Wednesday's Word: Steadfast Love (24 September 2014)

“Let your loyalty and good faith never fail; bind them about your neck, and inscribe them on the tablet of your memory.”  (Proverbs 3.3 NRSV)

         In May 1987 I travelled to Vancouver to attend my first meeting as a member of the faculty of Vancouver School of Theology.  It was a momentous meeting for me.  It was at this meeting that the faculty accepted the invitation of the Native Ministry Consortium to enter into a partnership to deliver the Master of Divinity to people serving in aboriginal communities in a way that respected aboriginal cultures and ways of learning.

         One of the commitments that the faculty made has been honoured for almost thirty years despite many ups and downs.  We committed ourselves to continue the partnership until our aboriginal partners said that our work was done.  No fixed date.  No conditions.  Just a commitment until the work was done.  Our aboriginal sisters and brothers asked us to act with loyalty and good faith.

         In Proverbs 3.3 the word ‘loyalty’ is used to translate one of the more important concepts in the Hebrew scriptures:  chesed.  In Micah 6.8 chesed is translated as ‘love kindness’; elsewhere chesed is translated as ‘steadfast love’.  However the word is translated, one thing remains constant:  Chesed is a fundamental quality of God’s relationship with creation.  No fixed date.  No conditions.  Just a commitment until God’s work is done.

         I like to point out to young couples who are preparing for marriage that the contemporary Anglican wedding liturgy does not use the phrase ‘I do’ at any point in the service.  At the exchange of consents that occurs prior to the actual wedding vows, the bride and the groom respond, ‘I will’.  In two words they make a commitment to live a life of chesed in their relationship one with the other.  Love, in the Christian sense, is an active choice made every day, perhaps many times within each day.  In other words, the Christian question is not ‘Do you love?’ but ‘Will you love steadfastly?’

         Christians believe in the ‘long haul’.  While there are times that we’ve had to make rapid changes to adapt to circumstances, we have done so because we are committed to God’s vision for creation.  That vision is for the long term and we’re in it until that vision is achieved.  That’s what chesed means; that’s what being made in the image of God sets in the very core of our being.

Richard Geoffrey Leggett
Feast of Matthew the Evangelist (transferred)

Wednesday's Word: Love (17 September 2014)

            In 1958 the British theologian C. S. Lewis gave a series of radio talks entitled 'The Four Loves'.  The original radio series was criticized in the United States because of Lewis' willingness to talk frankly about sex, a criticism we are unlikely to hear about these lectures today.  The lectures were gathered into a book under the same title and published in 1960.

            Lewis explored how, in Greek, there are at least four words that are translated into English as 'love':  (i) 'storgé' which means 'affection', (ii) 'philia' which means 'friendship', (iii) 'eros' which means 'romance' and (iv) 'agapé' which means 'unconditional love'.  In the case of the first three words, Lewis explored the 'shadow' side of these ways of speaking about human emotions:  (a) ' storgé ' or 'affection' could often lead to jealousy, ambivalence and smoothering; (b) 'philia ' or 'friendship' sometimes leads to the creation of cliques, anti-authoritarianism and pride; and (c) 'eros ' or 'romance' had the ability to lead people to do evil as well as to do good.

            Only one word, 'agapé ' or 'unconditional love', had, in Lewis' view, no potential 'shadow'.  For Lewis 'agapé ' was the love with which 'God so loved the world' that the Beloved was sent to bring about our redemption from sin and error.  'agapé ' is not only unconditional; it is also a love that is 'self-offering' and seeks the true good of the beloved.  It is, to use a common expression, 'tough' love that challenges the beloved to become truly alive, truly human, truly a child of God.

            Over the many years of the exercise of ordained ministry I have had to endure the reading of 1 Corinthians 12.31-13.13 at the wedding of star-struck lovers who have come to ask the church's blessing of their marriage vows.  Whenever I have been the presider and this reading has been chosen, I have gone to great pains in my homily to set it in the context of 1 Corinthians.  In 1 Corinthians Paul is writing to a fractious, disagreeable group of snobs who are unwilling to offer 'agapé ' to the poor and disadvantaged among them.  They have begun to fight with one another about who possesses the 'highest' gifts of the Spirit and cliques have begun to form within the community.

            In chapter 13 Paul is not talking about love as affection or friendship or romance; Paul is talking about love as unconditional, self-giving, tough love that challenges individuals and communities to grow into the full stature of Christ.  This is not a 'Hallmark' moment but a 'cross-shaped' moment.  This is not a friendly chat but a call to radical change that has yet to be fully realized in the life of the Christian community in our many and diverse expressions and among humanity as a whole.  Rather than smile benignly and nostalgically  when this passage is read, we should experience a moment of godly fear as we realize our shortcomings.  1 Corinthians 13 is a clarion call to transformation and action.  Perhaps one day we shall hear it so.

Wednesday's Word: Eternal Life (10 September 2014)

            And this is the testimony:  God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.  Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.  (1 John 5.11-12)

            Recently Ruben and I went to one of the private hospitals we visit to celebrate the eucharist.  As we were setting up, one of the residents waved at me and called me over to her side.  “I’m ninety-four years old,” she said.  “My husband is dead and both my children.  Why is God keeping me alive?  Why am I the only one left?”

            I admitted to her that I could not answer her second question.  I have my own questions about similar things that God has yet to answer.  All I can do is to leave such things with God.  But I could answer her first question.  “I believe that you are here because God still has things for you to do.”  After the eucharist she said to me, “You have given me some peace.”

            God has given us eternal life, a gift for the here and now as well as a promise for whatever future God intends for us and for all of creation.  Eternal life is a quality of life to be experienced and explored not a quantity to be measured.  When eternal life is understood to be some future state, it can and has become a tool of oppression.  Women have been told to endure abusive husbands because, in the life to come, they will be blessed.  People of colour have been told to endure injustice because, in the life to come, all will be made right.  The poor have been left behind because, in the life to come, they will enjoy the messianic banquet.  These are all distortions of the eternal life God offers to all people.

            In the Gospel of John Jesus is the incarnation of the Logos.  ‘Logos’ is most frequently translated as ‘word’, but it could also be translated as ‘the pattern, the rationale, the logic’ by which all that is was created and into which all creation is being restored.  Eternal life is experienced when we live our lives following the ‘logic’ of God as it is revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.  It is ‘an already’ that awaits its consummation in the ‘yet to be’.

            To live life after the logic of God in Christ is not only to be compassionate and self-giving, but also to resist evil, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being (The Book of Alternative Services, p. 159).  To live life after the logic of God in Christ is to know that God’s last word to us, even in distress and loss, is not ‘no’ but ‘yes’.

            ‘To have the Son of God’ cannot be confined to the possession an orthodox set of beliefs; ‘to have the Son of God’ is choose God’s logic over the logic of selfishness and fear.  This is eternal life.  What will be is God’s to know; what is now is ours to know and to do.

            

Wednesday's Word: Ordinary (3 September 2014)

            Recently in the news we learned that hackers had broken into ‘the Cloud’ and stolen intimate photographs stored there by various celebrities.  While there are many cautionary aspects to this story, one in particular is significant to me.

            What is it about celebrities that preoccupies so many of our contemporaries?  Everywhere we go, we are confronted with tabloids and magazines that promise to deliver up the secret lives of the rich and famous.  Our television channels are full of so-called ‘reality’ programming that is not ‘real’, not illuminating, not even entertaining.

            I have come to the reluctant conclusion that our society’s obsession with the cult of ‘celebrity-ness’ is, there is no other word for it, demonic.  It’s demonic for two reasons.

            First, its guiding narrative is that ‘ordinary’ life is flat and dull.  Instead of encouraging us to discover our own specialness and to seek joy in the everyday wonders of our lives, the cult of ‘celebrity-ness’ encourages corporate envy of our so-called ‘betters’ and dissatisfaction with the peoples, places and patterns of our daily lives.

            And because we are led to believe our humdrum daily existence is relatively unimportant, the cult of ‘celebrity-ness’ disempowers us.  We come to believe that who we are and what we do does not matter.  It is this aspect of the cult that is most dangerous to the common good.

            “But we have this treasure in clay jars”, Paul writes in 2 Corinthians (2 Cor 4.5a), today’s first reading for the commemoration of Gregory the Great whose papacy (590-604) came during a time of particular difficulty for ‘ordinary’ people.  Not doubt Gregory would agree with Paul that when ordinary people who are afflicted but not crushed, when ordinary people are perplexed but not driving to despair, the life of Jesus, the treasure we hold in the clay jars of our lives, is made visible.  When ordinary people are persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, then the life of Jesus is made visible in such ordinary lives.

            Contrary to the spirit of the cult of ‘celebrity-ness’, there is no power greater than ordinary people who can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine because of the treasure held within these lives.

Richard Geoffrey Leggett

Feast of Gregory the Great