the great inclusivity of this love

through the commitment to community—this congregation—

through our joys, challenges and searching together.

They make their vows to discover

the great power of this love to reconcile and unbind

as they practice compassion and forgiveness in their daily lives.

They make their vows to practice

the great justice and peace of this love

as they serve their neighbor in need in the manner of Christ Jesus.

As we bear witness to their vow-making

and as we welcome them fully into our fellowship,

may our own deepest vows be renewed.

Amen.

mandala image:  http://www.arttherapyblog.com/art-therapy-activities/making-mandala-art-for-self-discovery-and-healing/#.UcHG3JwQP2s