So Loved

Propers: Reformation, A.D. 2016 C

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Love. That’s what it boils down to, isn’t it? Every moment of your life, every heartbeat, every breath, you are loved. You are loved completely and utterly, more than you can ever know. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

There are many ways to view the world. Some look at the universe and see a dark, black nothing, a yawning empty void of meaninglessness. Others see the world as a blank slate of opportunity, upon which they wish to leave their mark for generations yet unborn, through willpower, determination, and self-mastery. And then there’s the modern view, that the world is a thing to be used, a menu of options to be selected and consumed for our own hungry, selfish little wills. Our society is a consumerist society. Little wonder, then, that so many of us feel consumed.

But this is not how the Christian views the world. The Christian views the world, rather astonishingly, as an act of love. Everything in it, all of Creation, is an ongoing act of love. It was created freely, generously, not out of need but out of joy. And it us upheld in every single moment by the self-giving love overflowing from the Trinitarian God who is the source and ground of all that is. If God ever ceases to love something, that thing ceases to exist.

Imagine the implications. Trillions of galaxies, with a hundred billion stars in each, all whirling throughout this cosmos and God-knows-how-many other cosmoses, worlds within worlds within worlds, each one of them an act of love. Think of all the people on this planet, each one of them a universe unto him- or herself, each one a world-builder, an endless font of thoughts and dreams and questions. And all of them, and their every thought, are all acts of love. The sparrow and the eagle, the atom and the galaxy, every one a sheer act of love, works of art, spasms of life-giving joy flowing out from the One in whom we live and move and have our being.

This is what we mean when we confess every Sunday that we “believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth.” We aren’t talking about some demiurge who set things into motion long ago. No, for we confess that every moment of existence, every instance of there being something instead of nothing, is God’s own act of Creation. If you exist, it is because God is at work even now creating you. If you can breathe, if you can think, if you have even the faintest glimmer of awareness, that alone is proof that you are loved and valued and cherished by the infinite wellspring of love that upholds and creates us all.

But now let us be clear. When we speak of God as Love, and of this world as His free act of loving, we are not being sentimental. No one who looks to the Cross can afford such a luxury. Love is not some warm, sappy emotion. Love is not the same thing as feeling in love. True love means putting someone else’s needs before our own, giving of ourselves that others may flourish. And that’s not easy. In point of fact, it hurts—love hurts—and not simply when things go wrong. To love is to give is to suffer. That’s why the symbol of our faith is God made Man, pouring out His life upon the Cross for the salvation of the world. And we call this act of supreme self-sacrifice His Passion, a word meaning both great love and great suffering.

It is no easy thing to love another. It requires nothing less than our overthrowing of the world as we know it, so that our lives cease to revolve around ourselves and begin to revolve instead around others: around parents and siblings, spouses and children, neighbors and enemies. Yet in this very selflessness, in this giving up to another, we find at last our blissful liberation from the tyranny of the ego. And it is from this dying to ourselves that new life is born. To love is to give is to suffer—is to create. And therein lies joy. Love, so simple yet so mysterious, truly does make the world go ‘round.

None of which is to say that the world is perfect. There are many things within Creation that God did not intend. Lies, wickedness, sin, death, injustice: none of these were His ideas. In point of fact, none of them exist in the strictest sense, because none of them have any substance in and of themselves. Nobody created injustice; it is simply the absence of being just. Likewise, lies are the absence of truth, wickedness the absence of morality, death the absence of life, and sin the separation from God. They aren’t things. They’re nothings. And when we embrace them we are embracing our own nothingness.

But the fact that we’re still here—the fact that the world is still here, that anything’s still here—is proof that God loves us, that He hasn’t given up on us. For all of our mistakes and stupidities and cruelties, for all the wars and theft and hungry children crying out for want of bread, God still loves us. He still has plans for us. He still has hope for us! If He didn’t, none of us would be here. The very fact that we are, shows that we have a future and that future is life and hope and forgiveness. For the future itself, the very basis of reality, is God’s love for us: the love poured out in Creation, the love poured out from the Cross. In every moment, every heartbeat, every breath, we are still and always loved. And that Love will not give up until each and every one of us loves Him freely in return.

On this Reformation Sunday, we are called to gather ‘round the Cross, to reaffirm the deep truths revealed to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Church is always reforming, for in every age the Church is always being called back to the Cross. And there are many things we could speak of on this day—of doctrines and ideas, of ancient practices and ancient quarrels—but at the end of it all, all of our denominations and our liturgies and our Scriptures and our Sacraments, it all boils down to one thing.

It all boils down to love.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that all who believe in Him may not perish, but have eternal life.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.