Through Stained Glass: Week 4 -- Becoming Committed Loving the World

 Becoming Committed – Loving the World

Morning Psalms for the week: 119, 145 (Monday); 34, 146 (Tuesday); 5, 147:1-11 (Wednesday); 27, 147:12-20 (Thursday); 22, 148 (Friday); 43, 149 (Saturday)

Evening Psalms for the week: 121, 6 (Monday); 25, 91 (Tuesday); 27, 51 (Wednesday); 126, 102 (Thursday); 105, 130 (Friday; 31, 143 (Saturday)

Old Testament: Gen. 49:1 – 50:26; Exod. 1:6 – 3:15

Epistle: 1 Cor. 10:14 – 13:3

Gospel: Mark 7:24 – 9:29

Will you love the ‘you’ you hide if I but call your name? Will you quell the fear inside and

never be the same? Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around,

through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?

Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name. Let me turn and follow you and never be the same. In your company I’ll go where your love and footsteps show. Thus I’ll move

and live and grow in you and you in me. (Will You Come and Follow Me, verses 4, 5)

    For God so loved the world…I would bet that these words frequently come to mind for many of us if—on the spur of the moment—we are asked to name our favorite Bible verse. A close second might be to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…and love your neighbor as yourself. Then of course, there is Paul’s beautiful exposition on love in 1 Corinthians. “If we do not have love,” says Paul, “we are nothing.”

    I admit that these days, it can be hard to love the world. There’s so much chaos, pain and confusion; we are bombarded by it every day. It hurts. In 2020, as we were beginning to emerge from the pandemic, I wrote a poem called “Fever Dream.” I thought about sharing it—because I still sometimes feel this way—but thankfully (for you) I decided it was too bleak! Instead, I share this photo from Dauphin Island, Alabama—the place I go to experience the healing beauty of Creation and to let God restore my soul. We all have such places in the world, and they are incredibly important. In these places, we remember that the world was created in love, that love defines our deepest selves, and that love is the summons that calls us to move with Christ to reshape the world. In Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Zossima says, “What is hell? I maintain that hell is the suffering of being unable to love.” Wow!

    Loving the world takes some practice—and a deep intentionality. It is much easier to join a crowd dedicated to self-interest than to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. The first way promises security and permits the exclusion of uncomfortable reality; the other invites challenge, even suffering. When Peter objects to Jesus talking about his impending suffering, Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus insists on a multi-dimensional life, reminding us that claiming our faith means leaving our fear and uncertainty behind and participating in the suffering of others. Following the crowd is easy, but it requires us to sacrifice our deepest selves to an ideology. The way of Jesus, on the other hand, leads to freedom and transformation—to self-discovery and ever-deepening commitment. Sometimes it’s easy to look around at our human-distorted “world” and think it is the world God intended. Yet throughout our gospel readings during Lent, we hear Jesus describe a different world, one that originated in undeniable and abundant love, and one that is within reach if we move and live and grow together with Christ.

Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen goes directly to disaster areas—floods,

earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.—to provide essential meals. Here WCK serves

food to Ukrainians displaced by war.

 

    Loving the world means, of course, loving and respecting and protecting our incredible physical world—our God-gifted garden paradise. It means loving the people who live in it—whoever, whatever, however they are. It also means loving ourselves even when we doubt or fall short of expectations. It means not giving up our commitment to do and be better. It means believing in the possibility of resurrection and restoration. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul lays out what this looks like. While he is writing to a specific church, his message provides a pathway for all of us, despite our diversity of mind or being, to live together differently—moving and living and growing in, through and with Christ. Into a broken world. 

    Paul writes: “God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there be no dissention within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” (1 Cor. 12:24-26) And he tells us clearly what it is that holds the body together: “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” (1Cor. 13:1-3) Love is the original wellspring.

    This sentiment is not unique to Christianity. Many cultures and religions are based on a similar call to love as a means of creating community and counteracting the pervasive influence of rampant and destructive individualism. The African concept of ubuntu, for example, says that one’s sense of self is shaped by one’s relationships with other people—a way of living in relationship with others and with the natural world that begins with the premise, “I am only because we are.”

    I hope that as we come to the end of this week of considering how we become committed, you are inspired to pay attention to relationships, to celebrate the true reciprocity of community, to “love the ‘you’ you hide, to let yourselves be transformed by love. When the English poet John Donne was very ill, he heard funeral bells ringing across the city, and he wrote a short essay that became this poem:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less,

As well as if a promontory were:

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s

Or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

    This poem reminds me of Paul’s message: “If all were a single member, where would the body be?” Will You Come and Follow Me? is my favorite hymn because it exudes love and reminds me that God is present to us all through love and community.…”wherever two or more are gathered in my name,” says Jesus. It renews my own commitment and gives me strength. In The Longing for Home, Frederick Buechner wrote, “Sometimes, by the grace of God, I have it in me to be Christ to other people. And so, of course, have we all—the life-giving, life-saving, and healing power to be saints, to be Christs, maybe at rare moments even to ourselves.” May it be so.

The Pando (“I spread’) Aspen Grove, located in Utah’s Fishlake National Forest, is the largest, most dense organism ever found at nearly 13 million pounds. It originated from a single seed and spreads by sending up new shoots from the expanding root system. The clone spreads over 106 acres and consists of over 40,000 individual trees. The exact age of the clone and its root system is difficult to calculate, but it is estimated to have started at the end of the last ice age. Scientists are concerned today because the clone is showing signs of decline. For more information check out www.friendsofpando.org.