Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Love Letters of Christmastide

Very recently I presided over a lovely wedding here at St. James.  The sermon title was, Love is Love, which I stole from the email of an acquaintance. When I confessed to him that I had stolen his line for a sermon title, he said, well here’s another one: “All you need is love. Steal that one too.”  The next day I went to meet someone over at the Wired Rooster in Wellsboro and what should I see on the tent sign outside of the cafĂ©? Chalked up in blue and white were the words: All you need is love, of course followed by, and a good cup of coffee.  I took out my smart phone and I stole it.  

Earlier this week while wandering around TJ Max fixated on a gift finding mission, I rounded a corner and found myself face to face with a large framed picture of some familiar words:  All you need is love.  I laughed and thought, how remarkable. Then I looked all around me and was astounded to see that I was in an entire section of framed words, all variations of the same line: All you need is Love.  All you need is Love in white cursive letters on blue pastels, All you need is Love in large block print letters on a black background, All you need is Love in larger than life gold sans serif letters floating against a light blue background. And then there were variations on the theme:  the single word, “LOVE.” (note the period), black letters on a white background, framed boldly; then there was the single word love, written in script, repeated many times taking the shape of a heart. Two walls and several shelves of All you need is Love. I would have laughed again, but I was truly astounded at the bold audacity of the universe.  I just stood there literally surrounded by Love. I wondered, What is the Holy Spirit trying to tell me? What is she, not so subtly, putting out there for me to grasp or perhaps just for me to see?

But there is another question that begs an answer. If marketing efforts were so keen on selling love, then there must be a market for it. Clearly the world is hungry for love.  By the millions we are buying printed images of words about Love, some tattoo it on their bodies, and others wear t-shirts to proclaim our beliefs about it.  And yet it seems just beyond our reach. Were it so easy to grasp, so easy to claim, so easy to give, so easy to receive, so easy to see, so easy to understand then Love art would no longer have any buyers.  We do not need to buy what we have in abundance.  It would seem that the culture we live in is asking all manner of questions about Love.  The question for the Christian community is, do we have anything to say about Love?

Well it’s Christmas and that has something to do with Love or at least it’s supposed to.  I’m not sure Love is the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Christmas though, if we’re honest.  Every year my first thoughts of Christmas occurs in October when the stores begin to put out their Christmas decorations; right next to the Halloween displays. It’s blatantly about the bottom line; end of the year consumer spending making up a goodly part of many business’ profit/loss statements.  This is in keeping with American culture in general, of course: if you want something then it’s simply a matter of saving up the money and buying it.  But what you and I know, really, is that Love can’t be bought. We can buy a framed picture of the word Love, but that is not Love. At some level I think we’re in Love with the idea of Love; of the picture of Love that has been shaped in our common imaginations by culture itself.  

Just think, where did you learn about Love?  I learned a lot of what I know about Love from books and movies.  I must be honest and tell you that did not learn about Love in the church. Or perhaps more correctly: for a very long time, I did not realize that what I was learning about was Love. I thought I was learning stories that portrayed the state and struggles of humanity throughout the ages.  I thought I was learning theological ideals about God. I thought I was learning about discipleship and how to act in the world; how to be a better person; how to find purpose in my life.  I thought I was learning doctrines and dogma that was instructive for living a life meant to emulate Christ himself.  I thought I was learning how to be kind.

Last month someone I care about moved far away. The last thing you really want to give a person who is moving is something else to pack so I decided just to give a blessing. But I’ve never given a blessing to a single person before in that way and I didn’t want to look completely stupid and suddenly forget the words. So I practiced saying the words which I have been known to stumble upon in front of an entire congregation; which is as embarrassing as suddenly forgetting the order of the words at communion when I put bread into open hands: The body of Christ, the bread of heaven – how many ways can you screw that up? Ask me, I can tell you. So here are the words I repeated over and over again:
Be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
Be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
Be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
Be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
Be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
Be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
It occurred to me that over the eleven years I’ve been saying this blessing, that I’ve never actually heard the words. They’ve been words for someone else to hear. But this time, they were meant for me. I heard, that is I internalized, “be swift to love.” 

If you think about it, really ponder it, you might come to the conclusion that have I reached. It’s really hard to be swift to love.  When we are small children we are hard-wired for love. Undamaged, unbroken, untrained, not yet tempered by hurts and disappointments and disillusions; not yet devastated by heart break and loss, we are all about love.  It pours out of us.  It’s easily read in our eyes and we hold it our small little hands with such ease. We do not think about it, because one does not need to consider one’s own nature; it simply is.
For those of us who have great difficulty understanding Love as it portrayed in the violence of the cross, then Love as portrayed as an infant child can be our way in. When we hear the nativity story we can connect with it because it is still so innocent, so pure, it is the time before – and all of us have a before and after story. It’s the before part of our stories that can once again connect with this Love. It is the window through which we might be able to see and understand the very nature of God. If you have not heard me say it recently, then hear it now: God is Love.  There really isn’t anything else you need to know about God, or religion, or spiritually, or even Jesus, beyond this. God is love. And what I realize now, what is so clear to me in this moment, is that everything I learned in Sunday school, or in the Bible, or in seminary, or in all the sermons I’ve ever heard, or written or preached, or by anything I’ve ever read by any theological author is that these expressions are all different forms of love letters. Letters written to tell me that I am loved.

I’m an avid fan of letter writing. I’ve been writing letters to the people in my life for as long as I can remember. Letter writing puts words on a page that have flow directly from your heart through your body into your wrists, hands and fingers, finding expression through a pen or a keyboard.  There are letters that were hard to write but needed to written; letters for truth-telling that once received will have consequences for both parties; there are unexpected letters we receive that fill us with complete joy and knowledge that we have been remembered; letters that tell us news that will forever change our lives; letters that are filled with happy news and the deepest desire to be appreciated; there are letters that beg in desperation for us to be seen and heard, letters that tell stories that make us laugh, or cry, or perhaps just think more deeply about things; there are final letters, final words; there are letters that are not meant ever to be sent, and letter we’ve written that we deeply regret sending; letters to lovers (the Song of Solomon is such a letter), letters with ill intent written in the blood our deepest wounds; there are letters we frame and letters we burn.  All these letters we write and receive, each in their own way, are love letters. 

In that same way, the story we have heard this night is a love letter written by someone who went long before us. It was written for the generations to follow. It was written for you. It is a love letter that tells a story about the Love of God, who is Love, who was born just like you were. But unlike you and I this love will not be corrupted over time and through the years of living.  This Love will do that for which we can only strive. It will grow instead of fade. It will intensify with the passing of years. It will embrace all things, accept all things, forgive all things, know all things. It will embrace you, accept you, forgive you and know you completely.  This Love we can only see in small glimpses. The most intense love we have known is but a shadow of this Love. In life we can see only part, but in death we will know it fully.  It is our life force. It grows in us as we learn to accept things and people and situations for what they are, as we do the work of forgiveness, and as we seek to know, to deeply know another human being. 

As a priest and as a health coach I refer to the work of love as healing. Healing is to me, is the final manifestation of love accomplishing its purpose. Healing is love in action.  Healers then are required, first and foremost to love those who come to them in pain and suffering. Healers begin their work from a place of acceptance, forgiveness and a willingness to identify with their own humanity as it is mirrored back to them through the ones who stand before them. All Christians are called to the work of healing. You are called to the work of healing. It is what the world requires: an army of healers.  Our only tool, our only weapon is Love.

Twenty years ago I was most fortunate to spend several years in the care of an excellent therapist while I traversed the landscape of life experiences known to many if not all of us: death, divorce, loss, more death, more loss, remarriage, rebirth, recovery and a birth.  As part of my personal spiritual journey a few months ago I wrote a letter to my dearest friend with whom I had not spoken in all these years.  It occurred to me she would not remember me and I was at peace with that because the work of love she had begun in me can never be undone. But within days of sending my letter, complete with a lovely stamp, she sent back to me her reply.  There I was standing in my kitchen holding her letter in my hand. I didn’t even need to open it to feel that measure of healing.  But I did.  It’s been 20 years and I am loved still. 

That’s what the nativity story has to teach us: Love that is truly Love doesn’t die, it cannot.  We are surrounded this night by flowers that signify the remembrance of those we love, many of whom have passed from this world into the next. The love we have for them and they for us does not die. Death cannot destroy love; not any longer. Not since Love was born into the world; not since God became Love incarnate. Love itself has insured that love cannot be destroyed or even diminished.

Someone recently told me about the death of one of their parents: regardless of what came before, what remained in the end was love. Love is unaffected by death, or by any separation. Love is both the substance and the residue. It’s all we really have to offer anyone that is of any value whatsoever. When people see us, what they are really looking at, what they are really sizing up about us, is our capacity for love.  Love for self, love to give, love to express through our lives’ work and our acts of kindness, hospitality and generosity; but also in the lines we draw and the boundaries we enforce, and in what we chose to give away and in what we chose to keep. That’s what we see in that little baby who we have come to know as the person of Jesus. We see in that child a vast and wide, all encompassing capacity for love. It is his greatest gift. Actually it is his only gift.

Christmas Eve Homily, 2014




Saturday, December 13, 2014

Love is love

Marriage Homily for Lynn Johnson and Joel Costello, Dec. 13, 2014, St. James

I begin with a little ditty from the last time Joel and Lynn and I met for pre-marital counseling.  Lynn was telling me that the wording on the marriage application has not yet changed to match the law; so the clerk asked the two men which of them would like to be “the wife.”  Lynn said he’d do it because, after all, he has the girlie name. Joel pushed back a little and said, Yeah, but I’m the one who carries a purse.

This is such a good day and a blessed event and I am honored beyond measure to have been asked to preside over this celebration of marriage.  This nation and its protestant churches have come such a long way in such a short time – its really breathtaking.  When I attended seminary from 2000 to 2003 the topic of gay marriage was front and center.  The national Episcopal Church was struggling with discernment on the issue and a national vote was set for the summer of 2003; anxiety was high church-wide. One day during a systematic theology class in 2001 one of my female heterosexual colleagues complained to the professor that she was tired of talking about this issue – it was all we ever talked about and she just wanted a break.  I though Professor Joe Monti was going to come completely unglued – he got right in her face and said:  You’re tired of it?  We’ll you better think again – ‘cause this is YOUR issue. You’re going to be on the front lines. This is your fight. Your church is positioned and ready to vote Yes at General Convention in 2003.  And you better figure out right now how you are going to live that out. And don’t ever tell me you’re tired of fighting for human dignity. This is what you signed up for.  

The irony of this is, of course, that she, and I, are only ordained to the priesthood because of the years of struggle that came from the women who we followed. We stand on the shoulders of thousands of men and women did not tire in their pursuit of the end of oppression, many of whom have lived to see the changes they fought for put into place and thriving. I am a beneficiary of social struggle. I try not to take that for granted.

I confess that even still, sitting in that classroom in 2001 I never thought I’d actually ever preside over a same sex marriage. Things at that time were so hostile, people were so staunchly set in their positions.  I never thought this massive church would actually be able to come to a resolution, much less put it into action. And yet, here were are, just over a decade later and today I am presiding over my second same gender marriage in three years – legal in both New York and PA as well as in the dioceses in which they were/are being performed.  As required by canon law I spoke with my bishop recently to seek approval for this union and I am required to do prior to all weddings and he gave his heartfelt and enthusiastic blessing.  And in preparing the liturgy for this service, in the space of five minutes I changed the language of the traditional Episcopal marriage rite from wife and husband to the wording we are using today. Imagine that, five minutes and a few strokes of the keyboard to change centuries of hatred, oppression, and exclusion.

What is important for our purposes today however is to understand what lies at the heart of this transformation.  The Episcopal Church has only seven doctrines. Just to compare, our Roman brothers and sisters have over one hundred and fifty. The over-riding doctrine for us, the one on which everything else rest is this: God is Love.  That’s it; three words. God is Love.  This doctrine, taken to its natural conclusion forces us to conclude without question that exclusion cannot be a part of our common life because it is not a holy expression of love, therefore it cannot be of God.  God is love – exclusion falls outside of that parameter. Likewise, oppression cannot be part of our common life because it is not a healthy or holy expression of love therefore is not of God. Christians must reject both exclusion and oppression and anything else that divides us from one another and from God based on a doctrine of three words. God is Love.

Of course this very simplistic understanding of the doctrine of Love turns on our personal perception of God.  If we think of God as judgmental and punishing then we are given license to mediate this to every person who does not meet our expectation of the way things are supposed to be. For some of us, love and its expression is a complicated issue; often tied to fear.  Human love invariable involves some level of pain out of which fear finds a sure home. 

I find the writing of Sri Chinmoy helpful on this score. Chinmoy is an internationally renowned spiritual leader and tireless emissary for peace.  He describes God as “the Love.” He writes: Where there is love, real love, there can be no fear.  Why do we fear? We fear because we have separated ourselves from God’s Love and we are apt to think of God the Omnipotent, not God the All-Love.  But even the Omnipotent God is not a God that threatens or strikes us with an iron rod every time we make a mistake. There is no such being as God the tyrant. There is only one God, and that God is God the Love. This God does not punish us. This God is constantly shaping us in His own way. ….. [We sometimes] feel that if we do something wrong God will punish us mercilessly. This is not so.  It is God’s Dream that each individual embodies. It is God’s Reality that each individual has to manifest here on earth.  It is in each human being that God’s Reality lives.”

Christians understand this concept of the God who is Love in the writings of the apostle Paul. The love of which Paul speaks in his first letter to the Corinthians is not love the verb. Paul is actually describing the very person of God.  God is patient; God is kind, God is not envious or boastful or rude. God does not insist on God’s own way, God is not irritable or resentful; God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, God rejoices in the truth. God bears all things, believes all things, God hopes all things, God endures all things. God never ends. Love never ends.

You might think theological discussion is boring and irrelevant but I assure you that were it not for such discussions you and I would not be here today celebrating the love that exists between these two lovely men; making legal and binding that love.  That love, the love that exists between two people, that love is why we are all here.

Have you ever wondered where love comes from?  You know, ...the kind of love that knocks you off your feet.  ….the kind of love that shows up when you least expect it or even want it.  …the kind of love that keeps that other person on your mind hour after hour.  …the kind of love that acknowledges that even the air you breath is made thinner by their absence.  

In his song, Sideways, Citizen Cope sings:
You know it ain't easy for these thoughts here to leave me
There are no words to describe it in French or in English
Well, diamonds they fade and flowers they bloom,
and I'm telling you these feelings won't go away
They've been knockin' me sideways
They've been knockin' me out lately whenever you come around me
I keep thinking in a moment that time will take them away
But these feelings won't go away, they won’t go away.

So are we born with it? Or do we learn it, like we learn to walk or ride a bike? From the Christian perspective, Love is God that resides in you. But we do not generally connect romantic love with God, as if there is something profoundly wrong with associating the two.  But Christianity has a long history of doing just that. The mystics have for centuries understood their feelings and yearnings to find union with God in terms of human love and longing. The two are very much one in the same. It does not benefit us to try to separate them, thereby rendering one lesser than the other.

At the end of the day, there are some things that are indisputable in regards to love: You do not possess it, nor can you harness or control it. It is life-giving and ever-growing and expanding. Ultimately it is a force for good; seeking to bring about peace and wholeness both internally and externally.  No matter how hard you try to beat it down or dismiss it, it will prevail.  To deny love is to do violence to yourself.  It will not be denied.  Given half a chance, love will consume you, motivate you and compel you like no other force on earth.  Unbridled it has the power to bring you back to your truest self.  If you wonder, Who am I? Ask instead, Who do I love? 

So let this marriage be for you a model of what love looks like when it is righteous and true and holy; two men who are winding their way back to God through their authentic expression of love. It is undeniably God’s own doing.