The Third Sunday of Easter-Rev Melanie Lemburg

 The Third Sunday of Easter Year B

April 18, 2021

 

        I’ve been reading the Presiding Bishop’s book that our whole diocese is reading for Eastertide.  It is titled Love is the Way: Holding On To Hope in Troubling Times.  I’ve been listening to Bishop Curry read it through audible as I go on my daily walks around the beautiful Isle of Hope.  Because I didn’t start it until we got home from our college tour and trip to see family last week, I’m a week behind, and I’ve been thinking about the questions for reflection from the diocese for last week. In the early part of the book, Bishop Curry talks about a lady named Josie Robinson who stepped into their family soon after his mother became ill when he was still young.  Before she’d even met the children, Josie ironed stacks of their clothes, and Bishop Curry talks about all the ways that she loved them sacrificially, even as she poured her love in action into the world through her vocation as a principal at a local high school whose purpose was to help teenage mothers continue their education. 

One of the questions for reflection for these early chapters is: “Josie Robbins embodied the love this book is about in her care for the Curry Family after Mrs. Curry's illness. Who has made sacrificial, self-giving love real to you?”  I’ve been thinking about this, even as I’ve been going through some things my mom saved for me to go through as she and my dad have been cleaning out their home that we grew up in.  Among the items my mom saved was a little placard I had forgotten I had.  The front says, “I love you.” And the back is a handwritten portion that says, “My very special friend Melanie.”  This placard was given to me when I was a young child by my friend whose name was Jane Schutt.  Jane was my grandparents’ age when I knew her, and my mom and I would go over to Jane’s house where Jane would entertain me with such mystical items as her autoharp and her cheese board with it’s own wire cheese slicer attached.  (She actually gave me a cheese board of my own for Christmas one year because I loved it so much.)  Jane always called me her special friend, on birthday and Christmas cards, in book inscriptions, and she was the first adult I can remember being true friends with beyond the relationship of family.  I knew Jane’s love in action as a small child as she loved me and treated me like an equal despite the differences in our ages.  It wasn’t until I got to seminary after Jane had died that I learned about the way she had loved in a much broader context.  As I was reading one of our books for our Church History class, I was startled to come across Jane’s name.  The book was titled Episcopalians and Race, and I learned in that book that my special friend Jane had had a cross burned in her yard by the KKK when she was working for Civil Rights in Mississippi. 

        Bishop Curry offers this definition of love:  “Love is a firm commitment to act for the well being of someone other than yourself.  It can be personal or political, individual or communal, intimate or public.  Love will not be segregated to the private, personal precincts of life.  Love, as I read it in the Bible, is ubiquitous.  It affects all aspects of life.”[i] 

        He writes later in the chapter: “If love looks outward to the good of the other, then its opposite isn’t hate.  Its opposite is selfishness!  It’s a life completely centered on the self.  Dr. King referred to this as the ‘reverse Copernican revolution.’ To be selfish is to put yourself in the place of the sun, the whole universe revolving around you.  Forget morality -at that point you’ve left reason behind.  Life becomes a living lie.  Because no amount of smarts, money, or accomplishments puts any one human at the center of existence.”[ii] 

        I’ve been thinking about all of this, about love being an action and both including and expanding beyond personal relationships, about how the opposite of love isn’t hate but it is selfishness.  And then I read part of our Epistle reading for today from First John: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”  And I see Jesus’s encounter with is disciples after his resurrection, his continuation of his self-giving love for them and for all of creation. 

        I can’t help but think about the first line of Mary Oliver’s poem The Messenger which says, “My work is loving the world.”  The poem goes on to talk about nature and creation and the delight and wonder found there and how it serves as a source of gratitude.  But I can’t help but wonder what it would mean to love the world not just through creation but to try to live selflessly for all the other people of the world and for creation?  What would it mean to give the same level of care and consideration for strangers across the country or across the globe that we would for our special friends, our spouses, our parents, our children, and other members of our family?  What does it mean that we are all God’s children?  How does that tie with others’ claim on us and affect our very thoughts and actions in every moment of every day? 

        Any love for others that we might be called to offer is only rooted in and through the love that God offers us which is made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ and continues to be experienced through the workings of the Holy Spirit.  All love comes from God, and we are able to love because God first loved us.  Sometimes we are already full to the brim of God’s love, and it isn’t as difficult to let that love spill out and over to love others.  And other times, we need to take time and space to be filled up ourselves with God’s love before we can go out and love others.  As I offer this prayerful meditation on the passage from First John in closing today, I invite you to close your eyes and ask God for what you need today. 

When we shall be

                    Praying 1 John 3.2-3

 

Beloved, we are God’s children now;

         I am your child, I am beloved,

         I am yours, I am of you. 

         I am.

 

what we will be has not yet been revealed.

         I am not done.

         I am becoming. As you will.

 

What we do know is this:

         I seek knowing deeper than thinking.

 

Christ, when you are revealed,

         I open my eyes,

         I dare to imagine.

 

we will be like you,

         beloved, made in your image,

         divine, breathing your breath.

 

for we will see you as you are.

         See you in all things,

         see through the eyes of love.

 

All who have this hope in you

         trust even in the dark.

         What is is becoming.

 

purify themselves, just as you are pure.

         Raised to new life,

         full of your light,

         pure love.[iii]

     

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[i] Curry, Michael with Sarah Grace.  Love is the Way: Holding On To Hope in Troubling Times. Avery:  New York, 2020, p 14.

[ii] Ibid. p 18.

[iii] Steve Garnaas-Holmes. www.unfoldinglight.net; April 15, 2021