EAT THE SCROLL : October 2017

Year A, Pentecost 19, Proper 24

homily preached at St Stephen's, New Harmony, IN

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

Matthew 22:34-46

We have a densely packed morning of readings
There’s the death of Moses

He gets right up to the edge of the promised land
…seeing but never touching

We have Paul showing his soft side to the Thessalonians

And we have the last
of the testing, testing, testing stories in Matthew’s Gospel
with the Great Commandment
the law of Love

It is a LOVE Sunday
Love God

Love your neighbor

Love, love, love

First…a story

…about an eager 16^th century disciple…I will call him Wannabe…

who finally gets an appointment with his very holy Bishop:

“Please Bishop, tell me, what must I do to attain perfection.”
"You must love God with all your heart," said the Holy Bishop
"and your neighbor as yourself."
"Yes, yes, thank you dear Bishop…but I was hoping for something a little more…concrete. Can you comment on the HOW part."
"Love," the Bishop said again,
"is both the means and the end,
the only way is, nothing but Love itself
. . . .Just as the soul is the life of the body,
so love is the life of the soul."
Taking a deep exasperated breath
and with great frustration…
and maybe a “DUH” on the tip of his tongue
Wannabe kept at it
"I am no further than I was when I walked in here!!!"
"Tell me…Tell me…how to acquire such love!!!"

The Bishop sat back
Wannabe leaned in
thinking…finally…I got through to him
"The best way,” the Bishop began slowly
“the shortest and easiest way
of loving God with all one's heart….
(Wannabe leans in further…)
is to love God wholly and heartily!"

He simply would give no other answer.

Then the Bishop added:
"You are only one more
in a long line of wannabe’s who want to hear of
methods …and systems
and secret ways of becoming perfect,
and I can only tell them that the sole secret is a hearty love of God,
and the only way of attaining that love is by loving.
You learn to speak by speaking,
to study by studying, to run by running,
to work by working; and just so…
You learn to love both God and neighbor by loving.

It’s okay…you are an apprentice,
but the very power of love
will lead you on to become a master in the art of loving.
But Masters in LOVE never believe that they have reached mastery;
for love should go on increasing until we draw our very last breath."

The Bishop is, of course, right…

But I totally get Wannabe’s dissatisfaction
One of our 21^st century problems is, I believe

Cheap WORDS

This Love business has become so mundane

…a soundtrack immediately begins to play in my head

…Love, Love, Love…love, love, love…love is all we need

We know there is more to it…but LOVE
We have a word problem

You know how, every now and again,
a word springs up in our conversations
and then it quickly becomes used for everything???

Like…AWESOME…that was one of them

All of the sudden every THING and every ONE was AWESOME

“That is soooo AWESOME!”

“She is sooooo AWESOME!”

And the result is

In effect

That NOTHING is awesome…Awesome means nothing anymore

Its AWESOMENESS has been squeezed out of it

Every bit of UMPH…squeezed out

And so…it seems…with Love

It has become too easy

Suspiciously easy
We love everything

I LOVE chocolate

I loved that Movie…

I love…a decorating tip I saw on pinterest

Love, love, love

All these loves

This harem of loves

are a response to something outside of me

and so…in that way…it is passive…I am not the initiator

And passive is…well…not that demanding

there is no real risk in it

Like AWESOME

LOVE is a little worse for the wear

Biblically speaking, our word problem is further complicated

Because there are three words in the Bible that get translated LOVE

Philia (familial love, brotherly-sisterly love)

Eros (erotic love…we know what that means)

and Agape (God-Like Love)

In today’s Gospel…and most often in the NT
The choice word for LOVE is AGAPE

And the thing about Agape

Is that it is anything but passive

It is on the move

It is active

Mercy, generosity, loving-kindness---AT WORK

And so

With ‘Love on the move’
It isn’t a response to something outside me

It is a choice…not simply a feeling.

It is a choice to act in a certain way

Agape love isn’t passive…
it isn’t a response to something or someone outside of me

Agape is something I DO…

Agape love is my imitation of the way God loves…

Our reading from St. Paul to the Thessalonians has something for this conversation
Bad Ass, passionate, argumentative, Paul
picks a very beautiful metaphor
to describe his love for the community at Thessalonica
Feminine images are rare enough in Scripture…
especially in Paul
When they do occur we ought to take note
The metaphor is a breast-feeding woman
and scholars suggest
that what is being referred to here
is a wet nurse
Most likely a slave
(and in NT times these wet-nurses were highly honored for their gift of life)
Paul compares himself with a lactating woman who feeds and nourishes a child (not her own)
with her own self…with her body…her very life
Paul says:
We were gentle among you
tender…like a nursing woman
caring for a child NOT her own…
That’s how deeply we care for you
sharing the Gospel with you…YES
but also sharing our very selves
Paul’s language
his choice of metaphor
is not only surprisingly gentle and tender
it is completely active
The action is that of nourishing
it is a physical gift
and it takes ‘our very selves’

When my grandson Theo was born
he came early
he was in the NICU for a week
It took a while for Stephanie’s milk to come in
but Theo needed it NOW!

Did you know…
I didn’t know this…
but there is…in the hospital…a bank of donated breast milk available for just such circumstances
(as an aside…this liquid gold can cost up to 100 dollars a day!)
This ‘sharing of a stranger’s VERY SELF’
had a profound impact on Theo of course, but also on Robbie and Steph…and me too

Love in action
active love
love as a choice to act

When Jesus posits the great commandment
in two parts
he is reaching back into the tradition

Reaching back to Deuteronomy-for the first part

and Leviticus for the second
So he’s not offering anything particularly new
but what is new is how he joins them
how he relates them making them the hinge…the ground…the base upon which everything else hangs
In Leviticus, after the ‘love your neighbor’ bit there are examples
because love needs to get concrete

verse 23 caught my attention

When you reap the harvest of your land

You shall leave the last row unplowed

You shall not gather the gleanings of your harvest

You shall leave them for the poor and the alien

I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD

Love as a choice to act

I am not a lactating woman
I have no fields to leave unplowed or ungleaned
But the images
Milk and Grain…
like the commandments themselves
Milk and Grain
they are …basic…the ground, the hinge…
fundamental to what nourishes life
sustenance and nourishment

…this AGAPE love must get concrete
Just what might it look like?
What does it mean…for me or for you…to ‘share our very selves, our very lives’???
What does it mean…for me or for you…to leave the last row unplowed???

There is a plentitude
Of nourishment and sustenance
Right here

The task for us is to make it concrete
and to continually press on
Because as our 16^th century Bishop put it:
…love should go on increasing until we draw our very last breath

some sources:

Suzanne Guthrie, Soulwork Toward Sunday http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/proper25a.html

Clayton Schmit, Dear Working Preacher, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1063

Sermon Brainwave https://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx

EAT THE SCROLL

Sunday, October 29, 2017

CHEAP WORDS*

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

The Weight of a Day