Looking in the Mirror

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
June 29, 2008; 7th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 8, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 10:40-42) -- Jesus said,"Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple-- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."
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If this Gospel sounds familiar to you, good. I extended last week's reading to include these verses from Matthew in order to tell a story about Mike McMurray, the only person who carried a briefcase to Oxford High School in 1966. I used to call him "Secret Agent Man." In last week's sermon I offered him as an example of someone from the edges, from the fringe, who speaks with a different voice and a different perspective, yet speaks truth to power. He was for me, a prophet. And he helped tune my ear to those odd, passionate people who may be the Jeremiah's of our day.

This week I'd like to reverse the focus. I want you to imagine yourself looking at your own image in a mirror. Whatever mirror you are most accustomed to seeing your face in, look at that mirror right now, and listen to these words that Matthew attributes to Jesus. Listen to these words as being addressed to you, about you, as you gaze at your own reflection. The voice speaking is Jesus:

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.

Look at your reflection in the mirror. You are created in the image and likeness of God. You are a word of God to the world. God's Spirit dwells with you and in you. You are a member of the Body of Christ. You are one with Jesus. So, whoever welcomes you, welcomes Jesus; welcomes God.

That welcome is bilateral. There are those to whom you offer a generous welcome. You see them with a love that is not unlike the love of Jesus. There are also those who let you know you are welcome. Isn't it affirming and energizing for someone to welcome your arrival and presence? It means so much to see another's face light up and realize it is you who is delighting them.

My favorite seminary professor was Dr. O. Sidney Barr. He was sloppy and disheveled: whispy hair flying like static electricity; wrinkled brown jacket; long, uncombed eyebrows. He lurked over his messy desk with a perpetual scholar's slump, reading the Epistles from the original Greek, preparing his lecture on Galatians again like it was the first time.

Every student at the General Theological Seminary was assigned to one teacher who was to be our advisor. I had Dr. Barr. I was supposed to visit with him each semester about my choice of classes for the upcoming semester, and he was supposed to be available during the in-between times if I had any other questions or needs.

One day I had a question. I rang the bell at his apartment door, and his lovely wife let me in and welcomed me as though she were expecting me. "Sidney is in his study," she pointed down the hall. I looked into his study cautiously. It was a scene from Dickens. The hulking professor pouring over Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, so lost in passionate concentration that he didn't hear me enter.

"Dr. Barr," I spoke softly so as not to startle him. His studies interrupted, he turned suddenly, and instantly burst into a warm smile, opening his arms with a greeting that seemed as though I had made his day by dropping in unannounced during his class preparation. I've never forgotten that moment. It was a generous moment of welcome. I felt cared for, honored, maybe even in some way, special.

One day, a bunch of us were talking about the faculty -- who we liked, who we didn't. And the person I thought of as the biggest ditz in the class ranted on about how much she loved Dr. Barr. (For once, I agreed with her.) She went on and on, while I feigned interest. Until she said, "He's my advisor. And, you know, when I go by his study, even if I'm interrupting his work, he greets me like my visit had made his day."

"Wait," I recoiled with inner protest. "That's how he greets me," I thought. But before I could say a word, she added proudly. "He makes me feel like I'm special."

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcome me welcomes the one who sent me.

The One on the other side of the mirror is Jesus. And the one on this side of the mirror is Jesus as well. God looks at us through the eyes of Jesus. God sees us and sees Jesus in us. We are the incarnation of God also; we are created in the image and likeness of God. So each of us is special. Each of us is given God's spirit to go into the world in generous welcome.

A few of us will go into the world as prophets, speaking uncomfortable truths like Jeremiah. Prophets rarely receive a warm welcome, but when they do, they give to those open hearts who welcome them a prophet's reward. Prophets need to be able to go to a mirror, where they see God looking back at them with a deep, appreciative welcome. They receive so few otherwise.

Most of us will go into the world and live the best we can. Most people are pretty-much doing the best they can. God appreciates that. God welcomes your best. Sometimes it doesn't feel like enough to us, but God is gracious and merciful. Welcoming our best, and immediately forgiving us whenever we don't live up to our best. Righteous living is living with God in a relationship of trust and welcome. Lots of the time doing our best; some of the time doing not quite our best; and all of the time offering it in trust to God who welcomes us with Dr. Barr gladness.

From time to time, each of us will help someone else. We will be the one to reach out and give a cup of cold water to one of these little ones. Every time we do so, we are refreshing Christ. And every time someone reaches out to comfort you, that person is comforting Jesus as well. The one who gives is Jesus, and the one who receives is Jesus. The cup of cold water given and received is a divine exchange. "Truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."

Frederick Buechner says, "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." A hungry student meets a glad teacher, and God is in the midst of them. I've thought about how that happened with Dr. Barr. It wasn't so much an effort for him. He wasn't steeling his attitude and forcing himself to be pleasant to students because that was part of his job description. No, it was much more natural than that. It was the way he was. His welcome came out of his being. It wasn't so much something he did, as something he was. And his being had been conformed to Jesus, largely through things like study and prayer and practice.

When I went to see him, I don't think I really needed anything. Maybe I had a question, or maybe that was an excuse. Who knows? But what I knew was that he was real. And every once in a while, we all need a dose of "real."

Someone has said, our task is not so much to "help" others as to be with them in their joy and sorrow. Not so much to do for them as to be whole in their presence. Not so much to save the world as to be the saved people that we are. We're not really out to save the world; God has already done that. The Good Life is to live in such a transformed way that when the reign of God breaks in we recognize it and welcome it, prepared to live in it gladly and naturally as true royalty.

It may be that the reign of God breaks in daily each morning as we look into our mirror. We look into the mirror, and what do we see? The welcome of God, gazing with loving regard at Jesus, looking back with glad affection.

What else might be in that mirror? Maybe sometimes a prophet. Most of the time a righteous person, doing the best they can. Often one who is willing to give a cup of cold water to one of those little ones. Sometimes, a little one in need of a cup of cold water.

Truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.

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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373

More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org

Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Secret Agent Man

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
June 22, 2008; 6th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 7, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

Matthew 10:25-39(40-42) – Jesus said to the twelve disciples,

"A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

"So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

"Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

"For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one's foes will be members of one's own household.

"Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."

"Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."
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I don't know if it's still this way, but when I was a freshman in high school, the seniors seemed pretty great and powerful. I'll admit I was a little naive and immature even for a freshman, but in our adolescent world, seniors had a god-like aura. The senior boys looked like men and were so worldly; the smart seniors were so smart, and next year they would be in college; and the senior beauties were mysterium tremendum.

But the most adult-like, smartest and most mysterious senior was Mike McMurray. He walked the halls with a condescending, knowing air; he had a powerful voice and presence; and he usually had a briefcase. Nobody else came to Oxford High School carrying a briefcase.

This was 1966, and the James Bond movie Goldfinger had spawned the TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the spy spoof Get Smart, and Johnny River's hit song Secret Agent Man. Christmas catalogs featured spy briefcases that would shoot plastic bullets from a hidden button near the handle, take surreptitious photos from a concealed lens, and hide various forms of firearms and weaponry inside.

Senior Mike McMurray carried a briefcase to high school, and freshman Lowell Grisham loved to tail him like a yapping terrier puppy, with taunts like, "Hey, Secret Agent man. What have you got in your briefcase? Who are you spying on? Are you going to kill somebody today?"

In hindsight, I realize he was very tolerant of me. He never threatened, except in complicated jest -- "Yes, I have a bomb set to go off in your britches during third period." Usually he just kept walking with a bored, sophisticated grin and dismissed me, with "Go away child. You bother me."

But every once in a while, Mike McMurray would open his briefcase and pull out some piece of paper. Often it included some photocopied non-mainstream newspaper story or a small print essay. "Here!" he would thrust the paper toward me. "Go read this. It'll improve your mind."

I usually read them. They were essays about things I didn't know about -- Shell Oil's deal with the South African apartheid government; the importance of the Shah of Iran; the rise of peasant communes in Chile and Central America. I suspected him of being a Communist. But I noticed, every once in a while, whatever Mike McMurray was interested in ended up as front page news many months later. There was something prophetic about these strange tracts that he carried in his briefcase.

As the school year ended, there was an incident that marked the memories of all of us who were students at Oxford High that year. One of the seniors, Bill Hartman, had been suspended for three days for getting drunk at the Junior-Senior Banquet. The suspension included Honors Day. Bill was an honors student and slated to receive several awards. He was promised that he would receive any awards that were his, but he couldn't attend.

Bill had been the driving force behind the school theater that year. He was stage manager, designed the sets, and recruited students from the Drama Department at Ole Miss to do the makeup and lighting. Bill and Mike were close friends.

On Honors Day, the principal announced the winner of the Thespian Award for Drama – "Mike McMurray." Mike walked with huge, purposeful steps down the aisle, bypassed the side stairs leaping onto the stage directly, and grabbed the microphone, loudly announcing that he would not accept this award, it rightly belongs to Bill Hartman. At that point, chaos ensued. The principal tried to grab the microphone away from Mike, and they wrestled physically for a while until the principal literally dragged him out the side door of the auditorium and told him never to come back. Mike was expelled from school the next day. He did not graduate, and had to go to summer school at Columbia Military Academy to get his high school diploma.

As you might imagine, the reaction around town was pretty severe toward Mike's scandalous behavior. It darkened that year's graduation.

I thought of Mike as I read the words from the prophet Jeremiah, crying passionately, "within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot." Jeremiah knows that people will not want to hear what he has to say. He knows, he will be punished for speaking truth. Nevertheless, he speaks. It didn't turn out well for him.

In our Gospel today, Jesus acknowledges almost passively, that there will be conflict. He recognizes that he is a divisive person. He says that what he brings will divide friends and families. He insists that the demands of God will create division. When anyone stands up for what they believe to be right, there will be disagreement. That's just the way it is.

It's not that Jesus demands that we be agents of division, but that we recognize that contention and division will happen. Conflict happens. Especially in election years. And what Jesus demands is that we be open and non-anxious enough to welcome others in the midst of conflict, to be open and unthreatened when conflict happens. That other, the one who is so infuriating or intimidating, may be the prophet who like Jeremiah must be the bearer of uncomfortable news.

No need to be defensive, anxious or self-protecting. After all, "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."

Instead of being defensive, Jesus tells us to welcome the prophet, and receive a prophet's reward; welcome the righteous one -- even though they can be so intimidating, those righteous ones; welcome the little ones -- the under-represented voices of marginal, the outcast and the different. Welcome them as disciples, even if they may seem so different that they make us uncomfortable.

My friend Tony Clavier, who used to be at Trinity Church in Pine Bluff, says,
This is surely a timely message when we see so much conflict in our parishes, dioceses, in the national church, and abroad, conflicts marked by the ways of the world rather than by the hospitality of discipleship. Following Jesus is not all about fighting for a Cause... Following Jesus means walking into a holy, gentle, self-forgetting lifestyle lived in community. It means costly learning to be like Jesus. One of the signs that we are doing this is our willingness to open our arms to others, and to take the risk of being abused in the process. Yet risking being used, and indeed of losing everything, means following the path Jesus trod. In human terms, Jesus is the great loser. Yet, through his loss, Jesus becomes Christ the Victor, and in him his victory is also our own. (1)

Eventually the truth came out. Bill Hartman had indeed won the Thespian Award. "Nothing that is covered up will not be uncovered." Years later a classmate of Mike McMurray's recalled the whole incident on the Class of 1966 web page. Chappie Pinkston is a pulmonologist now living in Jackson. He says, "The real hero of the whole affair was Mike McMurray. He knew what the administration was doing was wrong, and he did everything he could, even sacrificing his diploma, to do what was right. Even though I haven't seen him since then, I will always respect him for what he did that day."

And I've always paid attention to those alternative press things and those flyers that odd, passionate people want to put into your hands at inconvenient moments. You never know when what they are warning about may be front page news sometime down the line.
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(1) Anthony F. M. Clavier, Sermons that Work, from the Episcopal Church web service, June 26, 2005. Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8) Year A

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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373

More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org

Good Enough

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
June 1, 2008; 3rd Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 4, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 7:21-29) -- Jesus said. "Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?' Then I will declare to them, `I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.'

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell-- and great was its fall!"

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.
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I've shared more personally in our 10:00 Christian Formation hour than I tend to do in preaching. There is something informal and intimate in that other setting. Visiting in front of the fireplace in the Parish Hall is a setting that invites conversation -- the give and take that nurtures the exchange of intimacies. The singularity of the pulpit makes me cautious about talking about "my stuff," lest it turn into something about me rather than something about God and something about God and us. But I'd like to risk telling a little bit about the foundation on which I was built, and how I needed to dig beneath some sand to get to a bit of solid rock.

I was the first and only son of an only child. My father was the first from his extended family to go to college and get a professional degree. Underneath his drive was a powerful mother, who raised him with high expectations and planted in him a subconscious need for perfection. Subconsciously, naturally, he passed on those expectations of perfection to his son. There was no malice or ill will involved; it was simply the only thing he knew, the only way he knew how to be.

My experience of salvation was largely an experience of liberation from unreasonable expectations. For me grace came when my value was no longer connected to my performance. Maybe that's why I like the apostle Paul so much. I feel in him a kindred spirit. I know in my bones what he means when he speaks of "justification by grace through faith." Or Paul Tillich's rephrasing of that statement: "Simply accept the fact that you are accepted."

The angel who mediated my salvation was my roommate Bubba. Bubba grew up with, well..., fewer expectations than I did. I can see his jubilant face as he raised his Pabst Blue Ribbon to the heavens in glad thanksgiving, "I passed freshman English, Lowell. Look! A 'D'! Can't wait to tell my Dad. He'll be so relieved." When I came home with a 96, I was asked, "Well, what did you miss?"

What I realized while living with Bubba, was that he was happier that I was. And I wanted to be more like Bubba. Now, I wasn't Bubba. "D's" weren't necessarily in my nature. But when I decided that an "85" was just fine -- I didn't have to make a "100" -- I made a quantum leap in happiness. And when I realized that my Heavenly Father loved me unconditionally, even through the failures that if graded would have been "F's," something deep inside me was healed. It was on that foundation of God's unqualified love that I built a new way of being in the world.

Along the way, I picked up phrases or ideas that helped crystalize that central theme. For a while, "Your best is good enough," was comforting. Then I heard a line to trumped that: "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." I like that one. I like that one a lot. Take that one with you and think about it some, especially if it bothers you.

Every time I've started a new job, my first sermon quotes Robert Wicks: "Have low expectations and high hopes." Low expectations of people, and of me, so you don't force your control needs upon them so much; but high hopes grounded in the faith that God is always present, doing something good, something wonderful in every situation. Accept the moment, do what you can, and expect to be surprised.

Voltaire said, "The best is the enemy of the good." Good enough is good enough. Pursuing perfection, whatever that is, becomes infinitely more difficult as you get near to it. There is a time to say simply, "That's good enough," and be satisfied. "Good enough" is usually very effective. To insist on perfection so often devalues the good. "Don't call them perfectionists," said my Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor, "call them what they are. Fault-finders. There's no such thing as a perfectionist."

There is some deep wisdom in Garrison Keillor's folksy stories of "Lake Wobegon," "where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." In Lake Wobegon they do their shopping at "Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery," where the motto is, "if you can't get it at Ralph's, you can probably get along without it."

Swarthmore College psychology professor Barry Schwartz tells of a recent trip to the market where he "encountered 285 varieties and brands of cookies, 75 iced tea drinks, 40 toothpastes, 230 soups, 175 salad dressings, and 275 cereals." Would you like to buy some jeans. Do you want slim fit, relaxed fit, easy fit, boot cut or straight leg, button fly or zipper fly, stonewashed, acid washed, distressed, or unwashed? And that's not even considering the designer jeans.

How about religious consumers? Restless spiritual seekers may find themselves dabbling in this and grabbing for that, like customers trying all 40 brands of toothpastes to see which one is the right one. Others, faced with the vastness of spiritual choices, will freeze, staking their religious fortune to some claim of perfection, defensively trying to devalue all other religious claims in the shade of whatever light they have seen. In their anxiety to be right, they flip the "off" button.

Dr. Schwartz cites studies that show that for many Americans, as the number of potential choices goes up, we tend to freeze, becoming "more stressed, anxious, pessimistic, regretful, disappointed, frustrated, and depressed." Some examples: as the number of retirement plans available increases, the chances that people will choose any plan decline. As the number of optional assignments available to students increases, the likelihood that they will write on any of the topics decreases, and the quality of the work produced by those who do also falls.

There is a great burden placed on people to make the best decision: to find the best job, the best cell phone plan, the best digital camera, the best school, the best church. Studies show that plentiful choice increases the chance that people will regret their decisions because of all of the alternatives they passed up. Was there something better I could have chosen? (1)

We ingest cultural messages that tell us "only the best is good enough." I disagree. The best is the enemy of the good. And good enough is good enough.

I've wondered whether some of the pathology that drives religions to make absolute or infallible claims for their beliefs or their texts is our subconscious appetite for the perfect. Our desire for the whole, the perfect, the complete is actually our deepest, inner desire for God. Each of us has a God-shaped vacuum within us that is the source of our deepest, most passionate desires. Yet only God can fill that vacuum. Only the infinite, ultimate and mysterious Reality of God can truly satisfy us. But God is ultimate and mysterious. We can't define and confine God. In the anxiety of living in the mystery, we replace God with other things and say they are whole, perfect and complete. But only God is God. Not the Bible. Not the Church.

We can't grasp and hold the perfect and the infinite, even though that is our deepest desire. But good enough is good enough. The Bible and the Church are fingers pointing to the holy and mysterious One who is God. There are other fingers that also point toward God: the beauty of nature; wonder of creation; the crack of a poem; the pursuit of truth; the sound of music; the surrender of love; the heart of compassion; the devotion of faiths; the love of humanity; the vastness of silence.

For me, I've found a way that works for me. In this spiritual tradition of the Episcopal Church, I am directed toward the ultimate from within a community that drinks from deep and ancient wells. This tradition is not perfect, and it does not have all the answers. Happily, it is a tradition that is open to learning from other sources. It is not perfect, but it is good enough. I am satisfied. I am pointed toward God who is whole and holy, healing and challenging, present and yearning. I can rest, for I am loved. I can reach beyond my grasp, for I am held. I can be. Simply be. And from that rested place of being, I can do "good enough." And whatever is worth doing, is worth doing badly.
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1. Barry Schwartz, Can You Say No to Too Many Choices?; Spirituality & Health, May/June, 2007, p. 58.

Trinity Sunday

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
May 18, 2008; Trinity Sunday, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 28:16-20) -- The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Trinity Sunday is unique. It is the only feast of the Church Year that celebrates a doctrine rather than a person or an event. Each year on Trinity Sunday, preachers try to shed some light on the mystery of the Trinity. For me today, that means a pretty abstract, theological sermon. I don't have any good stories; no good illustrations. So I need your help. I need you to work hard to stay awake, to be open, and to think. Thank you for trying. I'll preach something more entertaining the next time.

Our simplest statement about God is this: God is love. But love, to be love, must be given to the Beloved. Full love is requited love, when the object of love returns love equally. How wonderful that is, though. In the mutual outpouring, of love given and received, something new is created -- the very love that unites takes on a certain reality. Love creates a living, breathing unity. When love is strong, it gives life.

God is love. The communion of the Lover, Beloved and Enrapturer. Eternal loving. Eternal self-giving. The Father pours out the divine life into the Son; the Son speaks and embodies this life; and the Spirit brings both together in passionate delight and love.

That's some theological talk about the Trinity. But here's what is important about that. This same Trinitarian love is in us. The divine love of the Trinity makes us who we truly are. Jesus tells us, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love."

We were created by love, for love, to love. That's all we have to do. When Jesus summarized the commandments, he wrapped them into this one word. Love. Love God, neighbor and self. Everything else hangs on this. Or, as another theologian said, all morals and ethics boil down to one thing: Love God, and do what you will.

It's not an entirely pretty, romantic picture, though. Loving will put our lives at risk. Becoming a loving person can feel more like agony than like bliss or peace. Jesus was willing to accept the risk. He was willing to be a full person within the brokenness of human existence.

Here's the beauty and power of what we call salvation. In the miracle of God's grace, the whole creation is included within the loving embrace of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God has chosen to be with us. Intimately. God has chosen more than just to "have a relationship" with us. God has chosen to be in us. And God has embraced us into God's own life. The Trinity describes how God embraces all creation, including evil.

Simone Weil describes the "stretching apart" of the Trinity this way:

God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love. God created love in all its forms. [God] created beings capable of love from all possible distances. Because no other could do it, God went the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. The distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this agony beyond all others, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed.

This tearing apart, over which supreme love places the bond of supreme union, echoes perpetually across the universe in the midst of silence like two notes, separate yet melting into one, like pure and heart-rending harmony. This is the Word of God. The whole creation is nothing but its vibration.

Simone Weil is no ivory-towered academician, writing abstract theology from a safe distance. She lived in Nazi occupied France, and she suffered from chronic illness all her life. She knew evil, and she knew affliction. She knew the cross of Jesus to be the stretching out of God to us in our affliction and separation from hope.

On the cross, the Word of God cries out in dereliction, finding us, sharing our plight, crying to the Father. Our lostness and distance from each other and from God has been embraced within God's eternal life of love, within the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father. That Love is One Love, the bond of supreme union, which we know as the Holy Spirit.

In heaven this love is the song of pure joy. In our world it is the heart rending harmony of a child crying, a victim suffering. Where is God? God is in and with the unrescued Chinese child lying below the rubble of a school destroyed by an earthquake; God is in and with the family that food relief will not reach because of the xenophobic government of Myanmar. God is in and with the Tibetan monk who is being beaten this hour in an underground cell.

On the cross, Jesus took into himself all of our evil and all of our suffering, even the experience of feeling abandoned by God and accursed. Jesus absorbed it all into his being and offered it all back to God. Our suffering is forever embraced and offered within this eternal loving which is God's life. And God's answer is resurrection. New life! Never condemnation. God never says to hell with you. But rather God eternally receives Jesus' intercession, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Jesus took our bitter separation from God into his own life, lived in its midst, loved its victims, and shared our fate. Jesus brought all of this to the Father. Therefore we know: NOTHING can separate us from the love of God. We are completely free! Safe. Liberated from our own evil and that of others. We are enveloped into the life of the Trinity. This is the "one thing." The "one thing" worth knowing. Love. Living in love.

So, whenever you experience any manifestation of the love of God -- whenever there is anything good or anything true or anything beautiful in all the world -- it is the manifestation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God, eternally creating and loving the universe into being. But that's the easy part.

In the deeper, darker mystery of the Trinity, whenever you see willful evil, meaningless suffering, or utter lostness -- it is also the manifestation of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word of God, eternally embracing and offering our brokenness on the cross of Jesus.

God's response is always love. Love expressed in infinite ways. The familiar love given as truth, beauty or goodness; and the dark love that is the embrace of death into resurrection. We swim in an ocean of divine love. There is no escaping the love of God, even if we crucify him.

So relax. Breathe. There's nothing that can break our union with God, because Jesus has taken everything and everyone to the Father. There's nothing to worry about. All we need do is let love come to us. Let God love us. Let God's infinite love breathe us into being. And having been infinitely loved, all that we need do is to love: God, neighbor, and self. It's like most mysteries. Essentially, it's very simple. Not easy. But simple.

God is love. We were created by love, for love, to love. That's all there is.
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Some of this sermon is composed from notes for a class I taught to our young people's Confirmation group. The topic was the Trinity, and I used material from Mark McIntosh's fine book "Mysteries of Faith," volume eight in the New Church's Teaching Series. I'm pretty sure I've copied some of his language and some of his writing without quotes, but on a Saturday evening, it's too late to be scrupulous about that. I'll just ask his forgiveness instead of permission, and recommend that you buy and read his nicely written introduction to the theology of the Church.