Lessons:
2 Kings 4: 42-44
Psalm 145:10-19
Ephesians 3: 14-21
John 6: 1-21
Are
we rooted and grounded in love?
And is that love a blessing we share with others? I believe the answer to those questions
is a resounding yes. Every
face I see before me is the face of someone blessed by God and willing to share
the blessings. The first verse of today’s psalm suggests that in recognition of
how open-handed God is in blessing us, our natural response would be prayers of
praise and thanksgiving: “All your works praise you, Lord, and your faithful
servants bless you.”
The
other day, I read a morning meditation on the subject of prayer taken from the
writings of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She wrote, “If you are searching for God
and do not know where to begin, learn to pray. Take the trouble to pray every
day. Tell him everything; talk to him. He is our father; he is father to us
all, whatever our religion. We are all created by God; we are his children. We
have to put our trust in Him and love Him, believe in him and work for him. If
we pray, we will get all the answers we need.” Considering what we have learned
about the prayer life of Mother Teresa since her death, I found these words of
hers very remarkable and moving.
Mother Teresa of
Calcutta received a call from God to serve the poorest of the poor, the sick
and the dying. She began her
ministry in India in 1950, and continued to serve as the founder of the
Missionaries of Charity until shortly before her death in 1997 at the age of eighty-six.
Since her death, the world has learned that, for many years, Teresa suffered
from a feeling of distance from God. She wrote to her spiritual director that
she continued to pray as always, but did not often feel God’s presence. Still,
she demonstrated her deep faith by continuing to serve suffering and dying
people, those so poor they had nowhere else to turn for help. Without the
services of the Missionaries of Charity, most of the people Mother Teresa and
her sisters cared for would have died on the streets of Calcutta.
In our collect for
today, we hear the words, “O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without
whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy, increase and multiply on us your mercy;
that with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal,
that we lose not the things eternal.”
Though her prayers were “sterile,” as Mother Teresa said, she believed God
would strengthen her. When her day to day life was comprised of serving poor
people who were dying of tuberculosis, AIDS, leprosy, cancer, and other
illnesses, it is easy to understand why Mother Teresa may have suffered from an
enduring depression. In that state
of depression, she may have found herself unable to connect to her source of
comfort—her God. Even so, she
continued to live her faith and to pray. She trusted her God and God’s mercy to
help her and those she served through the temporal afflictions of their
illnesses. She continued to be the face of Christ, the very face of love, to
the poorest of the poor.
Mother Teresa was
“rooted and grounded in love,” a phrase Paul uses in his letter to the
Ephesians. Without such a grounding, she would not have been able to carry on
her work for so many years. In saying “rooted and grounded in love,” Paul prays
for the followers of Christ, that all of them—all of us-- may have
Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith. Paul goes on to pray that we who
call ourselves Christian will someday “have the power to comprehend, with all
[our fellow] saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth” of
the love of God, that we will come to “know the love of Christ that surpasses
knowledge.” He prays that we will
“be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Paul promises these things are possible because the power of Christ is
“at work within us: and is “able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we
can ask or imagine.” Mother Teresa had the power of Christ at work within her, even
when she could not feel God’s presence. Christ working through her made her
able to accomplish abundantly far more than any of us could imagine. Although she struggled with her own
relentless sorrow, surely those she served felt her kindness toward them as a
great blessing. She showed unloved people what it meant to be loved by
God.
In spite of the
many sorrows of the world, our God is a God who is always ready to bless us. Today’s
Old and New Testament lessons illustrate the abundant generosity of God’s
blessings. In 2nd
Kings, the prophet Elisha tells his servant to feed a hundred people. When the
servant protests that he has only twenty barley loaves, Elisha responds, “Give
it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and
have some left.’” And so it was,
just as the Lord said. This lesson
prefigures the more familiar story in John, of Jesus feeding the five thousand
gathered to hear him teach. Once again, maybe the most astonishing thing about
the story is that twelve baskets of food are left over from the five barley
loaves and two fish. God’s
blessings seem to have a way of expanding to fill the pressing need.
But there is a special
condition to the expansion of blessings. Jesus has the 5000 people sit down in
groups. Then he gives thanks for the bread, breaks it, and distributes it among
the people. He does not overlook
anyone. He does not cast out anyone for being unworthy. The key to this miracle
is that the blessing is something shared by all. As we say before
communion, “All are welcome to the Lord’s table.”
Unfortunately,
over the years, the organized church at times seems to have lost sight of the universality
of God’s blessings. The church has not always stretched out its hands to
everyone in a welcoming way. At some point in its long history, the church
became more interested in rebuking people for their sins rather than inviting
them to share in the blessings. The Puritans, who settled Massachusetts and
played a large role in the founding of this country, condemned and executed innocent
people in their community for being witches. One of the most famous sermons in
American history, preached in 1741 by the Puritan Calvinist Jonathan Edwards
during the “Great Awakening,” is called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
Edwards tells everyone listening to him that they are all sinners, being
dangled by God like a loathsome spider over the pit of hell. Edwards’ sermon is
in line with the theology of “original sin,” an idea that dates to the 2nd
century after the life of Christ and asserts that all humans are, by nature,
sinners from birth. The concept of original sin came into prominence when
factions of the early church could not agree on dogma. The term “original sin” never
appears in the Bible. Politicians,
however, could see the usefulness of a doctrine that might help to control the
behavior of people by terrifying them with the prospect of hell.
There were some
theologians and ordinary people of that early period, however, who believed in
the idea of “original blessing” rather than original sin. Whereas the Puritans
and Calvinists called the forests of New England “the devil’s playground,” people
down through the ages have found beauty, solace, and inspiration in nature. In
Genesis I, the very first book of the Bible, we are told that God finds all
that he created to be good. After the creation of humankind, male and female,
we are told, “And God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very
good.” The joy God takes in all that he creates is a sign of His original and
continuing blessing. Doesn’t it seem that way to you? Yes, we all are sinners. No human being is perfect.
But instead of being sinners in the hands of an angry God, we can see ourselves
as sinners subject to the mercy of a loving and forgiving God, our father and
creator.
Contemporary
theologians Matthew Fox and Richard Rohr, among others, have rediscovered the
ancient tradition of seeing the world through the lens of original blessing
rather than through the lens of original sin. (In fact, Matthew Fox has written
a book entitled Original Blessing.) What
does that term mean? Simply that
we see ourselves from the day we were born as loved so much by God that we
ourselves are blessings. Loved by God in this way, we share in the blessings
all around us. The Lord who tells us to love our neighbor is the same Lord who
suggests that we should forgive our brother seventy times seven. Why should we ever doubt the love and mercy
of such a Lord? Listen to these
words from Psalm 145 again and hear the joy. Hear how ALL are blessed:
The Lord is faithful in all his
words
and merciful in all his deeds.
The Lord upholds all those who
fall;
he lifts up those who are bowed
down.
The eyes of all wait upon you, O
Lord,
and you give them their food in due
season.
You open wide your hand
and satisfy the needs of every
living creature.
The Lord is righteous in all his
ways
and loving in all his works.
The Lord is near to those who call
upon him,
to all who call upon him
faithfully.
Like the most beautiful of the trees
in all of Creation, we are rooted and grounded in the love of God. May we feel the full depth of that love
all the way to the tiptoes of our roots!
AMEN.
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