Love Is Our Religion

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Emmanuel Episcopal Church

July 19, 2020

Proper 11, A

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

“Love Is Our Religion”

I spent last week at Camp Allen for Jr. High camp, and it was a great week.  There was lots of physical distancing, masks worn by all, and activities done outside which had previously been inside.  They did a great job of safety while still making it feel like camp; it was really wonderful, and kids who had spent years away from or largely ignoring their faith were brought back to their faith in powerful ways.

Our theme for the week was The Way of Love, which is Presiding Bishop Curry’s way of talking about they way of Jesus.  Our teachings at camp were about turning back to the way of Jesus when we realize we’ve been living in a way that isn’t really about love.  We talked about how we can continue to earn together the ways of Jesus, and how we can bless others and share with others the healing we have found through the way of Jesus, the Way of Love.

I taught on how we can be a blessing to others, and noted that the first thing we need to do is to recognize our own blessings.  In order to be a blessing to others, we can ask ourselves every day, for what am I grateful?  These daily gratitudes can be grand in scale or very small and simple, and if we write them down and then make a practice of sharing these gratitudes with others we begin each day by blessing others and being blessed by them.  

Then we also get to work daily on what we’re wrestling with.  What’s got us upset, angry, anxious, resentful, afraid?  Then, rather than focusing on some other person or situation that’s got us upset, we look inward to understand “What’s going on inside of me that I’m so bothered by whatever it is.”  We work on healing ourselves so that we can then bless others with peace in our hearts.  Otherwise, acting out of our anger and our hurt, we tend to fight against someone or something and bring more harm and hurt into the world.  In the Way of Love, we’re called to recognize our blessings, find peace within ourselves, and then be a blessing to others.  

The campers seemed to really dig that idea and seeking to be healed within oneself before trying to be a blessing to others, and one night, one of the boys cabins asked me to do “priest on a hot seat,” where they asked me any questions they wanted so they could learn more about the faith and hear some thoughts on issues they were wrestling with.  

What do I think about Christians who are against various groups of people?  I said, “I believe they are faithful in their beliefs, faithful to what they’ve been taught, faithful to their understanding of scripture.  I may disagree with them and often do, but I am not going to condemn them or declare them not to be Christian.  I will say that while I think they are wrong, they are also striving to be faithful.”  Now, that response goes against my initial instincts which are to fight against them and start a ruckus over how wrong they are. 

It is easy to feel righteous and even to feel like we’re doing good by fighting and speaking against those whom we feel are wrong and those we perceive as being hateful to others.  Speaking against those others and spending all our time fighting against them however, is not the way of Jesus, the way of love.  

If I’m spending all my time fighting folks who are against people that I claim to love, then I’m not spending that time loving those whom I claim to be defending.  

So, back to the question I was asked at Camp, rather than spend my time condemning the groups of Christians whom I felt were wrong, I spoke out for those people who were condemned by other Christians.  That was a loving response which may have helped some of the campers themselves realize they belonged to Jesus and weren’t condemned or cast out.

Let the weeds grow along with the wheat, Jesus said, so that we don’t all get damaged by pulling the weeds out.  Imagine if everyone who wanted to pull the weeds out of society or out of the church was able to do so.  There wouldn’t be any wheat left.  Everyone would be pulled up and cast out because everyone is a weed in someone’s eyes.  So, Jesus said to let them grow together, and leave the weeding to God at the end of the age.

We’re God’s garden after all, and rather than leave the weeding to us who are tossed about by our emotions and our brokenness, we leave the weeding to God who is not only loving, but who is love itself.  I can trust love to do the weeding.  There are parts in me that need to be weeded out.  There are parts in all of us that need weeding.  There are certainly parts of society that need weeding, so we leave the weeding to God who is love, and we follow in the way of Love, focusing on loving and blessing, rather than constantly fighting against others.  

So, in that vein, one final story from camp.  For one of our prayer activities, we taught the campers about and had them walk a labyrinth.  Now, many of the campers walked the labyrinth in a slow, fairly contemplative way, traditional of a labyrinth walk.  Some of the Jr. High boys, however, kind of skipped through it, walked backwards, shuffled, and goofed their way through it.  

My initial reaction was, “Well, they’re doing it wrong; they’re not taking it seriously, and I should correct that.”  Thankfully, I didn’t.  Rather than see them as weeds in the Labyrinth walk, I pointed out that for some of them, goofing and enjoying their was through the labyrinth was prayer.  I realized that the traditional ways and structures of prayer in the church don’t work for everybody.  Some of these kids needed to have fun, and that fun with their friends was prayer.  What those kids then heard was not, “we’re weeds and doing it wrong.”  Instead, they heard that they are wheat, and they belong just as much as their friends who could walk more contemplatively.  

Later that night, one of the boys talked with his counselor, his cabin mates, and me about how he had felt God walking along side him during the Labyrinth walk.  His full group of cabin mates all got to be there with him in that.  They all got to be wheat together with him.  If I had declared some of them as weeds?  How much would have been missed, how broken would that cabin had been with some of them feeling like they didn’t belong when their friend told that he had walked with God?  

We’ve all got weeds within us.  We are also all wheat.  God, who is loving and who is love itself will sort that all out.  We are not weed pullers; that is not our religion.  As disciples of Jesus, (and quoting Ziggy Marley), “love is [our] religion.”  Our place is to love one another, both the weeds and the wheat, and to grow together in the Way of Jesus, the Way of Love.

Grace, Love, and Compassion: the way of the Trinity in conflicted times (and joyous times)

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Emmanuel Episcopal Church

June 7, 2020

Trinity Sunday, A

Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Matthew 28:16-20

Some of you have heard before a story I told of a former youth, now a young woman, who told me that all I do is talk for a living.  She was joking around, at least kind of joking, and during times like this past week, I kind of feel like that is all I do, is talk for a living.  When I see people being killed; see the violence in our streets; see hundreds of years of racism, of overt and covert oppression, and of mistrust throughout our society because of it, I want to do more than just talk.  I want to make some kind of lasting change and difference in the lives of people directly affected by the racism, violence, and mistrust, and I want to make that change quickly and right now, but I can’t.  Not alone, not immediately.

So, being that I can’t make some enormous, immediate change for the good, I figure I will go ahead and spend a few minutes talking, and I am going to talk about grace, love, and communion with the hope that these words will also address the racism, violence, and mistrust that we have all been witness to over the last week, months, years, and lifetimes.  

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.  That is how Paul ended his second letter to the Corinthian church.  With all else he had written them, addressing the good, the bad, the joys, and the strife, he left them with grace, love, and communion.  

Grace:  Compassion and understanding, true forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation, and the new life and beginning that comes with that healing. 

Love:  Choosing to see others as beloved, to act accordingly, to give up one’s own will and way in order to be of service to others out of true caring for them.

Communion - Sharing that love and grace together; living and striving together through joy and sorrow, beauty and pain.  

Grace, love, and communion is the way of relationship, the very image of God in whose image we were made.  We call God, “Trinity,” the three persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit bound up together so completely in love that they are one.  Now today, on Trinity Sunday, we could go on and on, round and round about definitions of the Trinity, but I find overly defining God to be rather tedious and kinda boring.  Like reading about a definition of a guitar rather than playing a guitar, I’d rather play with the Trinity a little bit instead of just define it.

Three persons bound together in love, God being relationship itself, I imagine conversations between the persons of the Trinity, conversations among God, each person of the Trinity contributing to the wisdom of the one whole God.  I wonder, then if God might have limited each person of Godself so that the three persons of God had to be in communion with one another to have all knowledge and wisdom.  God choosing that among Godself in order to fulfill relationship.

I like that idea as I imagine some of the conversations God might have had as I see changes in God’s desires and actions throughout scripture.  Looking at ancient Israel and God’s command for animal sacrifice, we see that very command change throughout scripture.  I imagine a conversation beginning with God the Father.  

“Well, we need some sort of animal sacrifice to keep the people focused on us.”  

“Dad, no we don’t.  True worship is doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with us.”  

“Boys, would you two stop arguing?  Animal sacrifice is kinda how the humans do things.  We can have them use it to focus on us for a while, and we’ll teach them justice, mercy, love, and humility as they go.”

Three persons united as one God, striving together for the sake of creation and for the sake of Godself.  Wrestling together, dancing together with grace, love, and communion.  That is the way of God as Trinity in whose image we are made.  

As much as I want to just go and fix stuff immediately by myself, that doesn’t even seem to be how God chooses to work.  Even if I could, I would just be imposing my will on others, denying them grace, denying them love, and certainly denying any communion between us.  

If we’re going to fix anything in our lives and in the world, we need to do it together, striving together with grace, love, and communion.  That means striving together with those whose views we find awful and crazy and striving together with those whom we believe see us as awful and crazy.  Each one of us is limited in our knowledge, experience, and understanding.  We need one another to find ways forward that don’t just impose one group’s or person’s will on others.  That’s how we get riots and police brutality.    

Striving together with grace, love, and communion means listening deeply to the differing sides, listening especially to ways we are called up short.  After all, we cannot remove the speck in another’s eye without first removing the log from our own eye.  

Part of my personal log removal is reading, Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad.  The understandings of white privilege and systemic racism which for yeas I refused to believe in, I am finally coming to understand and accept by listening to and learning from a black muslim woman.  I need her wisdom and experience because I am limited in my understanding and experience.  Listening to her and coming to accept the ideas of white privilege doesn’t mean suddenly believing that I am the bad guy, and that’s not what she’s saying.  Choosing to accept the ideas of white privilege and systemic racism and choosing to accept that I have a part in that does mean that I am choosing love, grace, and communion with those whose beliefs I found threatening.  Doing so isn’t particularly comfortable, and there is pain in the wrestling and striving, but I have also found divinity there.  

Striving for justice and mercy, walking humbly with God and one another requires more than just talking.  It requires listening, and it requires work.  It requires striving together with grace, love, and communion in order to work together for change, for justice.  That’s the way of God in the world, walking with us in grace, love, and communion, and as God walks with us in the world, God looks around and says, “This place is beautiful, fantastic!”  God also says, “This place is also terrible and tragic.”  Then, God also says, “Yes, and even now, we’re redeeming this place.”  

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