Rev. Judy’s Homily for the Seventh Sunday 2/23/14-Love Who? Be What?
Be what? Love who? Be what? Are the questions that may rise to our lips as we consider the texts for Sunday. With an air of incredulity and a sense of “you have got to be kidding” we shudder as we consider our daily lives and the struggles of our world with what is asked of us in the Law of Moses and the spirit of the Law that Jesus preached. What does God want of us? What did Jesus ask of us after all?
In the readings for Sunday we are told, as the Israelites were, to “be holy”, not to hate or exact vengeance, and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Leviticus 19: 1-2, 17-18). The Epistle reading (I Cor. 3:16-23) tells us that we are holy temples of God. And Jesus takes the Law one step farther in asking that we love not only our neighbors but our enemies. He sums it up by asking us to be perfect as our God is perfect.
Living the life that Jesus taught is hard! Now, as then, it is counter cultural and sometimes counter intuitive. Our readings today go to the heart of the Gospel Jesus preached and once again we are challenged by them.
Let’s make it real. Last week our News-Press ran an article about sexual offenders being dropped off in the woods to live in primitive make-shift camps because of the laws which prohibit them from living so many feet from schools and children. The truth is that once convicted, employment and housing are equally major problems. Editorials were quickly written and some allowed that despite despicable acts even sexual offenders deserved to live indoors (I very much agree) others said that they deserved to live nowhere. I have worked and ministered to some of the sex offenders who live in the woods, and more often with those whose lives have been forever stunted and altered by sexual offenders and predators. Sometimes I have had to pray hard for the grace to treat the offenders with Christ’s love. It was not easy. If they do come to church on Sunday, the church leaders and I welcome them then watch like hawks so they are nowhere near our beloved children. I only had to intervene on one occasion, but I fully understood the editorials that wanted them run out of town entirely (to someone else’s town). Of course the Church actually did that in repeatedly passing along and not stopping priests who sexually abused children. Only now are the victims heard and the Church is asking forgiveness and dealing with recompense. But there is no real recompense for such hurt caused by those who were trusted with the spiritual and actual lives of God’s children.
On the larger scale, as a diaspora New Yorker who viewed those Twin Towers on a daily basis at one time, and a US citizen I am still working on forgiving the suicide bombers who caused the World Trade Towers to fall on 9/11, and forgiving is a precursor to love for those who are our enemies. Never mind how our own hatreds perpetuate enmity and how many thousands of innocents our bombs and drones have killed. Jesus is saying if you don’t strike back the hateful actions stop-and that is a revolutionary and perhaps practical understanding. They certainly have not stopped with our striking back.
Another example: I love animals. When a man living in a nearby town tied his little dog to the back of his pickup truck and dragged it through the streets practically skinning it alive, I said “they ought to drag him by that truck!” Miraculously the little dog survived and was adopted but the man only got a fine. I was livid-I wanted justice and maybe I wanted vengeance. There is a fine line, and anger filled my heart. On another occasion I worked with a down and out couple where the man was abusive of the woman. We were able to help them both get incomes and housing. She repeatedly returned to him even when she finally received her own income and housing. I found it hard not to lose patience with her, but by the Grace of God, I didn’t. Once she was in our food pantry getting food and he appeared at the door yelling and drunk. He attempted to push past our co-Pastor Judy Beaumont to get in, grabbing her shoulder. I confess, I literally pushed him out of the doorway so that he landed on the ground. I then shut the door and the woman stayed with us until he left. Yes, I was angry and confess again, the woman got still another lecture that she probably would or could not heed. I am in no way perfected in love! And, that is my understanding of what Jesus means by “Be perfect”. How do we learn to love as God loves?
Jesus said “love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. This will prove that you are children of God. For God makes the sun to rise on bad and good alike; God’s rain falls on the just and unjust.
If you love those who love you what merit is there in that….Therefore be perfect as Abba God in heaven is perfect.”(Matt. 5:48- The Inclusive Bible).
It is not humanly possible to be perfect in the usual English meanings of the word-flawlessness and infallibility. But Jesus did not speak or think in English. Nor did he speak Greek to the largely peasant masses that gathered at his feet, but many scriptural interpretations relate to Greek words. Jesus spoke Aramaic and lived in the Semitic, Hebrew culture of his times. According to Errico (“And There Was Light…” p.102) the Aramaic word gmeera means perfect in the sense of “complete”, “thorough”, “finished” “full-grown”, “mature”, “accomplished”, “comprehensive”, ”rounded out”, and “all-inclusive”. It is used in the Near East for arriving at maturity. As the context for Jesus’ words about being perfect is loving those who are not your friends or even your countrymen and women, and those who may indeed be your enemies, Jesus is saying love like God loves-the rain falls on all-just and unjust. God’s love is all inclusive, all are God’s children, no one is left out. Wow!
One Peshitta text for Matt 5:48 reads: “therefore be all-inclusive even as your Father who is in heaven is all-inclusive”. Our very purpose in life is to be a non-violent and loving presence. We cannot will this to happen within us, but,thanks be to God, the Spirit enlivens us. God’s presence within us shines through as we love and grow in loving, for we are never finished with this kind of essential growth. When we grow and show the face of Love, God is happening. (Errico, And There Was Light, pp 166-169). Growing maturity in the faith of Christ is demonstrated by our growth in all- inclusive love. I will soon reach my 71st birthday and I am not there yet. But at least I usually know when I am falling short and when it is only God’s grace that enables such love to come from me. And I know because that happens all the time. I think that is what the Epistle (I Cor. 3:23) means when it says “…you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God”-God empowers us to be what God wants us to be-the face of love.
The Message translation is closer to the Aramaic meanings and I like it:
“In a word, what I’m saying is Grow Up….live out your God created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”(Matt 5:48)
Here is a prayer, maybe you will pray it with me: Our loving God, teach me, change me, and breathe love into me and through me. It is too hard for me to “get it” on my own. Help me to grow up in the faith of Jesus the Christ.
Amen.
Pastor Judy Lee, ARCWP
A St. Valentine’s Day Reflection-The Hunger for the I Love You with Rvdas. Olga Lucia and Judy
This insightful blog is from our sister priest, Olga Lucia Alvarez Benjumea of Colombia,South America. She wrote it in March of 2010 and shares it with us now. I have edited the English sometimes loosely but the thoughts are all hers.She is saying that all of us prodigal daughters, sons, parents, spouses, partners and friends are longing for love and affirmation from our loving God and one another. Thank you, Rvda. Olga Lucia!
As I read Olga Lucia’s beautiful words I thought about a young person who is part of my church. She rarely attends as she is fearful in crowds and was agoraphobic, remaining in her room for many years, until fairly recently when caring,love,began to thaw the iceberg that became her heart. She was abused physically and emotionally by an angry father until he finally left the home. She left school after the ninth grade. She began hearing voices in later adolescence. She hardly ever left the house. Her family attends our church and I had intermittent pastoral contact with her over the last few years. But something happened to bring us closer together. My surgery for the GIST(slow growing low level malignant tumor in my stomach) a year ago caused me to stop and reflect on many things. I reviewed my ministry and I identified that this one young adult was neglected by me in the midst of those clanging cymbals that made a lot more noise. I wanted to try harder to reach her-God laid her on my heart and I could listen to my heart because I was not very active nor running around with the ministry or life. I also realized that I could no longer take care of my large aviary adequately.
I guess that I had reached her enough for her to come out of her room to greet me and express her pleasure that I was getting better when I visited her family. That was a big step for her. I spent some time with her and asked if she liked birds and if she thought she could get to my house and help with the birds. We were both amazed as she thought she could, and she did come to learn how to do this. She was gentle and happy with the birds and she enjoyed this job. We talked a little each time she came. She was able to accept a referral to the Mental Health Center and also to begin seeing her general practitioner. She opened herself to the possibility of other friendships very slowly but surely. We saw the iceberg melt. We saw the fear recede. We saw a whole person developing with courage and in response to caring. Recently there was a setback when a physical problem required serious medical intervention. She tried to retreat and move back into the iceberg again. But soon she started coping with it “because you and my doctors and my friend are so persistent”. It is such a blessing to witness her growth into life. For Valentines Day we gave her a card with pictures of the kittys and birds in it. Today she brought me and Pastor Judy Beaumont a beautiful card that said “People as kind and as loving as you are God’s Valentines to the world. Happy Valentine’s Day”. And in her own hand she wrote:” thanks for all the help and support. You both are wonderful. Happy Valentine’s to both of you and the birds and cats are great, I love them.” Wow-unfrozen by love! How wonderful to experience it. Rvda. Olga Lucia is right!
love and blessings,
Pastor Judy Lee,ARCWP
The Good Shepherd Inclusive Catholic Community, Fort Myers, Florida
The Hunger of the I Love You in The Parable of The Prodigal Son by Rvda. Olga Lucia Alvarez
This text ,Luke 15:11-38 would call it the hunger of the “I love you”. When you have never had the warmth of a hug, a kiss, a loving detail, we become sullen, hard, frozen as icebergs. But if you meet this friend / or that support, this companions kind hand, that solidarity , that fraternity, you realize what you’re worth when someone cares. If you were a block of cement you’d melt like the opening of a a dam. See it fall lovingly, soft or hard, crystalline buds cascade of love and “I love you” spontaneous, fearless, free as the wind.
Some have had the experience of being concrete blocks, others perhaps never were, but one day the love they lost or never had, for whatever reason, unfounded fears, frozen by fears, by blockages in training, block out the experience of love. But like the prodigal son, and others somehow recognize and realize that in the house of my Father/Mother there is affection, a party, gestures of love hugs and kisses, and large or small details in pretty paper the bonds of love are wrapped. After thinking a while, we push and we run, with an open heart willing to melt in the loving embrace that receives and welcomes us because we are their daughters and sons and to God we are alike.
There are so many heartbreaks, causes of many diseases, and family violence. There are so many broken homes that create icebergs. Yet God’s great love is without fear and without reserve. You are melted by it and you feel violence, hatred and revenge that has brought us so many dead giving way and relenting.
It is the responsibility of all of us, of you and I of all who were born to ask for forgiveness, because this world, this life, and being distracted in our internal conflicts, we have not been able to sweep, shake and make ourselves as new. If you are sensitive to what I am saying here, I say it is because you have encountered the love of God, sometimes in another person.
Women and men need affection,it is the love of God that moves us to love. But, just as we know it, we are afraid. We may need a messenger to show us the face of God.
You have to be hungry for the “I love you”, you have to give them to receive them, you have to break the ice.
Leticia, I care about you, Get well; William;! I love you, Teresa, you’re great! Laura, God gave you that smile, so beautiful!. David! I hug and kiss you, Maru, thanks for the “I love you” I love you too, Camilin, Maria; my teachers, I love them! Diego! You’re the most beautiful thing God has given me in life, your presence, your friendship! Machelina, sister and my friend, how nice to have you in this life. Camilo, Inés, Benton, were thankful for that company. Blanca, Catalina, Charo, although they are far they are closer.
My life wants to be a hymn to life, I ask forgiveness for the times I have not loved, and I’ve offended, for the times I made you suffer and grieve someone this close or this far. To my family, my ancestors, my mother Earth, Air, Water, Fire, because I have abused them by not loving them and taking care of them as I should. I love you, I love you and I thank you. My greatest expression of love, commitment and responsibility towards all , is to show the face of God, that you recognize and find. May we, as we are, big, small, old or young, see the face of God. Run eagerly seeking your love and experience “I love you” like the prodigal son.
Thank God my spirit, because as they say, that when someone writes the soul walks. Mine escaped and went to recess and enjoy this day. .
Olga Lucia Alvarez B Rvdas. Olga Lucia and Judy
Bogotá, March 9/10
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