Reconnecting with Love
Since the beginning of Lent I have been speaking to you about reconnections with various aspects of our faith and of our life with God. The book I have been following for this series by John Philip Newell is entitled: The Rebirthing of God. The subtitle is: Christianity’s struggle for new beginnings. What Newell has shared in this book has probably been surprising to some of you and perhaps somewhat disturbing while for others he may have struck a chord. Basically, Newell feels that for people in this time to grasp a hold of the message that Christianity can offer to the world, Christians need to reconnect with our faith and its ultimate meaning. Essentially it becomes a rebirthing of God because we make the choice to not rely on the old ways of speaking about God or carrying on with the same traditional interpretations of God but rather seek to understand who God is for us and for the world in this time in which we live.
Even though our faith contains a message that continues throughout time, we need to ask ourselves what we believe about God and whether we can find our beginning with God in the flow of all the other beginnings of every person who has grasped the Christian message and lived it in their journey through this world.
And while we may have covered many topics from the sacredness of all life on this earth to compassion to light to spiritual practice to nonviolence and the unconscious, we have no doubt discovered that they all have one thing in common: a desire for us to see the ways in which our lives have become fragmented and begin to understand how we can weave the fragments back together to discover the oneness that God seeks for us to have. In our Western way of looking at the world, we have trained ourselves to believe that our faith is simply a faith of victory over death, of resurrection; we have trained ourselves to believe that our faith is to be reserved for those moments when we gather for worship or study or prayer; we have trained ourselves to believe that our only salvation is for our souls to escape this body that binds them and seek for the peace that comes at its release.
But from the beginning of time, our creation has been seen by those who first encountered this God as a unity of body, mind and spirit. In fact the resurrection, that victory over death is a victory that does not separate body, mind and spirit but renews us in all things and promises to us a place where we can be at perfect peace in a place where the scars of our minds, bodies and spirits can find healing. That is why the prescription against the taking of any life is surrounded by ritual and by commandment. Our life in its totality is a gift of God to be cherished and celebrated. The sacredness of life lies in the fact that we are not only creations of the Divine but bear something of the Divine within us. As our blood feeds us in body, mind and spirit, as the first breath we take is a sign of the presence of the Divine breath, we recognize how sacred life is. Our responsibility as believers is to reverence our lives and the lives of those with whom we share in community near and far. Our responsibility is to honour the life of everything in this creation and recognize our stewardship of all things.
To see within us and within others the light of God as it breaks into our world in so many ways is to acknowledge that God is alive and present in this world and that we have accepted the call to ever find that light within us and to seek for that light in others. To have the courage to be compassionate towards others; to resist the temptation to be judgmental, to be supportive of one another’s struggles, burdens, sorrows and joys; to seek to be peacemakers in a world that acts out its frustrations in violence and oppression – these are to be the signs of a rebirthing of God not only in our lives but in the life of the world.
Finding the ways in which we can focus ourselves and bring our fragmented lives into a focus that promotes oneness again is a goal for this journey we call life. As with any relationship, when we stop paying attention the relationship grows stale and dull and can eventually collapse in ruin. So our relationship to God needs a constant tune-up. I have mentioned the labyrinth as a means of connection; I have mentioned the use of a phrase in prayer as a meditative exercise designed to bring us focus; I have mentioned taking the time of twilight to pull away from the distractions of this life and find our centre and focus. All of these things are designed not to subjugate our life and our ego but to help us discover our true selves as we encounter the One who has given us life.
This brings us to what Newell would see as the ultimate reconnection: reconnecting with the heart of who God is – Love. The Gospel of John is so clear about who God is. The word love or an example of what love is appears over and over throughout the gospel. The gospel begins with,”in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” (John 1:1-2) We could just as easily substitute the word with love. For John the Word of God that is God is love. And it is that Love that made all things possible and it is that Love that came as the light of the world. And it is the love from God who is Love that came into the world not to condemn the world but to save the world. The coming of God was to bring to us again the vision of wholeness of life that was shared with humanity in Eden.
Through Jesus Christ, God shared with humanity an interpretation of life intended to bring healing and hope; through Jesus Christ, people heard what blessings could be theirs if only they would choose to follow the path of love and justice which they revealed. Now here’s something interesting about justice. True justice is never about coercing or dominating another person. True justice happens when two people are able to say yes to each other and to conjoin in ways that honour each other. True love and true justice require consent. Mutuality of consent is to be the very essence of justice and is to be at the heart of love.
Martin Buber, a Jewish theologian, said, “I do not believe in Jesus but I believe with him.” (Newell, p. 116) Perhaps that’s what Jesus really meant when he invited the disciples to come to the Father through him. If indeed Jesus is the Word of God and is God then it stands to reason that Jesus is Love and so the Way, the Truth and the Life that is Jesus is Love. Looking at our faith in this way, it is for us to believe in Jesus believing that we are following the way of love, the truth of love and the life of love. Would this bring oneness back to our lives? Would it restore a sense of the sacredness of life and encourage us to believe with and live with God?
We have been invited by God to be part of a sacred rebirthing as we live our lives in this time. We have the capacity to nurture this rebirth with our body, mind and soul. We can see that we are made as means to love and that it is a gift of God to us. The question is whether we will choose to live what we truly are – Love.
AMEN