“What the Future Holds”

Karen Sloan 23/08/2020

Readings: Ruth 1:1-18, Micah :6-8, Luke 6:27-30, Matt 25:35-40

Let me start with a summary of what we have covered in the last few weeks.  I had a 2 page summary prepared but I think these 5 points say it all.  I used a version of them at Easter, but they seem a good place to start today – If you remember nothing else from my sermons maybe you will remember these:

Remember, God is a God of the universe, found in the stars and planets, in animals and plants and in you and me. Spirit, breath, energy, all speak of this divine presence giving life. 

Remember, God is not for only a few, but for all of creation, all people and all nations. In all but greater than all.

Remember Jesus, for he guides and leads the way. God is spirit but that spirit needs to be expressed in the real blood and guts of the world.

Remember, if you don’t understand, just do it anyway, for in the doing you will sense the truth. The mystery of faith.

And remember, Jesus is with you always, to the end of time. For his words and deeds never fade.

So that in a nut shell is a summary of where we are today.  For me anyway.

But how to finish the series? How do we move forward?  I was at a bit of a lost until I went to the Elders meeting on Wednesday, and we discussed what love is, and how some have a problem when God is called love. It caused a bit of debate.  Ha, I had my Segway into today.

God is a mystery, Jesus calls us to this mystery, science documents that mystery. A mystery we may never fully understand or explain.  But one we feel deeply is true.

And what is the mystery, the mystery is life. How we get life, out of darkness and despair. Out of dead ends and false starts. It seems to come again and again.

And for us, that life, I believe, can be found in the over arching term, love.  For we are humans and we have to put into practise what life for us and others actually means.  On the ground.  

Love, I know it’s sometimes bandied around like an old shoe, but it’s the greatest force in the world, as Martin Luther King would say, even if it’s tricky to fully grasp.  But it’s not just the sweaty palms of agape love, it’s the love that wants the best for others, even if they are our enemies, even if they cannot love us in return, even when my own safety might be at risk. It’s the love that seeks out the lonely and widowed, the poor and the bereft, that saves without reward and shares without thought.

And it’s a love that springs from the inner most place of our hearts, and seeks to connect to that which keeps it flourishing. It swells from the thing we might call God or spirit or breath or energy.  

But just as we had to put flesh on Jesus we have to put flesh on love.

This love encompasses all that Jesus calls us to be - kind, compassionate, inclusive, generous, welcoming and all that Jesus calls us to seek -  justice, peace, equity, community, and is the crux of our faith. We are called to a unity with all people, and with all creation such that love becomes a real, flesh and blood thing! Not in our dreams but in real life. 

For as Dostoyevsky says in his novel, The Brother Karamazov –

“Love in your dreams is such a marvellous and glorious thing. Yet love in reality is active, labour and fortitude.”  

Love is a decision not to give up on a person, and to walk and journey with them is a daily decision, not one that comes and goes.

Or as Frederick Buechner says..

“Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality-not as we expect it to be but as it is-is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.”

We are called to a life of love. Here and now in this world, for as long as we can.  Displaying the call to unity that is the DNA of our being.

Perhaps that’s what the ancients meant when they said God is love.  Even if they didn’t know about the universe and its story.   God is love because love gives life. God’s spirit residing in this world just as in ours, working for life. They just didn’t know it went back so far. Or maybe they did.  The Moabite Ruth certainly did. The prophet Micah did.

And Jesus seemed to understand.

So I would add one more thing to my list of things to remember –

Remember life and love go hand in hand, even if love sometime seems a mystery.  

For love speaks to us of what human life at its most human and its most alive and most holy must be. Even through the ups and downs of our messy, chaotic, joyful and sometimes sorrow filled lives, we can all become bearers of Jesus’ vision of love that can change the world. As Buechner again says.

This is what the future holds, if we are brave enough to take hold of it.

Amen