The Puzzle of God's Love

When I was visiting some of my family over the Christmas break, we began to work on a 1500-piece puzzle. It was a big picture of a living room, with a guitar against the wall near a window that looked out at a small tree by a deep blue lake. There were many different colors and hues and we spent quite a bit of time sorting puzzle pieces before we could even start to see the big picture.
But this puzzle was different than many I had worked on in the past. Usually, the picture on the box showed what the puzzle looked like, but this one was not so obviously put together. It was true that the picture on the box showed what it resembled “in general.” What we discovered as we assembled more of the puzzle is that there were various things in the picture that were different than what the picture on the box had portrayed! For example, instead of one clock on the wall, there were two! Instead of four record-albums, there were five! Not only did this make it more difficult for us to assemble, it also made it harder to fit pieces together. Pieces that looked like they never should go together actually did. In fact it was more likely that pieces of the same color and shape would not fit!
         On a fun side note, my 3-year-old niece decided at about 4am the next morning to “help” put the puzzle together without us there to guide her. Let’s just say, we had to start all over again.
         1500-piece puzzles are already challenging enough when we know what the picture looks like. It makes it even harder when we don’t know what it looks like! Regardless of the size, the scope, or the amount of 3-year-olds helping us, puzzles will always be harder to fit together when we don’t know what the picture looks like.

I.

Jesus said, “Holy Father, protect them in Your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as We are one.”  Jesus prays these words to God the Father on behalf of His disciples, all of who Jesus had just said would be scattered because of His death in the previous chapter of this Gospel.  Since we know in the Easter season the reality that Jesus has risen victorious over death, we sometimes give the disciples a hard time for not being able to understand what Jesus was saying. And yet, when we read the Gospel of Saint John, we all should get a little confused at what Jesus is saying. How can they be one as God and Jesus are one if they are scattered? How can they be unified if they are apart?
Not only that, but how can the disciples even begin to carry out the mission of God revealed through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, if He leaves them and goes back to His Father?
        Jesus, if you are not here, then how can you expect us to carry out God’s plans for the kingdom of heaven? If we don’t know what the grand picture of the kingdom looks like, then how can we ever put the puzzle pieces together?

II.

When we look at the world we live in, we cannot help but be aware of how divided people can become. We as citizens of the United States are being confronted with the fact that we have not solved some fundamental problems that we perhaps thought we had put behind us.
We are in international upheaval about racism, which, as we have learned over the past year, is alive and well in our country. We have probably heard and seen numerous articles and talking-heads discussing the “pro-immigrant” or “anti-immigrant” positions that certain people take. And there are many more divisive issues that I could name. The point is, whether it be debating positions or deflating footballs, we are all intimately aware of the human capacity to wrong our neighbors and hurt other people.
          These issues and problems are not very far removed from the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church’s doors either. In our churches, differences about belief and ethics can very quickly transform themselves into theological firefights about who is right and who is wrong, leading both groups to basically excommunicate each other from the Christian faith. Even in our blessed Anglican Communion, the relationships continue to be strained as we struggle to find unity in all of our various diversities. Thabo Makgoba, Archbishop of Cape Town South Africa, noted in his speech to seminarian graduates this past week that social media has been instrumental in breaking relationships with our other Christian brothers and sisters.  Through social media, blog sites, or even a seething comment on a news page, we sometimes vilify each other when we should be trying to continue the message and prayer of Jesus to be one, as He and Our Father are one.

III.

But even in all of this upheaval, we need to realize that Jesus has not left us orphans to fend for ourselves. In fact, God has never been more present. As we heard today in the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit has come to us. The Spirit chose Saint Matthias to be numbered with the Twelve, to fill the missing puzzle piece left after Judas’ betrayal and suicide. Not long after this, we have the first deacons of the One Church selected to take care of the widows and orphans. And as the teaching about Jesus the Son of God spreads, we find that the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ begins to change the world. We have Gentiles invited in along with the Jews to be a part of God’s kingdom. The lame walk, the blind see, the hungry are fed, and the outcasts are welcomed in to the household of God.
And it is in this saving action of Jesus that we find the truth: we don’t assemble the puzzle pieces. We are the puzzle pieces. And we are meant to be a part of a beautiful picture that our heavenly Father is putting together, being assembled and moved into place to become the very image of Jesus Christ.

IV.

         Therefore, my brothers and sisters, when we engage this broken and mixed up world we live in, let us do so unified in the power and love of God. Let us recognize that we are all pieces of God’s puzzle meant to be where God has put us, right here in Siloam Springs. We were meant to work where we are working at, to live where we are living at, and to know the people we engage with every day. Since this is the reality as Christians, make the most of every opportunity that God has provided you in your life.
         Love your enemies. Pray for those who curse you. Play with the little children. Care for the poor. Visit those in prison. Heal the brokenhearted. Rebuild bridges that have been burned. And do these things knowing that you are an irreplaceable puzzle piece in God’s picture of love.

        And may God our Father fulfill what Jesus has prayed on our behalf:

        May we be one, just as God is One.

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

Jesus Grows Our Love

 

      Have you ever tried to grow a tree from a seed before? It is a painstaking and slow process that will try your patience. My family once helped grow an apple tree from just one small seed. It was fun to see the finished product, but to my 5-year-old self at the time, it took WAY too long to happen! It was years until it was a full tree! Can’t it just grow and get it over with already?
Any tree takes years to grow strong and full. The trees on the outside of the parking lot of this building have been growing there for much longer than any of us would care to wait. Yet, they have grown. They have been nourished by the sun in its radiance, watered by the white clouds above, and tilled by the many squirrels, earth worms, and moles that live around them. And they have grown. Imagine the things that those trees have seen, the storms that they have weathered, and, perhaps, the children that their branches have held. Yet, one thing is amazing about these trees: it was not by human hands or human efforts that they have grown.

I.

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”  The words of the Gospel according to Saint John today come in a long string of important lessons that Jesus is teaching His disciples. He teaches them about who His Father is, who the Holy Spirit is, and how exactly He as the incarnate Son of God fits into that picture. This agricultural metaphor that Jesus uses provides a striking image, because He is basically saying that regardless of where we come from and regardless of our particular circumstances, the people of God all must abide in Jesus in order to grow as branches of God. Also, this passage is Christ-centered. Because in Jesus’ teaching, He places Himself as the sustainer and feeder of the entire world. As Saint John said earlier in his Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word…all things came into being through Him.”  And apart from the Source of Creation, nothing can grow.
Without the radiance of the sun, the trees die and bear no fruit.

II.

We all have experienced hunger, in some form or another. We get hungry every day! From the tiniest baby to the strongest professional athlete, we all become hungry when we have been removed from food for a while. Yet, the people in the world who know hunger better than most of us are the people who have no ability to access food. People who suffer from hunger are far more prone to death from preventable sicknesses, such as measles, malaria, the common cold, and many more. In fact, by current estimates, nearly 4.5 million children world-wide will die from hunger-related causes just in this year alone.
You may be surprised to hear that one of the poorest and most depressed parts of the United States is very close to us: Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The poverty rate of Pine Bluff, according to a recent study of unemployment and poverty rates, is a staggering 24.4%, meaning that 24 out of every 100 people who live there subsist below the poverty line.
But poverty is not simply a physical thing that we experience. Sometimes, the hunger we feel is not for food. It is for love. How many of us have felt lonely? How many of us have experienced what it is like to not have someone who will listen to us, someone who will take us in their arms and love us as beloved sons and daughters? How many of us have struggled with acceptance of ourselves? All of these things are hungers that cannot simply be satisfied by physical food: it can only be cured by the spiritual food of unconditional love.
When we think of poverty and hunger, we sometimes think of those places far from home, when in fact we come to realize that hunger is everywhere, and not simply the places overseas. It is indeed on our doorsteps.

III.

But history is filled with the reality that God provides. God always provides. And boy does God’s provision come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Jesus feeds crowds of thousands of people simply with the breaking of the loaves and the giving of the fish. Jesus turns water into wine for the enjoyment of the patrons at a local wedding. Jesus heals the blind, gives strength to the limbs of the crippled, and reverses death upon itself in His glorious resurrection!
Jesus truly is like the sun, shining His light into the world and sustaining all that lives within it. And by the Holy Spirit of God, the followers of Jesus Christ were given the sustaining power of God’s provision and love. Think of the miracles that happened in the Acts of the Apostles. The Holy Spirit allowed Saint Peter to heal a lame beggar who had been crippled from his youth. Saint Phillip was directed by the Holy Spirit to the Ethiopian eunuch who needed guidance in his reading of the prophet Isaiah.  And many more examples can be found in the lives of the saints of our Holy Tradition.
Jesus has shined His light down upon us, so that we, as tender trees, may grow and lift up our leaves to bear the fruit of righteousness and love.

IV.

        And Jesus is right here in the midst of Northwest Arkansas as well. Think about the amazing things that Jesus has empowered the Church to do through Magdalene House in Fayetteville, a home for women recovering from violence, prostitution, addiction, and incarceration. These women are being fed both physically and spiritually by the love of God that lives in the people who support that ministry.
        We don’t even have to look beyond our own doors to see Jesus’ sustaining power. The Wednesday food pantry and the Wednesday free meal feed the poor and less fortunate people in our community. This is a shining example of simple food being provided for people who have need by the saints who live just down the street in our neighborhoods.
        When we, the followers of Jesus Christ, see how much Jesus sustains us and that He is our true vine, we discover that we (the branches) have been given so much grace that we can hardly count the instances where we see Jesus today. We see Him in the lives of the people we work with, the people we feed, the people who feed us, and most of all, in the love that we have for one another.
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, let the light of the Son of God shine down upon us to grow our love. Let us feed the people God puts in our way with bread that sustains their bodies and love that sustains their spirit. Let us seek those who are homeless with compassion and not just feed them with physical food, but with the fruit of conversation, engagement, and loving acceptance. Let us see the stressed out woman at the grocery store as a tender tree, planted by God who needs the fruit of encouragement in her hectic life. Let us bear the fruit of patience with our children who take up so much of our time and see them as the tender saplings who are still in need of nourishment as they grow in the knowledge and love of God.
        We are all trees planed and nourished by God. So bear good fruit. And may God the Father be glorified in this: that we bear much fruit and become Jesus’ disciples.  For He is our vine; and we are His branches.

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