Sermon for October 26, 2008

A sermon given at Buck Mountain Episcopal Church (10:30) and Graves Chapel (5:00)

Lessons:
Deuteronomy 34: 1-12
Psalm 90: 1-6, 13-17
1 Thessalonians 2: 1-8
Matthew 22: 34-46

Our lessons today provide us with a set of bookends. In Deuteronomy, we have the passing of Moses, the great giver of laws. In the gospel reading from Matthew, Jesus speaks the words that sum up all the laws in a way that anyone should be able to understand. “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” If we love God with all of our being and we truly love our neighbors as ourselves, we will be incapable of violating any commandments, or in any other way causing harm. Jesus tells us that love is the only law we really need to know. For this reason Jesus, whose life was sacrificed for love of humankind, has been called “the fulfillment of the law.”

If you’ve heard me preach before, you may have noticed that one of my favorite biblical themes is “God is Love,” and we are reminded of that one again today. Unfortunately, we may feel that we have good reasons to doubt whether God is really love. All of us have had experiences that have broken our hearts or made us want to shake a fist at God and ask, “Why?” At this very moment, someone somewhere is suffering. Someone is grieving. Someone is afraid. Where is God in all of this?

One answer that people have for the inexplicable tragedies that occur seems to be “It was God’s will.” Believing as I do that God is only love, I cringe when I hear that said. I believe that God does NOT will the bad things that happen. God does NOT cause the tragedies. In granting humans free will, to choose the good over the bad, to choose love over hate, God allowed us to control our own fates. Bad things happen because of human willfulness, human error, and human complexity coming into conflict with natural forces. With all of our freedom, we have made a pretty good mess of things.

Even though we often disregard Him, however, God never abandons us. We think of God the Father and God the Son, but, as we also hear, they are “one being.” God knows our sorrows because God chose to enter them. To understand our lives, God became fully human, and for our sakes, he died an excruciating, lonely death. God knows what it means to suffer. When our hearts break, God’s compassionate heart breaks, too. God does not cause our suffering, but he is there to suffer with us and offer divine consolation.

I have felt that blessed compassion in my own life. My sweet mother, a devoted Christian, died too young of a terrible and rare neurological disease. Yes, it was very unfair. But from all I can read about Steele Richardson syndrome, its most likely cause is something environmental. How can I blame God for the way humans have polluted his creation? And I certainly can’t blame God for my father’s suicide. But I want you to know that in the dark days after the deaths of both of my parents, God made his presence known to me in very powerful ways. That is where God is in the deep sorrows of life--there to console us, to lift us, to draw us into his loving arms. He came to me in the love of friends and family, in the outpouring of sympathy and help. He came to me in a letter written by one of my mother’s best friends, who assured me that I had done everything I could for Mama, even though I believed I had not.

What then does God will for us? As a former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Right Reverend Frank Griswold once said, “We have so reduced and so limited notions of God’s will to orders and commands that we have lost sight of the truth that God’s will is fundamentally a matter of divine affection and delight. God’s fundamental will for us is our deepest well-being.” His predecessor, the Right Reverand Edmond Browning said something along similar lines when he wrote, “What is the purpose of the autumn leaves? We know why they need to fall: it is so the tree can rest during the winter, and so the soil can be renewed by their decomposing. But why, before they die, do they burst into this glorious song? It is hard for me to imagine any other reason besides the disposition of God toward the good and the beautiful. Many things need not be lovely, but they are.”

There are so many stories in scripture that illustrate the abundant love of God, and sometimes it is a nurturing, mothering love. In the Book of Proverbs, the Wisdom of God is personified as a woman named Sophia. Of Wisdom it is said, “She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her...Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy.” [Proverbs 3:15-18] I like thinking about Sophia as the feminine side of God’s nature, and not just because I’m a woman. I wish I’d heard more about her when I was a child who feared the stern, white-bearded old man some people called God.

Jesus also reminds us of the compassionate love of God when he says, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” [Matthew 23:37] He speaks directly to the way humans reject the love so freely offered by God when he says the people “were not willing” to be gathered under his wings. Jesus also lets us hear how much the act of giving love to others brings him joy.

In December, if all things go well, my first grandbaby will be born. As I think about this unborn child, I am already beginning to understand something my friends, who are already grandmothers, have shared with me. I hear that being a grandmother is more precious even than motherhood, and that spoiling grandchildren is a great blessing. Those of you who are already grandparents probably know what I’m talking about. Giving love to our children and grandchildren, feeling that we would do anything for these precious ones, is, I believe, the kind of love God feels for us.

I’d like to tell you my story about my great-aunt, Mary Estes Hawkins. I say my story, because Aunt Mary was to me someone uniquely special. I never really got to know well any of my own grandparents; both of my grandfathers were already dead when I was born, and my grandmother Estes was sick and in a nursing home from the time I was very young. But for some reason I can attribute only to her love and compassion, Aunt Mary became my grandmother. Her daughter Dolly and my mother, though cousins, were as close as sisters, and since Dolly and her children lived with Uncle Buck and Aunt Mary, we spent a lot of time at their house. Age-wise, I fit somewhere in the middle of Aunt Mary’s grandchildren, and we played together. I spent many nights at her house. I realized that Aunt Mary saw me as one of her own by the way she treated me with the same love and generosity. This became very clear to me one time after Aunt Mary and Uncle Buck returned from a trip, and she brought me the very same souvenir gift that she brought her granddaughters. I still have and treasure the little glass lamp. And I still treasure my memories of Aunt Mary.

I was reminded of her and her kind of love by these words in today’s psalm: “May the graciousness of the Lord our God be upon us; prosper the work of our hands; prosper our handiwork.” My mother crocheted and embroidered, my aunt Clara cross-stitched and knitted--seeing women at such work is infinitely comforting to me. Aunt Mary did handiwork as well, and what I remember seeing her do was tatting--a way to make lace with fine needles. If you will indulge me, I’d like to share a poem I wrote in honor of my aunt Mary:

Aunt Mary

With a needle and white thread
she tatted lace around a kerchief
as she rested in the evening, day’s work
done in kitchen and garden.
She was a descendant of the first one
who sewed polished bone to deerskin,
all those who demonstrate
by the work of their hands
and the refinement of their nature
a belief that life is more
than just a struggle to survive.
What is the current state of civility?
The work of fostering concord
requires too much time.
Few hands still fashion wood
into smooth bowls or graceful chairs
in a world far removed
from simple art, simple pleasure,
simple need.

Lamplight kindled her silver hair,
head bent as she shuttled the needle,
her movements rhythmic as a loom.
I’d love to hear her soft voice again,
unfold a damask napkin
and sit down to dinner at her table.
I want to hear the creaking of the earth
as it turns from darkness towards dawn.

We are all called to be instruments of the love of God in the lives of others. We are called to seek and serve Christ in all persons. As St. Teresa of Avila said, “God has no hands, nor has he feet nor voice except ours; and through these he works.” If God is love, then it is our job to make that love known in the world. And we are blessed in the giving. To quote Bishop Browning again, “As we have been created to love and savor the world God has given us, so we have also been created to care for each other, to serve whom we can while we can. While God’s goodness does not depend upon ours, and God’s plan unfolds whether we go along with it or not, we are intended to mirror the love which created us in the love we bear one another.”

So, remember, “Life is short, and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us, so be swift to love and make haste to be kind.” (Henri-Frederic Amiel)

Susan Hull