+The collect, what I read at the beginning of our liturgy, is a tone setter. Through this prayer two things are accomplished…first we gather as a community and I, as a representative of the community collect us in worship and, secondly, the collect foreshadows the scriptural theme for the day. Now, sometimes this is fairly far-fetched and I think, while reading it, “what in the world does this have to do with what we’re reading today?”
But more often, like this morning; the Collect sums it up perfectly:
“Pour into our hearts such love towards you that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all we can desire.”
Pour into our hearts such promises that EXCEED all we can desire.
Wow. God pours into our hearts things that surpass anything we could ever want. Anything we could ever think we need.
One commentator puts it this way:
“God is not stingy in revelation but prodigal.”
In other words, when Go shows up, it is usually in a big and prodigious way. In any way, in all ways, in anyone or anything, in everyone and in everything, God is prodigious in God’s revelation.
No better example of God’s prodigious manner of revelation can be found than Jesus. Jesus was a pretty bold way for God to be revealed to the world.
Now this isn’t to say that God didn’t use others for this bold revealing. Giving aged Sarah a child----that was bold.
Choosing a grandson of Pharaoh as a prophet and then bringing a whole people out of slavery and into a land flowing with milk and honey. That’s pretty bold.
Giving Naomi and Ruth a bond which overcame all the social and cultural shame their communities could foist upon them, was bold.
Taking a scrawny shepherd boy with a great ear for music but a questionable ability to lead and making him the father of a long line of leaders and prophets, ending in Jesus himself, was bold.
Choosing a Galilean peasant girl and her stalwart yet otherwise unremarkable carpenter betrothed, as the God bearing couple, was bold.
Having that same young mother be a guide and guardian for God in the flesh, walking with him every step of the way from crib to cross, tomb and upper room, was bold.
God is not stingy in revelation.
But these revelations were a long time ago weren’t they? Of course, I hope you find God revealed among this community and at this altar each and every time you’re here, each and every time you receive the sacrament at this rail.
But the big bawdy “God revealing” we hear about in scripture, we proclaim in our creed we remember in our Eucharist----that doesn’t happen anymore, does it?
Or does it?
Bruce Epperly, United Church of Christ Theologian and author says: God is beyond all we can see or imagine, yet is revealed in all things.
God is beyond all imagery, yet is revealed in all things.
This must be what Jesus meant when, in this morning’s Gospel he says:
I am in God.
You are in me.
I am in you.
Jesus in God, Us in Jesus and Jesus in Us makes one monumental prodigious revelation of Love, doesn’t it? As our morning collect tells us, this revelation can be overwhelming, reaching beyond what our senses can comprehend.
So, if God’s love revealed to us is so overwhelming, so beyond our comprehension the question becomes: will we recognize God when we see God?Ddo we notice the revelation?
Jesus wasn’t recognized. Throughout the year we hear readings of people seemingly incapable of recognizing Him for who he was, unable to hear his message of hope and redemption.
So the challenge for us is twofold:
One ----to strive to recognize God revealed in the world. Sometimes this is easy. On this Memorial Day weekend when we remember all those who have given their lives for our protection---like my own Uncle Robert, killed in the battle of Anzio during WW2 or the 174 US service people killed this year in Afghanistan and Iraq---we see the revelation of God in people who selflessly give their lives for another. Other times God’s revelation is more difficult to recognize. Do you see it when struggling to pay your bills as big business gets break after break, and the rich get richer while those of us in the middle get squeezed…. Or while hearing about our country’s role in clandestine, illegal and immoral activity. Or while watching those we love fall into despair from alcohol and drug abuse, or enduring the pain of abuse from a spouse or a parent or a child.
It’s difficult to see God’s revelation in such situations. It’s easy to give up to say that God isn’t here anymore, that God’s revelation has passed you by. But, and here is the secret, here is the key to God’s boldness in creation, God revealed in others is only part of the equation.
The revelation over which we have complete control, the revelation God has entrusted to each of us is….US.
How is God revealed in you? In Us?
God pours God’s Love into us. ..how do we reflect it…God pours it into us, but it’s our job is to let it overflow, to let it show.
We are God’s revelation in the world. Does the world recognize God in what we do?
Does the world recognize Jesus in us? Does the world recognize us in Jesus?
When we go out into the world, we are reflective of God. We are the instruments of God’s Love. We may reveal God in a quiet steady witness to the world, or in a bodacious and vigorous shouting out to the world, or it a tear-laden lament for the earth, or a rant against torture and terrorism or a simple act of kindness between two neighbors. God’s revelation in and through us takes as many forms as the personalities which fill this church and populate this earth—all we need to do is remember, God is revealed to others through us and God is revealed to us through others.
Jesus said: I am in God. You are in Me And I am in You.
Will we see it? Will we show it? +
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