In this passage the Temple is functioning the way it was supposed to and God’s salvation is seen in many different dimensions.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
First Sunday of Christmas, year B 
Texts: Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Luke 2:22-40

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When we think of Jesus in the Temple, we often think of flipping tables.

All four gospels include an account of the “Cleansing of the Temple,” when Jesus drove out the money changers and the merchants. Mark and Matthew include the detail of overturning the tables and in John’s gospel Jesus even has a whip! This encounter lives large in our imaginations and it means that the Temple in Jerusalem, the very center of Jewish faith and religious practice, is primarily associated with Jesus’ righteous fury. Often we only think of it as a place of exploitation and consumerism and corruption.

But in our gospel passage today, we see the Temple in a very different light.

This encounter, like so much of the Nativity story, is only included in Luke’s gospel. And it is a very different account of Jesus in the Temple. There are no whips, no overturned tables, no mention of money-changers. Instead, we see the Temple functioning beautifully, the way it was supposed to.

You can see it with the prophet Anna.

We don’t know much about her, we don’t even get to hear her speak, but we know that she was a widow and that she had lived for a long time without a husband to provide for her. For decades and decades. And we are told that she “never left the Temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day.” Which prompts the question, who was taking care of her? Who was making sure she had what she needed and was holding her in love and respect? In the Temple the answer must be: her neighbors.

Because the Temple was supposed to be the place where the two Great Commandments – to love God and love your neighbor, were fully in effect. Where you could expect the laws commanding care for orphans and foreigners and widows were followed. And where Anna could deliver her prophetic words of critique and comfort and be fed and sheltered. That’s how the Temple should be and, in this story, that’s how it was.

And you can see it in how the young family, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, are welcomed.

They enter the Temple as strangers in Jerusalem, following the law, and presenting their firstborn son to God. They are too poor to offer a lamb, so Mary and Joseph bring a pair of birds to sacrifice, the most they could afford. Yet they are welcomed. Simeon and Anna rejoice over their baby. And their family is held not only in joy, but in pain as well, when Simeon acknowledges Mary’s coming grief, the sword that will pierce her soul. Just as they are, they are seen and embraced.

The Temple was supposed to be a place where everyone could come as they are. Elders and babies, rich and poor, men and women, Jews and Gentiles, gathering at the Temple to rejoice or fast or pray or wait or make an offering or receive a blessing. That’s how the Temple should be and, in this story, that’s how it was.

And you can see with Simeon.

Simeon is promised that he “will not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.” And when the time comes, the Holy Spirit guides him to the Temple. I imagine that the Spirit could have led Simeon to any place to meet Jesus. But Simeon is guided to the Temple.

Because most of all, the Temple was supposed to be a place to have encounters with God, a place where people were expecting God to show up. And when God showed up as the Messiah, not in the shape of a warrior, but incredibly in the shape of a child, Simeon saw! Simeon and Anna were looking for God and they found Jesus. And then they told everyone who would listen, everyone who was looking for God, everyone who was waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem. “Look! God is here!” That’s how the Temple should be and, in this story, that’s how it was.

And here’s the point. When the Temple is what it should be – salvation is seen!

Simeon sees. “My eyes have seen your salvation,” he says, and in the context of this encounter in the Temple (with the Temple functioning the way it’s supposed to) we see it too. We see God’s salvation – and in many different dimensions.

We see the cosmic and eternal dimension of salvation.

Simeon is holding God in his arms! God, enfleshed and alive! Simeon recognizes God-with-us in this baby, who has come to reach us, to be made known to us, to love us, to suffer with us, to forgive us, and to save us. So that our broken selves won’t be this way forever, but instead every tear will be wiped away and every child of God will be restored to glory. This is God’s redeeming work to reconcile with humanity, to make all things new forever and always, and bring us into eternal life in the Spirit. And Simeon saw it face to face.

And this salvation is multidimensional!

Not only personal and eternal, but collective and immediate. Not just for you singular sometime in the future, but for you plural, now.

Jesus, destined to cause “the falling and rising of many,” flipped the tables that needed flipping. When the Temple wasn’t functioning like it was supposed to, Jesus brought salvation, driving out all who oppressed and exploited. So that there might be salvation for the poor – like Mary and Joseph, and salvation for the desperate – like Simeon, for the lonely and dependent – like Anna, and salvation for the outsiders – like the Gentiles that Simon sings of. This is the salvation which topples tyrants and lifts up the lowly, and tears down the barriers between us.

And this is the quiet and ordinary salvation of flourishing and abundant life. The kind of salvation that Simeon might have seen in the Temple that day even if Jesus hadn’t been there. But it was there, when Simeon was holding a child from a poor family, who were just going about their ordinary business of loving God and loving their neighbors, there he saw salvation.

This is why we gather, not anymore at the Temple, but as the church, week after week.

So that like Simeon, we can see all these many different dimensions of God’s salvation. Salvation on the scale of the universe, and on the scale of your own heart. And everything in between. At all scales, God is at work. Salvation is happening everywhere all the time. And we gather so that we can see it. So we can tell each other about what we have seen.

Isaiah imagined God’s salvation shining out like the dawn or like a burning torch so that the nations could see. But the dawn can be easy to miss. If you aren’t looking for it, you probably won’t see it. But God wants to be seen. God wants you to see salvation. God wants to guide you right to it. God wants you to hold Jesus in your arms.

We gather not in the Temple, but as the Temple, so that all are loved and welcomed and cared for, so that we can encounter God and see salvation. The way it’s supposed to be.

In the name of the Father, of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

 

Mary was in an impossible situation and it is the same situation that we are in, to bear Christ to the World. Thankfully, nothing is impossible with God.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
Fourth Sunday of Advent, year B 
Texts: Luke 1:46b-55, Luke 1:26-38

Greetings, favored ones, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Mary only asks one question. 

Most people, I think, if they had been in Mary’s shoes, would have asked more questions. I certainly would have. I would have wanted to know at least a few more details about this crazy thing that was about to happen to me. But when Gabriel tells her she will bear the Christ, a baby she will name Jesus, the Son of the Most High, Mary only asks: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”

And the common interpretation, when we hear this question, is that Mary is wondering about the biology of this whole thing. As if she was fixated on the clinical impossibilities of an immaculate conception. As if she’s asking, “Excuse me, Gabriel, can you explain exactly how this embryo will be fertilized? Where will the other half of this baby’s DNA come from? I need to know how this works, medically speaking.”

But what if that wasn’t what she was worried about?

What if she didn’t actually think it would be much of a miracle for the God who created everything that is out of the chaotic void, to manifest one more life. Maybe she didn’t think it would be a big deal for the God who breathes life into everything to breathe life into her womb. After all, she doesn’t sing, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God who miraculously impregnates!”  She actually doesn’t mention that part in her song at all.

So maybe she was thinking about something else. Maybe when she asked her one question, “How can this be since I am a virgin?” she meant something more like, “Do you really know what you’re asking me?! I’m not married yet. Don’t you know how hard it is here for single mothers?” 

Because she didn’t know, yet. She didn’t know that Joseph would step up and stick around, great guy, or that her relatives and her community would support their family. She didn’t know, yet, that complete strangers would show up with expensive gifts from the East!

At this point, all she knew for sure was that if she said yes, she might have to do this alone. And she knew what an impossible situation that might be. 

And as if being a single mother weren’t hard enough, what about being a mother to God?! 

Mary might well have been asking Gabriel, “Do you know what you are asking me? I don’t know how to raise a MESSIAH! I’m just a kid!” Because there she was, not all that far from childhood herself, just a poor girl from a small village, tasked to raise a king of whose kingdom there will be no end!  A king to sit on David’s throne forever! A king who is GOD INCARNATE. Is there a person on Earth qualified for that?! How was she supposed to know what to do? 

Another layer of impossible. 

Or, you know, maybe Mary was just not sure she really wanted to bring a baby into this broken world.

She knew about thrones, about the mighty, and the proud, she did sing about them. And maybe in that first moment of contemplating motherhood, she just couldn’t fathom bringing any more life, any more precious and vulnerable and beloved life into this world that wasn’t yet put right. She was just a virgin, just an unmarried young woman living in an occupied nation, thoroughly and in every way cut off from political and economic power – how could she protect him?

Because even knowing that her baby boy was God incarnate, in this world not yet made right, she would have known what would happen to anybody who went around preaching possibility and hope, justice and redistribution, and all those things that might topple a tyrant.  She might have guessed already that she would have to do the most impossible thing of all for a mother: watch her son die. 

Let’s give Mary some credit. 

And let’s imagine that she knew all the many dimensions of impossibility surrounding the scenario that Gabriel was presenting, and that maybe the part about the virgin pregnancy wasn’t even the top of the list.  So she asks her one question, overwhelmed for a moment, by impossibility:

“How can this be?”

And I don’t blame her.  It seems like a reasonable response to a unique and impossible task. 

Although, it’s not truly unique at all, is it?

A young woman and an unplanned pregnancy? Not unique.  Powerless and terrorized people longing for liberty and restoration? Not unique.  Sinners and sinned against waiting for a savior? Not unique. This story repeats and echoes through the generations, in impossible situation after impossible situation. It repeats in us.  Ordinary people, encountering the divine and answering the call to bear Christ into the world.

Because although we don’t have the same physical experience that Mary had, our calling is the same. 

We are all called to bear Christ, to experience divine love growing within ourselves, to labor and birth Christ anew again and again for the world. 

We bear Christ so that every single person can know that they are favored and completely loved by God. 

We bear Christ so that God’s justice can be accomplished, so that the mighty may be cast down, the proud may be scattered, the rich may be sent away empty. So that every unjust social structure built on oppression and exploitation and violence can be overturned, by the strength of God’s arm. 

We bear Christ so that all life can flourish. That the lowly may be lifted up, that the hungry may be filled with good things. So that every single person can be fed and housed and cared for and welcomed. 

And you know what? That can feel pretty impossible sometimes.  Overwhelmed, we also might want to respond with just one question of our own: How can this be, God? How can we do all the things you call us to do?

And then Gabriel’s words echo through the centuries, answering not just Mary’s question, but our own desperate wonderings.

The angel said: “Nothing is impossible with God.” 

Nothing will stand in the way between God and us.  Not the powers of this world, not our own inadequacies and certainly not biology.  God will go over or around or under or straight through any obstacle to save us.

And every impossible situation you can think of, any impossible situation that you may be facing right now, God is already there. The tenderness of Divine Love is already there, turning impossible into possible.  

God is in the business of possible, of new beginnings, new life, ways from no way.  In a word, hope.  After all, what is hope, if not possibility? When we are called to bear Christ we are sharing a future pregnant with possibility! It is not easy (pregnancy and labor aren’t easy), but it is never impossible. 

With God, nothing is impossible.  

This was the only answer Mary needed to her question.

“Here am I,” she says, “the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

And then she sings. The song that echoes through every Christ bearer and that is our song too:

Our souls proclaim the greatness of our Lord!

And our spirits rejoice in God our Savior! 

Our God of infinite possibility.  Thanks be to God!

In the name of the Father, of the  ☩  Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 

 

Advent allows us to experience the slipperiness of time, the already and the not yet, and whether we keep awake or not, God the Potter will not abandon us on the wheel. 

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
The First Sunday of Advent, year B 
Texts: Isaiah 64:1-9, Mark 13:24-37

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I’m not a potter.

I have thrown one or two pots in my life but they are much too embarrassing to show anybody. Maybe then, it is not surprising that what I remember most about the experience is being pretty frustrated. Frustrated that I wasn’t very good at it. That the clay didn’t move the way that I wanted it to. And that more than once I had to collapse the whole thing down into a ball and start again.

When the prophet speaks in Isaiah of God as the potter and as all of us as the works of God’s hands — I have to believe that God is a much better potter than I am. That God does know how to shape us, and will resist the impulse to abandon us, half-formed on the wheel. And yet, while I am absolutely convinced that God is entirely in love with each and every creation, I wonder if God isn’t also sometimes a bit frustrated. I wonder if God, like me, sometimes wishes the clay would cooperate a little bit better, would become what it was meant to be just a little bit faster.

And I say this because I think you can hear some of Jesus’ frustration slipping out in our gospel reading today. We have left Matthew now for Mark’s account of Jesus’ last days. This section, which is often called the “Little Apocalypse,” contains the last teachings of Jesus that Mark records. Some of the last words he speaks to his disciples.

And they are in response to a question: Earlier in Mark chapter 13 the disciples had been marveling at the very large stones, the enormous blocks that made up the foundation of the temple, and Jesus had replied, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

At which point, the disciples ask him, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” They want to know the date.

They want to know about the when – about time.

And Jesus knows that time is exactly what he is running out of. He is running out of time at the potter’s wheel. But these disciples, these bits of clay, are just not getting into shape! And it’s frustrating!

“Keep awake!” he says again and again. “Pay attention! Don’t worry about what’s going to happen, be awake to what’s happening now!”

These are exactly the same words he will speak in the next chapter. The same frustration that will bubble up in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he pleads again with the disciples, “Keep awake with me! I’m running out time!”

But none of them did.

And, as I was thinking more about my limited and unsuccessful attempts at pottery, I began to wonder if part of the reason that Jesus gets so frustrated might be because “time” is such a slippery thing.

Because while I was giving my whole attention to the clay beneath my fingers, when I was fully and utterly absorbed in the task, I had no idea how much time was passing. It could have been five minutes, it could have been five hours. It wasn’t just the clay that was slippery, time itself had slipped through my fingers.

And, of course, we experience the slipperiness of time all the time. It speeds up and slows down. It slips and skips. It fluctuates with our attention.

Which is why Advent is such a gift.

This is our liturgical season specifically dedicated to time and attention: to waiting and watching. Advent gives us the opportunity to notice and to experience this slipperiness of time.

Time is slippery in Advent when it moves fast and slow — fast for grown ups, for whom the days will pass by quickly, and the longer our to-do lists, the more quickly it will go. But for children it will be agonizingly slow — “When will Christmas get here?!?”

Time is slippery in Advent because it begins at the end. It it is the beginning of our liturgical year, but our reading from Mark is not from the beginning of Jesus’ time on Earth, but from almost the end.

Time is slippery in Advent because it is our season of already and not yet, when we try to wrap our heads around how God already came to be with us in person, how God is here with us now, how God will come again finally in glory to set everything to right forever.

And it sure seems like it’s about time for that last part, doesn’t it? It sure seems like it’s about time that all the shadows be banished by the Light of the world. About time for injustice to be washed away by a flood of righteousness.

It sure seems, God, like it’s about time for you to get here! It’s about time.

Advent is about all these kinds of slippery time. Because although we will celebrate Christmas exactly 22 days from now, Advent forces us to think about the kinds of time that you can’t read on a clock or circle on your calendar. And maybe that’s the precise reason that Jesus told his disciples not to worry about it. Don’t worry about the when.

Instead, he said: “Keep awake!”

Sometimes keeping awake is easy. “How did it get so late?” we might ask ourselves when we are absorbed in a task or enjoying the company of the people we love, or energized by life in the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes keeping awake is excruciating. “When will this moment pass?” we might ask ourselves when we are deep in dread or anxiously awaiting, or gripped by a spiritual insomnia when evenings and midnights and cockcrows pass by with agonizing slowness, when we are weighed down by regrets and fears and worries and resentments.

And sometimes keeping awake is impossible. Worn down and weary, we just need to shut our eyes for a while. To shut our eyes to the suffering of those around us and to death and decay and disappointment. When we are desperate for a little slice of oblivion and ignorance, we can’t help it. In our own Gethsemanes, we fall asleep.

And here’s some good news.

Even if, even when, we fall asleep, the God of time is still at work. It didn’t matter, in the end, that the disciples fell asleep in the garden. Christ died for them and for us all anyway. God is faithful. Always.

And here’s some more good news. God, unlike me, is a good potter. God will hunch over the wheel as long as it takes. God will give you the full time and attention to become what you will be, the work of God’s hands. And you are not just a lifeless pot, you are the clay that is called into partnership with the Potter.

God wants to partner with you.

Wants you to keep awake — to pay attention to the way it is about time for some peace and hope and joy and love. About time for something radical, something that will tear down the stones of corrupt systems, something that will shake the mountains of oppression and hatred, something that will shake the very stars out of the skies, something that will never pass away. And it’s coming whether you keep awake or not.

But if you keep awake, if you are paying attention as much as you can to what is happening right now — 

If you let your clay be supple and responsive to God’s warm and gentle hands –-

If you lean into the already and not and yet and embrace the slipperiness of time –-

What a morning, what a dawning, what a sunrise you will see!

The dawn is coming. Already and not yet. It’s about time.

In the name of the Father, and of the  ☩  Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 

In our weekly celebration of the Eucharist, we affirm that it is right, our duty and our joy to give thanks and praise to God.  The Samaritan man who is healed of his skin disease might have said the same thing if he had been asked why we went back to say thank you to Jesus. 

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
Thanksgiving Day
Text: Luke 17:11-19 

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.  

It is right to give God thanks and praise! 

It is indeed right. 

Our duty. 

And our joy. 

That we should, at all times and in all places give thanks and praise to you, 

Almighty and merciful God, through our Savior Jesus Christ. 

If you have worshiped here or in another ELCA church, those words should sound pretty familiar.

They are some of the first words of the celebration of the Eucharist, which if you’re rusty on your Ancient Greek, means “Thanksgiving.”  So, it seemed like the best place to start, as we are gathered together today, on our national holiday of Thanksgiving, because it is a good reminder of how, for us, every time we celebrate the Eucharist, every Sunday is Thanksgiving. And how every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we proclaim that it is indeed right for us to give thanks to God. Not only right, it is our duty and it is our joy. Not just on Sundays, but at all times and in all places.  It is right.

And it struck me that the Samaritan man who was healed of his skin disease in our gospel reading, if he had been asked, “why did you go back to give thanks?” he might have answered with these same words. 

“It was right!” he might have said. Right to give thanks! After all, this is the story of Jesus miraculously making things right. The ten men in this story had been suffering from a torturous skin disease. We aren’t sure exactly what it was, but it is clear that it was a malady that was a painful and slow killer, which had separated them from their families, from their communities, maybe for years or even decades. So they had pleaded with Jesus, begging him from a distance, “Master, have mercy on us!”  Make things right!

And Jesus did.  Healing their bodies, yes, but also sending them to the priests to complete the necessary rituals of restoration, so that not only their health was restored, but so were their families, and so were their communities that had missed them. So that everything was made right. 

And so, “of course” the Samaritan might say, “of course I gave thanks!” Not just for the healing, but for the rightness, because he saw, for a moment, the world restored to wholeness, wholeness he never expected, wholeness that felt like God’s perfect and complete and abundant life.  So perfectly right.  And his part? To see it, to witness and recognize it, and rightfully, to give thanks for it.

“It was indeed right,” the Samaritan might say, “and it was my duty!” 

He felt it was not simply his responsibility, but the only thing he could do. And it wasn’t even what Jesus had told him to do. Jesus had told him to go to the priests, but the moment he saw his disease had been cured, he realized that he didn’t need the priests to be his bridge to God’s goodness. God was right there in front of him. What else could he do but his duty, and fall at the feet of the Great High Priest?  

“And it was my joy!” the Samaritan might say.

A joy so overwhelming, so abundant, so profound, it couldn’t be kept in. He shouted! He ran! He hurled himself toward Jesus.  Maybe he couldn’t decide if he should hug him or dance with him or just tackle him, but in the end all he could do was throw himself to the ground. Bowing prostrate at the feet of Jesus, with what I imagine was the biggest smile he had ever smiled – just radiating joy. 

What an experience!  It’s so enticing to imagine. 

But it’s something that most of the time we have to imagine. 

We don’t really get to experience anything like this on an everyday basis. Or, at least I don’t.  I can’t think of many moments when it was so obvious that God had acted, putting the world to right.  I think the moments probably happen all the time, but I just don’t notice, and maybe you don’t either. 

And I really hope you do have a moment, soon, when you see, you witness, you recognize God putting something to right, something you had given up hope on.  And that when you do see it, I hope that you can’t help but fall on your knees, grinning from ear to ear, shouting or maybe just whispering, a fervent thank you that bubbles up out of the sheer joy of it.

But even though we say that it is indeed right to give thanks at all times and in all places, we know that we can’t always maintain such intense, continual joyfulness that erupts in spontaneous thanksgiving.  Especially when instead we are overcome with all the ways the world isn’t right, all the ways it is broken and dying – how do we feel gratitude? When we are separated from our loved ones, when we are crying out to Jesus to have mercy – how can we give thanks?

And here’s the secret – we do it anyway.

And it’s why we return, Sunday after Sunday, to our own great thanksgiving.  That’s why we say the words every week.  That’s why in 1863, in the middle of the bloodiest war our country had ever experienced, when it seemed that nothing was right and no joy was to be found, President Lincoln declared a new national holiday – a Day of Thanksgiving.   

Because when we give thanks anyway, a funny thing happens.  It’s Joy! 

It can be so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we have to feel the joy before we can really give thanks, that the only authentic kind of thanksgiving is the Samaritan’s spontaneous outburst – but the secret is that it also works the other way around. Joy produces thanksgiving – and thanksgiving produces joy. Our rituals of gratitude, when we take the time to notice and acknowledge the ways that God is working in the world – that produces joy.  

There is joy when we gather in the spirit of thanksgiving, whether we gather in our homes around tables packed with family or friends, or whether we come to God’s table, where everyone is invited. Where Jesus seeks out every single person, always and forever asking, where are the others? Wanting them at the table too. There is joy.

Thanksgiving produces joy!

Whether we pass around the plates of food that remind us to give thanks, our turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and pie or whatever foods you will eat today, or whether we feast on the indescribable gift of God’s own body and blood, the bread and the wine that are our tangible signs of God’s surpassing grace. 

Thanksgiving produces joy, whether we are feeling happy or whether we are mourning all those that should be at our tables but won’t be, whether everything happens exactly as planned or whether everything is on fire, whether everything feels right or whether it feels broken beyond repair. 

Because God does have mercy on us. God sees what is broken, God acts to make it right, and God is doing it in all times and in all places – and when we take the time to notice, when we take the time to cultivate gratitude in our hearts, when we take the time to “Eucharist,” we enter in to God’s abundant love for us where there is peace and, you guessed it, joy. 

Cheesy and corny as it may be, I’m thankful for Thanksgiving. For our holiday today and for every time we gather at God’s table of grace.  I’m thankful for these rituals that open our eyes to the ways that God is putting the world right. And it is right that we respond with thanks and praise. It is indeed right, our duty, yes, and our joy. 

In the name of the Father, of the  ☩  Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 

We so often approach the commandment to love God and love your neighbor as labor, leading to exhaustion or despair. But it becomes easier when we remember the crucial insight of the Reformation and mystics:  that it’s actually about God’s love for us! 

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
Reformation Sunday, Lect. 30 A 
Texts: Leviticus 19:1-2, Psalm 1, Matthew 22:34-46 

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We hear this morning “the greatest commandment” – the very center of Jesus’ teaching.

And it’s pretty simple. Love God and love your neighbor.  That’s it. 

This wasn’t some secret that Jesus revealed. The two parts of this commandment are both pulled straight from the Torah, God’s gift to the children of Israel, which we often call the law.  It’s what God had been saying all along.  “Love me and love each other.”

And I really do believe that it is a gift. And that if I could just do that, just really get good at loving God and loving my neighbor, my life would be better. I could be so happy, like it says in Psalm 1. I could be like a tree planted by streams of water, bearing the most beautiful fruit in due season.

And I feel like I should be able to do it.

I feel like I should be able to love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind and to love my neighbor as myself.  But then, I start to think about actually doing it and all of a sudden, my anxiety ratchets up, because that’s a lot!  My brain immediately goes into problem solving mode and I think maybe if I break it up, try just one of the pieces at first.  Maybe if I just focus on the easier one to start with, that might help! Okay, Well. Which one is easier?

Is it easier to love God who sometimes feels so far away?  Or is it easier to love my neighbor, who, you know, a lot of the time feels way too close?

Either way, it’s not so easy.

Either way, it feels pretty hard. A labor of love with an emphasis on the labor. It feels like work. 

It’s hard work to love a God whose sheer vastness I can’t hope to comprehend! Hard work to love my neighbors who are so small and petty (and so am I). 

And I start to wonder, how can I possibly love God with my entire self, my heart, my emotions, my center… With my soul, my being, my identity… With my mind, my intellect, my understanding? And how can I do it when I’m afraid that if I really did love with all of that, with all of me, there wouldn’t be any left of anything else?

And how can I hope to love my neighbor as myself, when I have such a hard time loving, or even liking, myself?

It’s exhausting! And so easy to despair.  And that’s the bad news. 

Not the commandment itself, that is a gift, but the way I tend to approach it as a checklist. How I experience it as a burden, as labor.  The way I obsess over all the ways I think it’s too hard, impossible even.  The way I let the tree from the psalm be withered, instead of watered.

But here’s where the good news comes in.

It’s hiding in plain sight, in the very verse from Leviticus that Jesus quotes, although he stops before he gets there.  But in the Torah, it says: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”  I am the Lord. 

So often, we don’t say the last few words of this verse, focusing so much on the imperative (you shall love), that we miss the declarative: “I am the Lord.”  But these words ought to resound, like a bell, calling us back to the Great I Am, the source of all life and all love. 

It’s about God!  This is the good news! It’s not about how hard we work, how much we labor to love.  It’s not about all the shoulds and should nots or our insecurities over whether we are loving enough or the right way.  This little refrain (“I am the LORD”) is our reminder that it’s actually and always about what God did and does. How God has loved and will love and always loves.  

The same good news that the writer of I John captured so eloquently and succinctly: “this is love: not that we loved God, but that God loved us.”

And it’s the same thing Martin Luther was trying to tell everyone. 

The reformers of 16th Century Germany that we celebrate today recognized how easy it is to get caught up in the fear and the anxiety of doing the labor of love. And how toxic and depleting that approach is and how often it leads to despair.  Their remedy was to insist that it isn’t about us doing work, isn’t about us doing anything – it’s all about God.  Because God saves, we are saved. Because God is faithful, we can have faith.  Because God loves, we can love. 

The crucial realization, or maybe we should say recentering, of the Lutheran Reformation wasn’t earth-shattering because it was a new insight. It was earth-shattering because God’s love is earth-shattering. 

After all, many people throughout time, the medieval mystics in particular, have experienced the earth-shattering love God has for us. Often in evocative and sometimes frankly erotic terms, they have written about how God loves us with God’s whole heart, soul, and mind. 

I want to stay on that image for a moment.

To take a cue from the mystic imagination, and play with the idea of how intensely and passionately God loves you. Let’s imagine God’s heart –whatever that might be – that it aches.  I imagine God’s heart aches for you, composing love letters and poetry for you, sending you messages of every kind, hoping someday you’ll respond. 

I imagine God’s soul – God’s very being – warming at the thought of you, itching to embrace you, leaning with longing toward you.  

I imagine God’s mind – and God is head over heels in love, utterly fascinated and mesmerized by you, hanging on to every word you say. 

That’s the kind of love that kindles reformation. On the scale of Christendom – and also deep in each person, deep in me, and deep in you. 

Because when you accept God’s outrageous love for you, it changes the way you hear this commandment. 

It’s not an order to try harder, piling up greater and greater labors of love.  It’s an invitation to relax, relax into God’s love, like sinking into a warm bath. Not just around you but inside you too. The love of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit dwells in you and wells up in you, warming you from the inside and spilling over to others. 

God’s love around us and within us frees us and transforms us.  That’s what allows us to love as God loves, in a way that is abundant and abiding, and a tiny bit absurd.  Because when we are snuggled in the warm, fuzzy blanket of God’s love, we experience the commandment like Luther did, who said that “the heart draws joy from the commandment and warms itself in God’s love to the point of melting.”¹  

Melted in the furnace of God’s love, suddenly it isn’t labor any more.  

Suddenly it is an exquisite joy to love God back, heart for heart and soul for soul and mind for mind, a perfect dance of desire and longing.  Suddenly it’s easier to love ourselves, to turn down the volume of our anxieties and fears and self-consciousness because we are too busy blushing at God’s tenderness toward us.  Suddenly it’s a delight to love our neighbors – because we know God is absolutely crazy about them as well. 

This is reformation. And it’s on-going and it’s happening in you. Every time you remember how utterly and completely God loves you.  Every time you are reminded that this commandment isn’t a to-do list, it’s a love letter.  Then your heart, and soul, and mind are re-formed, made new, every day by God’s love. 

So, relax.  And be loved into love. 

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

_{1. Martin Luther, “The Third Commandment,” Treatise on Good Works, 1520.}