THE READINGS (The Message)
First Reading: 1 John 4: 17-22
God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ's. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love. We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. [God] loved us first. If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating [their] brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, [they are] liars. If [we] won't love the person [we] can see, how can [we] love the God [we] can't see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You've got to love both.
Gospel Reading: John 20: 1-2, 10-16
Early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone was moved away from the entrance. She ran at once to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, breathlessly panting, "They took the Master from the tomb. We don't know where they've put him." …..No one yet knew from the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead. The disciples then went back home.
But Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she knelt to look into the tomb and saw two angels sitting there, dressed in white, one at the head, the other at the foot of where Jesus' body had been laid. They said to her, "Woman, why do you weep?" "They took my Master," she said, "and I don't know where they put him." After she said this, she turned away and saw Jesus standing there. But she didn't recognize him. Jesus spoke to her, "Woman, why do you weep? Who are you looking for?" She, thinking that he was the gardener, said, "Mister, if you took him, tell me where you put him so I can care for him." Jesus said, "Mary." Turning to face him, she said in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" meaning "Teacher!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
God, we ask for the blessing of Your presence to be made known in the speaking and hearing of these words. May all that we do bring glory to You. Amen
Today, we begin what I think will be an interesting and spiritually beneficial look at four of the most popular hymns in the Christian tradition. “In the Garden”, our first hymn which we sang together at the beginning of our time together is a well-loved hymn which brings us face to face with looking at our personal relationship with the Divine. And it does so in very personal and embodied way. Some of you, when singing this song, may have remembered the many funerals at which you heard or sang this song. Indeed, many in the praisechoir, when first presented with the music, told me: “That’s a funeral song.” Let me tell you what I told them. There is nothing funereal about this song at all. The fact that you hear it at so many funerals reflects the popularity of this song particularly in the generation of many of our parents and their friends. That got me to thinking about the “why” of its popularity and what we can learn today in this setting which is very much not like a funeral at all.
We are spiritual creatures who embody real live human forms—we walk and we talk. We live on a physical plane but we have very real spiritual needs that require us to know the joy of inviting and recognizing the presence of the Divine into our very real physical world. This hymn is the epitome of what we do each and every time we commune with our God, whatever we call this God and however we envision this God to be. I think what I like most about this hymn is not its melody—in reality, I’m not particularly fond of it and certainly do not treasure the many quite horrible renditions of In the Garden I have encountered along the way. What speaks to my heart most of all, is the radical closeness of the relationship between myself and the Divine—in this case, Jesus—that is portrayed in the words of this sweet hymn. Our Gospel passage retold the biblical story that served as the inspiration for this song. C. Austin Miles, who was a pharmacist by trade, wrote this hymn after his own encounter with that same story. He writes this:
“One day in April 1912, I was seated in the dark room, where I kept my photographic equipment…I drew my Bible toward me; it opened at my favorite chapter, John 20—whether by chance or inspiration let each reader decide. That meeting of Jesus and Mary had lost none of it power and charm…My hands were resting on the Bible while I stared at the light blue wall. As the light faded, I seemed to be standing at the entrance of a garden, looking down a gently winding path, shaded by olive branches. A woman in white, with head bowed, hand clasping her throat, as if to choke back her sobs, walked slowly into the shadows. It was Mary…She saw Jesus standing. So did I. I knew it was He. She knelt before Him, with arms outstretched and looking in His face, cried, “Rabboni!” I awakened in sunlight, gripping the Bible, with muscles tense and nerves vibrating. Under the inspiration of this vision I wrote as quickly as the words could be formed the poem exactly as it has since appeared. That same evening I wrote the music.”
And so, this hymn, so popular at funerals, is not a funeral hymn at all. In fact, it is very much the opposite—it is an Easter hymn that celebrates Mary’s gratitude and worship at the sight of a risen Jesus. It celebrates her joy and ecstasy when she is once again in the physical presence of Jesus. And we have much to learn.
For most of us, our formal religious training, I use the words loosely in most cases, has rarely encouraged us to look at faith as an embodied act—as an act that requires us to use heart, and mind, and body. In fact, most of us learned to stay as far away from our bodies as we could when thinking or talking about our religious faith. And, as a result, we may well have a well-practiced art of keeping mind and heart or spirit, and body separate. This hymn and the story it tells, calls us to a different place—a place where we are not split into two beings—a spiritual being and a physical being—no, it calls us to a place where we are whole—where our worship invades our bodies and celebrates our ability to walk and talk and be physically present to the Divine. This mind/heart-body split is what makes it possible for people to hate us and anyone who looks or acts differently that what mainstream religion requires us to be. If we truly understood—and I mean all of us, truly understood the wonderful truth of this quaint hymn several things would happen. We would be physically as well as spiritually present in our experiences of the Divine, and it would become impossible to look at physical or biological differences to separate us. And we would be at ease with who we are. And, I would like to think, that we would be much more comfortable using our entire bodies in our acts of worship. We might let God’s presence, at least in private, invade our very bodies as we begin to feel and sense in new ways God’s presence in our lives. Now, I am not suggesting that we start dancing or swaying, although I certainly see nothing wrong if we were to do so; but I am more interested in our healing our mind/spirit/body divisions and by doing so enlarge our healing to the created world itself.
For that, I take us to our first reading. The writer of First John is eloquent in the description of the spiritual life and very physical words are used indeed. First the proclamation upon which all else is based—“God is love!” Living a life of love means that God lives in us as we live in God. And this love permeates every aspect of our life. The author says, in our translation today, that love has “the run of the house”. And where there is love, there is no room for fear or for hatred. And less, we quibble over the intricacies of loving a God we cannot see, John is clear—we love and experience God by loving God and loving very real, physical people. We cannot love one without loving the other. And so our experience of the Divine moves effortlessly back and forth between the spiritual and physical—loving God—loving each other. And, dare I say, loving the creation.
I have for many years, claimed with pride, my Celtic ancestry, as some of you do as well. The Celts, living in ancient Ireland, Scotland and Wales, have, perhaps more than any other tradition resisted and mended, when necessary, the mind/spirit/body division. Nature is one with spirituality. The world and all her people are one with God, the creator and sustainer. We are redeemed on an everyday basis by our love in and of God and in creation itself. The Celts knew full well that we cannot limit God. In the early writings of the Celts, centuries before feminists called us to inclusive and expansive language, God is referred to as both Father and Mother—both creator and sustainer. The nurturing power of creation—the very physical realm of experience—is celebrated and treasured.
Though it is not the least bit a Celtic hymn, I think that the Celts would appreciate In the Garden as it acknowledges the beauty of the world that is at work in the larger experience of the Divine. The birds, themselves, stop their singing as they understand they are in the presence of the Divine. And the melody that comes from this walking and talking in the garden calls us to deeper and deeper relationship with the one who redeems and sustains us.
You may be familiar with knots that are used as symbols in the Celtic traditions. These knots of the Celts call us to understand how profoundly all of the aspects of our lives are intertwined with the Spiritual, the world, and with all other beings. Dame Julian of Norwich, writes of this intertwining when she says, “God is in everything. God is nature’s substance. So she speaks of smelling God, of swallowing God in waters, and of feeling God in “the human body and the body of creation.” Just as the knot is completely intertwined, we are completely intertwined with God and nature and God’s grace. Just as the writer of First John says, you can’t love God without loving people, Dame Julian calls us to a complete understanding of the intertwining of grace, nature, and God. Julian expands this intertwining and tells us that our deepest longing—our love longing—is the sacred longing for union. As we experience more and more of God, our longing for God increases.
This, then is the nature of the garden walk—this intertwined longing that is both nourished and encouraged by spending time in the presence of God. And lest you think this is somehow impossible, or unreachable for those of us still struggling with our God-walks, our simple hymn leads us to the truth. As we walk and talk and spend time feeling treasured in our spiritual and natural gardens with God, we will long for more of the same. Our hearts will open to more that God has to show us, and we will grow in grace and love. Amen and amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment