Father Gustavo's Sermon Sunday, March 16, 2014
Second Sunday in Lent
Life in the Beloved:
Invitation
“This is how
much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is
why: so that by believing in him everyone can have eternal life, a life lived in
wholeness and gratitude.”
Let
me start with a question, “What is the
difference between ‘loving ourselves’ and ‘selfishness’”? The answer is
that in ‘selfishness’ we knowingly and wittingly act without any reference to
any other person, even without to our own good. In loving our neighbor as
ourselves by necessity we are drawn out of our belly buttons and must look
around to the world around us and make appropriate calls.
You
see, as I told you, love cannot exist in isolation. To really love, we need to
extend ourselves outwardly! So, even self-love needs an outsider to act as a
kind of reflector of our love. For instance, we take care – hopefully we all
are doing this – of our bodies. Why we do that? Perhaps, sheer survival. But
most likely it is because we care about someone else – spouses, significant-others,
children, relatives, coworkers… and even it may be possible that we come to
care for our bodies because we care about the God who has given us this
wonderful “machine,” which is our
body!
In
our reading today, we realize that God truly loves us – despite whatever
misgivings we may have – because, as St. John reflects in his gospel, God gave.
That is to say, God reaches out of
himself to give of himself to us, with no expectations. For, if there were
any expectations, it would cease to be love. This is love, “in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us,” (Romans
5:8).
In
today’s gospel we find the well-known story of Nicodemus coming at night to see
Jesus. Nicodemus, a leader in the Jewish community is sincerely puzzled about
Jesus, so he approaches Jesus and asks,
“Rabbi, we all know you’re a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the
things you are doing unless somehow God is involved.” Jesus said, “You’re absolutely right. Unless a
person is born from above, it’s not possible to see what I’m pointing to—to
God’s kingdom.” “How can anyone,” said Nicodemus, “be born who has already been
born and grown up? You can’t re-enter your mother’s womb and be born again.
What are you saying with this ‘born-from-above’ talk?” And Jesus said, “You’re
not listening, Nicodemus.” (John 3:2-6). You are not listening. That was Nicodemus problem. He had a good
start, but then, somewhere along his life he got lost in his own reasoning.
This
is, perhaps, where most of us get stuck in our understanding and in our
experiencing of the full measure of what it truly means to be a child of God.
Somewhere between baptism and adulthood we stop listening to what God really
has to say, and we start making up what we guess God may be saying. Remember
last Sunday reading about the story of Creation and what God actually said and
what the serpent “recalled” God had said?
A
lot of the time we spend in Church, and personally, in pastoral care, is invested
in cleaning the bad stuff left behind in the “browser” of our minds and
experiences. A good reason to read the Scripture is because it helps you really
hear what God has to say. (And, if you still haven’t made your mind about which
book to read, let me recommend “Evolution of the Word”, which is in our Lenten
Readers’ List.)
Our
theme for today is Invitation, which is an outgrowth of our Epiphany theme, “Come
and See”. Now let me quote from the Cowley Fathers materials,
“In the last days of his
life, Jesus gathers his disciples around him and tells them, ‘I have called you
friends.’ We watch this friendship grow, throughout the pages of John’s Gospel,
in the very real and challenging love Jesus shares with those friends, from his
first invitation that they ‘Come and see’ to his demonstration of love in the
washing of their feet at the Last Supper. ‘I have set you an example,’ he tells
them, ‘that you also should do as I have done to you.’ The same love which he
shares with the Father, he now shares with them. He asks them in turn to share
this love with one another and with the world. ‘We love,’ the author of First
John tells us, ‘because he first loved us.’
“This invitation to intimate
relationship crystallizes in John’s Gospel around the figure of the ‘beloved
disciple’ who appears at the Last Supper, reclining on the breast of Jesus. We
find him again later, at the Crucifixion, waiting beside the Cross. Tradition
has assumed that this disciple is also the author of the Gospel, John. Whether
or not the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ is the same person who wrote the Gospel,
it is actually most significant that this disciple is never named. Anonymous,
the beloved disciple becomes a stand-in for every disciple.
“We are all invited to be
beloved disciples. Every one of us is invited to step into that privileged
place, close to the heart of Jesus, and thus close to the heart of the Father.
Knowing ourselves to be beloved by God allows us to share that love with a
world in need.”
A
good question to ask is, “How do we accept this invitation?”
Is it a one-time invitation? Do we need to respond only once, perhaps like in an
altar call? Is it an invitation that requires our RSVP on a daily, monthly, or yearly
basis? Is it a standing invitation?
If
you perhaps are wondering, “Did I ever hear such an invitation to
closer fellowship with Jesus Christ?” Let me assure you that indeed you
have. Perhaps you do not remember the occasion, because you were a little
bundle of love in your parent’s or godparent’s arms, but in coming to baptism
you came as a response to God’s loving call. Baptism was the first time that as
baby you may have heard words such as love, child of God, Jesus, new life,
pardon, forgiveness, and, of course, “Welcome
into the family of God!”
Remember
the parable of the Prodigal Son? When the elder brother sees his father
feasting his younger brother he complains that he never been treated like his
bratty brother. And what was his father’s answer? “Son, don’t you understand?
You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours?” The root of
his bitterness is that he never appropriated himself to what it was truly his!
Both
Nicodemus and the older brother in the Parable point in the same direction, our
failing to understand who we really are, who we really belong to, and how much
we miss in our alienation.
So,
today, you are again invited to listen carefully to what God has to say, “You are my beloved child. I am delighted
about you!” This is what God has to say about each one of us. And, yes, if
there are issues that need to be dealt with – And we do know that we have
issues that need to be dealt with! – they will be dealt in the context of a
loving and affirming relationship. After Peter denied Jesus, all Jesus had to
say was, “Take care of my sheep.”
This is love, as you have heard me so many times, “in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us.”
“We are all invited to be
beloved disciples. Every one of us is invited to step into that privileged
place, close to the heart of Jesus, and thus close to the heart of the Father.
Knowing ourselves to be beloved by God allows us to share that love with a
world in need.”
In
their 2014 Easter Letter, the Benedictine monks of St Gregory Abbey, in Three
Rivers, MI, try to respond to the question of why people join a monastery
rather than going out into the world to spread God’s love, and they write about
“monastic evangelism” as follows.
“Christian nuns and monks in
the past and present have found this type of [monastic] evangelism to be
fruitful. After all, much of northern Europe was evangelized by establishing
monasteries in pagan areas, allowing the neighboring inhabitants see the joyful
life of the nuns and monks. Although politics sometimes did play a part in the
‘Christianization’ of these areas, much of the time the people around the
monasteries merely decided that they wanted some of the life that nuns and
monks had, and became Christians themselves.”
We
too, as a community of the beloved, a community of those who feel themselves
known and accepted in Christ Jesus, a community of brothers and sisters who
recognize their belonging to each other, can be a center of renewal and
evangelization, here at the Crossroads and beyond. Describing the Christian
Church, the African historian Tertullian wrote, “See how much they love each other.” He didn’t congratulate them on
their theology or doctrines. Their way of life, their love was their witness.
They knew themselves to be beloved in Christ.
Today,
our invitation to walk in closer fellowship with our Lord is an open and
standing invitation. It is a kind of “come as you are.” There is an old traditional hymn that rings so
true to our Saviors invitation, Just a Closer Walk with Thee.
“Just
a closer walk with Thee, Grant it, Jesus, is my plea,
Daily
walking close to Thee, Let it be, dear Lord, let it be.”
Make
this Lent season a time for you to catch up with yourself, and with your
beloved Master and Redeemer.
