Sermon - 6th Sunday Easter April 27 - 2008

Sermon - 6th Sunday Easter April 27 - 2008
LOVE
Today we are talking a lot about love, and to love someone is to know them. To know someone is not a series of facts about them, it's intimacy. In the movie the Moulin Rouge, in an attempt to court the cortisone, Ewan McGregors character (the young bohemian lover)uses many lines to get his passion and love across.
“Love is a many splendored thing, Love lifts us up where we belong, All you need is Love. I was made for loving you baby... This powerfully points to the desire to know the other. To know in a God type way – is to know with a deep sense of intimacy – beyond physical, emotional or spiritual of anything any of us has yet experienced with other humans. In fact, it’s a one sided love that depends nothing on the other reciprocating the love.
Perhaps this is where God and Ewan McGregor are different. Both are passionate, but Ewan, like all humans, requires love to be reciprocated to keep feeling it. Ewan, like all humans, can be made to give up when to much betrayal or dishonesty enters a relationship.
Thank God that God’s love does not require such reciprocation and that, as Jesus shows us in the resurrection - God is not about to give up.
God comes to Adopt us - Alone, broken, hurting, hurtful and ... deep down... At the root - God knows that to know and be known is something that we long for.
TRUST STORY
There was once an intern who was serving a rural two point parish, just north of Saskatoon SK. In the first of the two points, the intern read a poem about ecology and how the whole world is connected through the water cycle, and how God calls us to be in good relationship with the earth. It was an exciting poem that gave hope that God would be with the people in the hard times, and was calling the people to work with God in the care and help with restoration of the earth. The intern had a large green bucket on a table, and there were cloths to symbolize the different parts of the poem. It was well done.
The intern then went to the second point in the parish and set up his large green bucket at the front. He called some of the kids forward and a flock of 2 to 5 year olds came forward to see the bucket. And as the intern recited the poem... the young children grew restless, they started to squirm around. And the intern, trapped behind the large bucket, could only watch in horror as his own 2 and a half year old daughter bumped into the large Christ Candle at the front of the church. In slow motion terror the intern watched as the candle hit the steps - the candle went out, and the wax splashed up onto the chancel carpet - two pieces of Christ Candle lay on the floor only loosely connected by the wick.
I’m sure it says somewhere in the church constitution that ‘thou shalt not knock over and break the lit Christ candle during church’. There was a collective gasp, and then a sigh of relief when it was revealed that no one was hurt.
Sensing the tension, the interns daughter ran to her embarrassed mother sitting in the front row - repeatedly saying “Sorry mama sorry mama sorry...”
I am thankful that my daughter... I mean... that interns daughter could run to her mother and know that forgiveness was coming - even though in that moment she was terrified and scared about what might happen next... and the temptation might have been to run the other way, but she ran into her embarrassed mother’s arms.
This is the very same trust that we are called to. The faith like a child, to believe that even when we break the Christ candle, or perhaps we have made the choices that might seem to make us unworthy of God’s love, we can still trust that God will receive us, we will not be turned away. God’s love is not waiting for us - it is always coming.
THEOLOGY
It was actually my wife that found todays Gospel - the good news for today. Right there in the middle of the reading “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.” She said “This speaks to a core fear we all have. It speaks to the deepest fear we have as humans - to not be chosen - to be left alone. It speaks to fear that someone we love will turn us away.”
God is the one who promises to never leave us. God is the one who promises that he is coming. God is the one who promises to send us an advocate to be with us till that time when we are fully united.
The natural outcome of loving God is to live and learn in all that Jesus commands. This is what happens when someone is saturated with the Love of God - it pours out onto others. There is no path to the love of God through fearfully trying to earn the love - this is to try to take the love and posses it. No the love of God is coming - like getting caught out in the rain, it’s not hard to get wet.
RECONCILIATION
So today we hear a great promise. A promise that addresses our loneliness - we are not alone. A promise that addresses our need to know we are cared for. God will not leave us orphaned.
Out of this, the burden of loving the world is made light - the challenge to learn Jesus commandments and to love God becomes possible.
And we can apply all this trust to God’s mission to love and bless the world.
Henri Nouwen writes:
A Christian community is a healing community not because wounds are cured and pains are alleviated, but because wounds and pains become openings and occasions for a new vision. Sharing weakness becomes a reminder to one and all of the coming strength.
May it be so with us. In our worst moments, God is reaching down and signing the adoption papers.
In our wounds and pains, God is informing us of who we are - the adoption papers are already signed.
We are the children of the God that makes promises to come to us, to walk with us, and to stick with us... even when we knock over the Christ Candle.
AMEN