The first chapter of A Faith for the Future tells us that God creates out of nothing. We read: Nothing forced God to create, God created out of God's great love. And when God created, God looked at this new creation and said it was good.
When I first met Bishop Kendrick for lunch (a lunch that would launch me into an Episcopalian future!) he asked me "what do you think it means to bless someone or something?" My first thoughts went to creation: In the beginning God created and said it, we, are good.
Have you ever stopped to really think about why God created a world, human beings? Is creation a form of blessing? Yes, we are told God created out of love. Yet, love as we know it has a variety of needs, motives, wants, and vulnerabilities wrapped in it. We don't usually associate many of these with God.
From a human perspective, why do we create? Procreate? Artists, musicians, parents, teachers, poets, etc? From whence comes the desire to create? And when such creation takes place, it is generally a good feeling, a fulfilling and transcendent sense of participation in otherness. Or is it?
We read: God chooses people not simply to bless them and set them apart from others, but so that through them all people may be blessed and know God's love. God calls a people because God needs a whole community of people to make God's blessing known.
How do you bless people? Generally we have a tendency to think that blessings come from God, priests, or someone in an "official" capacity. What if we are created to bless? What would that look like in your life?
In the ultimate moment of blessing Jesus became incarnate for us, to reveal that God-for-us and with us. In his great act of humility and washing, he broke with all the models of humanity that are visible in our own time: the rat race of productivity, the fear for survival, the frenzy of accumulation, and the deathly sense of self-sufficiency.
In this, Jesus summoned and constituted an alternative community of which we are heirs, adopted children. Imagine a community that refuses to participate in anxiety and insecurity of the world because it imitates creation: birds and lilies of the field in the sure confidence that God knows our needs and supplies them.
In Jesus and his way of life, we have been given an example to replicate--an example that is in sharp contrast to the ways of the world. In the grace and power of your Spirit, may we be the community that refuses insecurity
because of our sure confidence in you
and be empowered to reach out in creative compassion and love. Amen.
It asks of us to list words or phrases that help us understand God. Mine are: love, created in His image, His will, follower, disciple, prsyer, and healer.
ReplyDeleteThe image that I see when thinking or picturing God is the one of Jesus holding a child in His lap and other children surrounding Him. That is my image. I have never cared for the bridegroom and bride image.
The most tempting god that I trust is MYSELF. I think I know what is best and what will work and how things should be. Instead, I need to remind myself that I am His and I am here to serve.
Seeing God in others is challenging sometimes. My faith and relationship with God grows when I free myself of my comfort zone and reach out to someone I might not have. It always turns out fruitful.I do have to remind myself that they too are made in His image. They are loved by God just as much as I am.