Sunshine Cathedral Sermons

Lent 4

The Good News Written

(Excerpt from the 36^th Psalm, Gafney Translation)

⁵AGELESS ONE, as far as the heavens is the expanse of your faithful love,
your faithfulness extends as far as the clouds.

⁶Your righteousness is like the mountains of God,
your justice like the great womb of the deep;
you are the savior of humankind and animalkind, COMPASSIONATE ONE.

⁷How precious is your faithful love, O God!
The woman-born take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

⁸They drink deeply from the richness of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your bliss.

⁹For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.

¹⁰Draw out your faithful love to those who know you,
and your righteousness to the upright of heart.

Ann Landers:

“If you have love in your life it can make up for a great many things you lack. If you don’t have it, no matter what else there is, it’s not enough.”

Luke 15.11-24 (Gafney Translation)

[Jesus told this sermon illustration]: ¹¹“There was a person who had two grown children. ¹²The younger of them said to one parent, ‘Give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So the property was divided between them. ¹³A few days later the younger one gathered every personal possession and traveled to a distant country, and there squandered everything in dissolute living. ¹⁴When everything was spent, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and the young traveler began to be in need. ¹⁵So the new immigrant went to one of the citizens of that country to be hired. The citizen, a pig farmer, sent the desperate young traveler to the fields to feed the pigs. ¹⁶The poor immigrant would have gladly feasted on the pods that the pigs were eating; but no one offered even one. ¹⁷Then the poor sojourner had a moment of self-reflection and clarity and said, ‘How many of my parents’ hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! ¹⁸I will get up and go to my parents, and I will say to them, “Mother, Father, ¹⁹I am no longer worthy to be called your child; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ ²⁰So the determined traveler set off and went home. But while still far off, one of the parents saw their child and was filled with tender love; their adult child ran and embraced them and kissed them. ²¹Then the repentant child said, ‘Mother, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your child.’ ²²But one parent said to the slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe — the best one; bring a ring and bring sandals and put them all on my child. ²³And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; ²⁴for this child of mine was dead and is alive again; my child was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.”

The Good News Proclaimed

Preached by the Reverend Wil Gafney, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Hebrew and Hebrew Bible, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, at the Sunshine Cathedral on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 14, 2010.

There are so many kinds of love in the world:
Baby love — the little critters, like puppies and kittens, are so cute so that you will overlook their youthful crimes and misdemeanors and allow them to grow up.
Mother love — some women love their children so much that they make the very love of God visible.
Father love — some men love their children with the kind of love that provides their children with emotional security that lasts throughout their lives and transforms their future relationships.
Puppy love — that first experience of real love that you know will last forever, ’til death do us part and then some.
Romantic love — all of the sonnets and symphonies in the world can’t articulate the love you feel for your beloved or the joy you felt when she or he told you that he or she loved you too.
Sexual love — the sheer ecstasy of sex even when you or your partner are still figuring it out.
Chocolate love — the combination of anandamide, caffeine, tryptophan, phenylethylamine, and sugar have no equal on this earth.

God’s love — seen and felt in and through baby love, mother love, father love, romantic love, sexual love and chocolate love and transcending each and every type of love known and unknown, uttered and unarticulated.

Ann Landers teaches us: “If you have love in your life it can make up for a great many things you lack. If you don’t have it, no matter what else there is, it’s not enough.” This is also the lesson taught by the parable of the loving parent. So many people identify this parable by describing the worst moments in this one person’s life. But this parable is about love: the love of parents, the love of children — particularly adult children and the love of God.

This morning’s psalm is also a love song, a hymn celebrating the love of God to and for all of the woman-born under the expanse of the skies. All. All means all. Sometimes I want to ask some folk, What part of all do you not understand? Love. God loves. God loves us. God loves us all. All. All means all.

This love of God extolled in the psalm is, chesed, in Hebrew. I translate it as love, faithful love for linguistic and theological reasons. Linguistically speaking, there are no similar word roots in the languages of the Ancient Near East; biblical Israel coined a unique word to describe human and divine relationships. There are other words for love in the Israelite scriptures, ahav/ahavah, mean emotional and romantic love between human persons and between God and human persons, individually and collectively. Yet there was a type of love that transcended the baby love, mother love, father love, romantic love, sexual love and chocolate love, love the psalmist saw in her community and experienced with his God.

The lack of comparative linguistics means that Hebrew scholars turn in part to theology to craft a definition for chesed. And the pale-male — and sometimes female, male-stream Hebrew scholars who preceded me (some of whom are still active) came up with words like mercy, loyalty, relational obligation, good-heartedness, faithfulness and kindness. A few chose loving kindness, steadfast love or unfailing love. And I have a theory, those whose relationships with their partners was one-dimensional, saw relationships as a series of contractual obligations and applied that understanding to Israel and her God. Those who saw God as a cosmic titan couldn’t imagine that god relating to humanity with anything other than mercy or pity. I believe those folk also saw all relationships between human beings and God in hierarchal terms and God knows the biblical and interpretive literature is full of their theology.

I believe that chesed is love because God is love. I believe that chesed is love because in addition to God, humankind and even some of animalkind are called by versions of chesed in the scriptures. I believe that chesed is love because the holy people of God who are called saints in the Hebrew Scriptures are those who are full of chesed, love for God and this ought to mean love for God’s children. All of God’s children. All. All means all.

But saints are also sinners and sometimes they miss the mark, especially in the scriptures. Loving God means loving all whom God loves — or at least it ought. And even when we fail at that, God loves us. God loves us all. All. All means all. And then there is the stork. In Biblical Hebrew, a stork is a chasidah. Most scholars believe that the ancient Israelites chose a derivative of chesed for the stork because of the tender love the mother birds show their young.

It’s all about love. In the Gospel, the parents love their children enough to allow them the freedom to make different choices, including potentially — and ultimately — dangerous, damaging and injurious choices. The adult child loves herself enough to not to settle for the squalid circumstances in which he found himself. And the parents love their adult child enough to receive her back unconditionally and to lavish their wealth on him. And, God loves us more than this. This is the point of the parable; this is the way that God loves us, not the limit of God’s love.

If there is a limit to God’s love, it is the very heights of heaven, the depth of the sea — not the one we can measure but the primordial one out of which creation was born. That is psalmist-poet’s way of saying there are no limits to the love of God. This is the God on whose behalf I speak today. The loving God in whose image we were all created, who calls us to love in God’s holy loving, wholly loving image.

The Lenten prayer in my Afro-Catholic, Anglo-Catholic, African Episcopal, tradition that begins the Ash Wednesday liturgy opens with these words, “Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made…” Nothing and no one. God loves us all. I’m repeating myself so much today because we live in a world where people lie on God, especially religious folk, especially professional religious folk and some folk have been told and are being told that God does not love them.

Some folk doubt the love applies to them. Some folk doubt that the love of God applies to folk who are different from them. Some folk just need to be reminded that God loves them. Some folk have the audacity to claim that God does not love all the woman-born, that all are not welcome under the sheltering wings of God’s tender, loving, faithful embrace. This is a lie. Some people claim that God doesn’t love lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender folk. This is a lie and a deadly one. Precious gay and lesbian children take their lives out of the pain this lie causes as it destroys not just individuals and whole families, but robs nations and the world of unimaginable gifts and graces.

And then there are those who think they are doing God a favor by raping, maiming and killing God’s bisexual, lesbian and gay children as they act out the lie that God loves them but not their victims. This lie has permeated the Church and the instruments of governments around the world. And the simple truth of the Gospel has been lost in the cries for exclusion, imprisonment and death, based on the lies of those who cannot or will not see the image of the loving God in anyone who does not love, live or think like them.

God does not hate us. Any of us. God loves us. God loves us all. All means all.
And again I want to ask the folk that I admit sometimes I don’t want to talk to, What part of all do you not understand?

Let me tell you how I understand all as a technical term in the scriptures of Israel. All is a marker of radical inclusivity. Far too often, the ancient scriptures of Jews and Christians speak to and only to the male landowning citizen in a heterosexual union. Sometimes the scriptures speak to those in his household: his woman or women, children and servants and, occasionally his critters. In a few really expansive cases, the scriptures speak to the householder and his family and servants and merchants and immigrants resident in their towns. And then there is all.

The reality is that male, landowning citizens in heterosexual relationships and their womenfolk and children and servants, even when combined with non-Israelite resident alien immigrants simply do not represent all of the people on this earth, all those whom God loves or even all those known to the ancient Israelites. So sometimes, when the categories and little boxes into which people were organized were simply insufficient, the word all was invoked.

All includes the households headed by women in ancient Israel, and the widows and orphans without households. All includes all of the people from other nations who worshipped other gods — even those who were designated as “enemies.” All includes those not in heterosexual unions or any union at all. All includes those whose sexual and gender identities were in some way irregular according to the dominant culture — like eunuchs. All includes people whose physical abilities exempted them from mandatory religious obligations. All includes minor children whose voices can rarely be heard in the pages of scripture.

All is invoked in our psalm in the category of the woman-born. There are no limits on the woman-born who are sheltered beneath the wings of God’s embrace. There is no one who is not welcome. All are welcome. All are welcomed. All. All of God’s children under the heavens which cannot contain the faithful love of God. When we welcome the children of God with the love of God — all the baby love, mother love, father love, romantic love, sexual love, chocolate love and even shoe love, love that we can muster — we reveal the God in us to the world.

There is one more image of love in our lessons today, that of the Holy Child Jesus, the preacher of the parable. In my Afro/Anglo-Catholic tradition we celebrate Jesus as the love of God and God of love incarnate in the womb of the Blessed Virgin on this Sunday; we call it Rose Sunday and it is one of two — the other being in Advent — that we wear pink vestments with or in place of purple ones. Jesus of Nazareth is the woman-born sibling of all the woman-born. He is the lover, savior and redeemer of all the woman-born. Jesus loves all and Jesus saves all. Jesus redeems us all. And all means all.

The love of Jesus is not reserved for lesbian and gay and bisexual and transgender children of God and their allies alone.
Jesus even loves the homophobic, homo-hating and misanthropic. Jesus loves all, and because Jesus love all, Jesus redeems all from hatred, fear and even death. Jesus has already saved us through his birth, life, death and resurrection and Jesus continues to save us through his love and our faith in his love. It is all about love. It is all about the love of God for the woman-born. It is all about the love of God in Christ Jesus. It is all about the baby love, mother love, father love, romantic love, sexual love, chocolate love, shoe love, and even love for carbohydrates that gesture towards the love of God even as they fail to capture it in its fullness.

The Good News Affirmed

God is Love.

I see God’s love in Jesus’ never-ending life.

I see God’s love in my life.

I see God’s love in every life.

God’s love comforts, strengthens, and sustains me now.

God’s love is all-inclusive.

And all means all.

Amen.

The Good News Repeated

“God is love, but get it in writing.” Gypsy Rose Lee