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nadia blolz-weber

Reflections on love, themes from 1 Corinthians 13: 1-3

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , ,
I looked in temples, churches, and mosques. But I found the Divine within my heart. ― Rumi
This is our great covenant: To dwell together in peace,
To seek the truth in love, And to help one another.
— James Vila Blake

Agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Songs about Sacred Love:

Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
What do you know of Love except the name?
… Since Love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal:
it has no interest in a disloyal companion.
The human being resembles a tree; its root is a covenant with God:
that root must be cherished with all one’s might.
A weak covenant is a rotten root, without grace or fruit.
Though the boughs and leaves of the date palm are green,
greenness brings no benefit if the root is corrupt.
If a branch is without green leaves, yet has a good root,
a hundred leaves will put forth their hands in the end.
— Rumi

A SERMON on LOVE by Nadia Bolz-Weber (Excerpt – full article: https://www.patheos.com/resources/additional-resources/2010/02/sermon-on-love?p=2)

…  the really amazing thing about 1 Corinthians 13 is that even hundreds of thousands of schlocky wedding and inspirational posters and bad Christian coffee mugs can’t kill it.  Paul’s hymn to Love is perhaps one of the most recognizable texts in the New Testament.  And it is really beautiful… but it has just about nothing to do with romance.

To be sure, the subject of love is a tricky one.  I think because we so often are loved poorly, loved incompletely, loved conditionally.  The subject of love is a tricky one because we so often love poorly, incompletely, and conditionally.  And, forgive the pop psychology, but my theory is that when we are loved so poorly we begin, on some level, to assume that we are maybe undeserving of being loved well.  And from this state of being loved poorly, feeling undeserving, and then loving poorly in return — which, let’s face it, is the foundation of Oprah’s and Dr. Phil’s entire empires — we do some stuff that’s… unhelpful.

…. Richard Rohr has a way of assessing our spiritual health… namely what do we do with pain?  Do we transmit it or do we transform it?  Because the mirror in which we might see ourselves as God sees us gets dimmer and dimmer when the pain of being human is transmitted to us and not transformed.  As our own sin and brokenness begins to be a lens through which we view ourselves and others, the mirror grows dimmer. And then the pain of not knowing who we really are becomes transmitted through all the things Paul describes: arrogance, impatience, unkindness, envy, selfishness.

It can be a desperate cycle based on something as simple as the truth my mother once spoke: “Honey, bullies just bully out of their own hurt inside as though they have to spread it.” But this is true of so many things when we think about it.  And I think what Paul was saying to his little church plant gone bad was: stop hurting each other.  Stop transmitting your hurt and sin.  Because from that state of being loved poorly, feeling undeserving, and then loving poorly in return, we do some stuff that’s… unhelpful.

This letter to the church in Corinth ..  told them who they were not by telling them about history or biology or sociology, but by telling them about love. Not the emotion of Love. Not the sentiment of Love. Not the romance of Love. Because honestly, I have yet to see a Hallmark card with I love you so much that I will endure you. Or, My love for you bears all your things.  But Paul writes of Love as origin.  Love as source.  Love as God, and God as Love.  This Love has really nothing to do with feeling nice.  It’s actually not about feelings at all, it’s about truth.  It’s about the truth of who we are through the eyes of a God who knows us fully.

This love described by Paul isn’t mushy and sentimental.  It’s tough and unwilling to yield. This love — which is patient and kind and isn’t rude or boastful and is self-giving and all that — here’s what is scary about this kind of love:  you can’t manipulate it.  There is no amount of weight loss, piety, personality management, big smiles, or strained pretense that can effect this love.  And maybe in the absence of manipulation we stand bare before the eyes of God. This love is found in the gaze of God as God looks upon us naked and whole. Because this type of love is characterized by the giver not the receiver.  Gone are the strivings and manipulations and efforts to make ourselves more lovable.  In the face-to-face Gaze of the beloved we are known because we are loved.  We aren’t loved because we are known — that leads again to trying to gussy ourselves up to be lovable.

We are known by God because we are loved by God.  Think about that.  The truth of who we were before any pain and hurt was transmitted to us by those who are hurt and in pain…before we forgot our song… we were loved.  Paul says, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.”  For now we manipulate our selves and our image and our loved ones and see only dimly.  Now we gaze in the mirror and see only part of who we are and even then the image is reversed.  But we have the promise that in the fullness of time we will see face to face with God.  Because, Paul writes, “Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

The truth of who you are is found in the eyes of God, not the eyes of the world.  It is the love of God who created this world and called it Good. It is the love of a God who brought the Israelites out of slavery, who fed Ruth and Naomi, who walked among us as Jesus of Nazareth, it is the love of the God who knit you together in your mother’s womb that gets to tell you who you are.  Nothing else. Not the media, not a family who wishes you were different, and not even yourself.  Only the God who knows and loves you fully can tell you who you are. And this is true of everyone, the good the bad and the boring.

In the movie Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean offered pastoral care to a despicable murderer.  He was an unrepentant, wretched man.  Yet her faith in a loving God allowed her, moments before his execution, to say to him, “I want the last face you see in this world to be the face of love, so you look at me when they do this thing. I’ll be the face of love for you.”

I think Paul might be telling us to be the face of love for each other.  When we know that we are loved by God in the fullness of God’s knowledge of us we are free to live in this love.  Free to transmit the love of Christ in a hurting world.  Free to see ourselves and others as God sees us. Not because we are good, but because we are loved.  And seeing just a glimpse, wanting it, moving toward it, brings us closer to what is promised to us forever: that we will see God, who is love, face to face.

GIVING Out of LOVE, GIVING Out of GUILT — Rachel Held Evans (full article: https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/giving-guilt)

I realized that I was giving out of guilt, not love.  And according to Paul, even the greatest, most dramatic acts of charity will leave me feeling empty if I do them out of self-interest (easing my conscience) rather than out of love (easing other people’s burdens).

[Note that Paul says that, “I gain nothing.” For a kid in desperate need of clean water, a well is a well—regardless of whether a donor gave out of love or guilt. I firmly believe that giving out of guilt is better than not giving at all, and that sometimes our acts of faithfulness must precede (or do without) our pure motives.]

…A few things have come to mind:

  • First of all, I’ve got to stop measuring the amount of love in my life by the amount of money/publicity I give to my favorite non-profit organizations. The truth is, it’s easier for me to love people I have never met (kids with AIDS in Africa) than it is to love people I have met (that hard-core conservative down the street who always gives me flack about my politics).  It’s easier for me to have compassion on the widows I spent a week with in India than the women I see every day. It’s easier for me to say I am intellectually committed to Jesus’ teaching that we are to love our enemies than it is for me to let go of the bitterness I carry around from people who have wronged me.  In other words, if I have no compassion for my friends and neighbors, what I give to strangers is just charity—not love.  But if I can become more patient, kind, understanding, forgiving and compassionate toward those around me, what I give to those in far away places will come from the overflow of love already in my heart.
  • Secondly, I’ve got to stop looking at the “poor and needy” as mere objects of my charity and actually form interdependent relationships with the people around me—where I am a part of their community and they are a part of my community.  It’s so much harder, yet so much more authentic and rewarding, to give to people I know than it is to give to people I keep at arm’s length. It’s even harder (for me) to make it reciprocal, to accept their help and friendship in return. My pride likes to keep me in the position of giving rather than receiving.
  • Finally, my favorite trick for easing my conscience is to judge people who don’t give as much or care as much as I do. But this is not love. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.  The best way to inspire others to give more is not to tell them to give more, but to live as an example—without judgment, without pride, without envy, without (gulp) cynicism.  (Looks like I’m going to have to meditate on this passage a bit more!)

ON SACRED LOVE (AGAPE)

There is sweet family love, entangled by history, need, frustration and annoyance. There is community love, a love of music, Zorba’s reckless love of life. It can be vital or serene. There’s the ecstatic love — for the natural world, or in bed — there’s the love of justice or the radical transforming love of what we might call Goodness, Gus (Great Universal Spirit), or God. — Anne Lamott

Let your goal not be to be the first or the best. Let your goal be to be the peace, love, and light of the Divine.― Hiral Nagda

This fire that we call Loving is too strong for human minds. But just right for human souls. ― Aberjhani

For love is a celestial harmony
Of likely hearts compos’d of stars’ concent,
Which join together in sweet sympathy,
To work each other’s joy and true content,
Which they have harbour’d since their first descent
Out of their heavenly bowers, where they did see
And know each other here belov’d to be.”
― Edmund Spenser

I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love. — William Blake

Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love? — Fulton J. Sheen

There are no galley-slaves in the royal vessel of divine love – every man works his oar voluntarily! — St. Francis de Sales

Agape love is selfless love . . . the love God wants us to have isn’t just an emotion but a conscious act of the will—a deliberate decision on our part to put others ahead of ourselves. This is the kind of love God has for us. — Billy Graham

Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re worthy. Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love. Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re beautiful. Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful. — Rob Bell

Agape is disinterested love. Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes.
Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both. — Martin Luther King Jr.

MEDITATIONS on SEEDS & PARABLES

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow. —Aeschylus

The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is, and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God. — Meister Echkhart

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. — Napoleon Hill
God does not only sow his seed in good soil. He loves us with such abandon that he scatters that love far and wide. He does not want to miss the chance of reaching even one lost soul. And in these times, the thorns and weeds, may be the very thing that brings us back to a deeper relationship with God. —Kate Nicholsan
SONGS about SEEDS

In Case of Complete Reversal
— Kay Ryan
Born into each seed
is a small anti-seed
useful in case of some
complete reversal:
a tiny but powerful
kit for adapting it
to the unimaginable.
If we could crack the
fineness of the shell
we’d see the
bundled minuses
stacked as in a safe,
ready for use
if things don’t
go well.

SMALL & MIGHTY

So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself. — Florence Nightingale

I have a mustard seed; and I am not afraid to use it. — Pope Benedict XVI

A man of words and not of deeds, Is like a garden full of weeds. ― Benjamin Franklin

No faith is required to do the possible; actually only a morsel of this atom-powered stuff is needed to do the impossible, for a piece as large as a mustard seed will do more than we have ever dreamed of. — Leonard Ravenhill

The strongest and most mysterious weeds often have things to teach us. ― F.T. McKinstry

But what attracted me to weeds was not their beauty, but their resilience. I mean, despite being so widely despised, so unloved, killed with every chance we get, they are so pervasive, so seemingly invincible. ― Carol Vorvain

Man gains wider dominion by his intellect than by his right arm. The mustard-seed of thought is a pregnant treasury of vast results. Like the germ in the Egyptian tombs its vitality never perishes; and its fruit will spring up after it has been buried for long ages. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The Seed Market — Rumi

Can you find another market like this?
Where,
with your one rose
you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?
Where,
for one seed
get a whole wilderness?
For one weak breath,
a divine wind?
You’ve been fearful
of being absorbed in the ground,
or drawn up by the air.
Now, your waterbead lets go
and drops into the ocean,
where it came from.
It no longer has the form it had,
but it’s still water
The essence is the same.
This giving up is not a repenting.
It’s a deep honoring of yourself.
When the ocean comes to you as a lover,
marry at once, quickly,
for God’s sake!
Don’t postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.
No amount of searching
will find this.
A perfect falcon, for no reason
has landed on your shoulder,
and become yours.

SEED COMMENTARY

They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart. — Frederick Buechner

But a closer reading of the text offers some help – and forgive me for talking about grammar in a sermon, but in Greek there is a “future conditional clause”: If you were to have the faith of a mustard seed — implying that you don’t have that faith now (which is how I always heard it).
But there is also an “according to present reality conditional clause” in Greek: in which case Jesus response to the disciples changes to: if you have the faith of a mustard seed (and you do) —implying that they ALREADY have enough faith.
So here in Luke Jesus isn’t actually scolding them for not having even the tiniest amount of faith – instead when they ask him to increase their faith he’s basically rejecting the premise of their request.
In essence, he seems to imply that what they need isn’t  more faith,
What they need to realize is that the thing they already have IS faith.
It’s like Jesus is saying how much faith do you have? and I’m like I don’t know Jesus, it’s not very much it’s like barely any and Jesus is saying “perfect!” — Nadia Bolz-Weber, full reflection: https://thecorners.substack.com/p/its-a-low-bar-thank-god

The Kingdom is like a tiny mustard seed, Jesus said, that grows into an enormous tree with branches wide and strong enough to make a home for all the birds. It is like a buried treasure, a delicious feast, or a net that catches an abundance of fish. The Kingdom is right here, Jesus said. It is present and yet hidden, immanent yet transcendent. The Kingdom isn’t some far off place you go where you die, the Kingdom is at hand—among us and beyond us, now and not-yet. It is the wheat growing in the midst of weeds, the yeast working its magic in the dough, the pearl germinating in a sepulchral shell. It can come and go in the twinkling of an eye, Jesus said. So pay attention; don’t miss it.  — Rachel Held Evans

Seeds are powerful. They operate in our culture and in our psyche on a literal and metaphorical level like nothing else. They are possibility incarnate – a tiny gift package wrapped in a protective outer layer with infinite potential to sprout, grow, and produce more seeds while providing food and shelter to humans and animals alike. Joan Chittister writes, “In every seed lie the components of all life the world has known from all time to now.”
Our ancestors have been saving, selecting, and planting seeds for thousands of years, which is largely why we are here today. It is an essential part of the human discipline. — Farmer Kyle of Bellwether Farm

COMMENTARY on SOWING SEEDS on DIFFERENT SOIL

Maybe the point of this parable isn’t judgement at all, maybe it’s joy. Since again and again in the midst of this thorny and rocky and good world, God still is sowing a life-giving Word. Just wantonly and indiscriminately scattering it everywhere like God doesn’t understand our rules.
Which would also mean that the thing we call the Word is not something relegated to religious institutions and ordained clergy and the piety police. The thing we call the Word isn’t locked up in some spiritual ivory tower. I am persuaded that the Word of the Lord is anything that brings good news to the poor, and comfort to those who mourn. Whatever heals the brokenhearted. Whatever opens prisons.
The Word is whatever brings freedom to slaves. Whatever brings freedom to former slaves. Whatever brings freedom to the descendants of former slaves. The Word is whatever liberates a nation from the spiritual bondage of human bondage.
And God’s Word is scattered all around us… joyfully scrawled on protest signs and heard in newborns’ cries, and seen in city streets and county fairs and shopping malls.  The Word of the Lord is written on the broken tablets of our hearts, it is falling like rain in the tears of the forgiven, it is harnessed in the laughter of our children. —Nadia Bolz-Weber, full reflection: https://thecorners.substack.com/p/gods-wastefulness

If we want to return our hardened paths to their natural condition so grass and flowers and trees can grow, they have to be plowed up, the soil aerated, new seeds planted and the rain and the sun allowed to do their work without force or interference. That’s what listening to the word of God does for hearts trampled down by the back-and-forth of busyness and that are hardened by the heat of over-exposure. — Kenrt from cslewisfoundation, full reflection: https://www.cslewis.org/blog/january-13-2014/

 

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