single persons, people
of all races and families
of every kind.
Sunday
Service:
Holy Eucharist
at 9:30 am
Child care is available
Church of Our
Saviour
191 Flanagan Way (Rt 153) Secaucus, NJ 07094
Tel: 201-863-1449
Fax: 201-863-1474
Mark A. Lewis,
Vicar
MLewis@secaucus.org
Dorothy Fowlkes
Pastoral Associate
This page revised 22
May 00
http://www.secaucus.org/
oursaviour
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Making love
our basic enterprise
Reflections on the
lessons for the Fifth Sunday of Eastertide
By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar
Deuteronomy 4:32-40 / Psalm 66:1-8
I John 3:18-24 / John
14:15-21
Yesterday, on the radio, there was a program about a woman from Long Island who had started an organization to help immigrant women get the papers they need to get legal jobs so they can support their families. And it grew and grew and then one day she got a letter in the mail.
You may have heard of the McArthur Foundation. They are a group that keeps a watch out for people they decide are doing very significant work in the world -- of all different kinds. They don't tell anyone they're watching until they make their decision and then -- one day -- out of the blue, the chosen folks get a letter telling them they've been awarded a grant of a million dollars to do whatever it is that the foundation thinks they do so very well. The popular name for the grants is intimidating. They're nicknamed "genius grants".
Well, this woman was completely bowled over. Of course. But the part I could relate to the most was when she described her feelings when she went to the party the foundation threw for al the grant recipients. There she was, just this woman from Long Island (in her own eyes) in a room full of "real" geniuses -- people who had invented the internet and composed symphonies and discovered miracle cures. "There must have been some mistake," she was thinking. "When are they going to figure out that they've got the wrong person?" But she did belong there. Really. I feel like her a lot of the time. I wonder how much I'm just acting like a grownup, or like a productive member of society, or like a Christian. When will the jig be up? When will people at last see through me?
"Actions speak louder than words" people used to tell me when I was a child. And I suppose they do. But it has always been hard for me to find the line between acting like something or someone and actually being that. And today's lesson really hit that problem square on if you ask me. Here's one more place where the Bible defines both God and human beings by their actions. Here's one more place where the Bible has historically made it very easy for Christians to become convinced that if we do good works we will be good people, or -- maybe more precisely -- we will become good people. If we figure out all the rules and follow them thoroughly -- if we do what Jesus commands -- then we will dwell in him and he in us.
But there's that gray area again. Where does acting give way to being? The real task before Christians -- really before all God's people -- is not to behave like God (although that is a pretty good place to start the process) but rather to become like God. The task is to discover and develop the spirit of truth, the spirit of love, the spirit of creativity that lives inside us until "good behavior" no longer is changing who we are, but rather flows from who we are.
That's pretty abstract. But I have seen it happen in real life. In my first parish -- in Virginia -- I knew a woman who was almost too good to be true. She was one of those people you meet sometimes who are practically indispensable to their community, their church, to the people in their life, and even to many people who weren't really in her life in any significant way. Plus, she was funny and interesting and more on top of that. You just couldn't get enough of her. You know the kind of person I mean. We have some of them here, too.
She wasn't always that way, though. A long time before I knew her, she had had a son, just the one child. And he was killed in Vietnam. She would tell you -- if you asked -- about how she struggled for years and years afterwards with anger and guilt and devastation. And how she blamed God for not running her life the way she wanted it. And then she'd feel bad about that, too. She kept on showing up at church on Sundays because she always had. But before too long that didn't feel good, either, and she found more and more reasons to skip church. But, being basically a responsible person, when she was gone more than she was there she went over to see the rector -- fairly new at the time -- to tell him she was resigning all the jobs she'd taken on. She would just hang it all up.
While they were talking, she started pouring out her feelings. And the priest did what I've since found myself doing. He didn't know what to say so he mumbled something about how God loved her and would take care of things. (This part is hard for me to picture. Alta was a little woman. Plain-looking, quiet, smiley.) And while he was rambling on, she just snapped. She reared up and screamed at him until people came in from outside to see what was happening. She screamed that he could keep God for all she cared because she did not know God and did not love God . . . not the way she had loved her boy.
Twenty years later she told me that after her outburst, she thought about what she had said. And realized that she had seen something entirely new to her. For the first time, she said, she recognized God's face in her love for her son.
She finally understood what the phrase GOD IS LOVE means.
- Not God resembles love.
Not God reminds us of love.
But God IS love.
Something clicked for her. And for the rest of her life she saw God in the love she had in her heart and a whole new kind of living took root in her and flowed out from her life-changing, startling revelation. Her critical understanding of who she is and where God is found. She became the real thing.
- God is not somewhere else where
we have to go.
God is not some special skill we have to acquire.
God is here and we know how to do God.
And we know that because we know love.
And God is love.
Very often people tell me they do not believe in God. But I do think that all of them do believe in love. What they don't believe in is something other people are trying to tell them about God. I don't think people can believe in things they don't know or recognize. But I do think there is enough of God dwelling in us, and enough of us dwelling in God, that recognition is possible anytime.
The good news is that you can't look for God wrong. You can't find God wrong. And you can't love God wrong. Like the woman at the genius awards. You might not think you belong at the party, but the host does. God sees God in us. And with a command to make love our basic enterprise, God calls us to act our way into a whole new way of being. And when the scale finally tips, the acting changes from the discipline of our lives into the fruit of our lives. That's when we're abiding in God and he in us.
-- Mark Lewis
Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org.
Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page.
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