The Life of Love
By Charles Rush
June 13, 2004
I John 4: 6-10
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“My beloved friends,
let us continue to love each other since love comes
from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with
God. The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God,
because God is love – so you can't know him if you don't love him. This is how
God showed his love for us; God sent his only Son into the world that we might
live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about – not that once
upon a time, we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his son as a
sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage we have done to our
relationship with God. My dear friends, if God love us like this, we certainly
ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one
another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes
complete in us – perfect love [The Message].”
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yne,
I promise not to drone on about you
but I would be remiss if I didn't thank you for a couple things that you have
done over the years that were important. And they can be profitably shared in a
sermon because they are things I hope our young people will emulate as they are
filled with the Spirit of the Almighty. And then I will close with something
you would rather have me talk about… God.
First of all I
want to thank you for becoming a Minister. The author of Hebrews makes a
comment at one point that as a Church, as a congregation, we are to be priests
to each other. We have a wonderful way of symbolizing this at Christ Church when we do gathered communion. I
break the bread and bless the elements and then the whole congregation serves
each other. It is a tangible symbol of our life together. The clergy have,
obviously, a critical role to play in the life of the Church, but they cannot
take the place of each of us sharing our lives together, each of us reaching
out to others in need, giving comfort and support. We do that for each other
and for better and worse, we are the face of Christ for each other.
Forty one
years ago we hired a young graduate of Union Seminary's music program to lead
our choir and for many years that what he did. But over time, and often out of
necessity, he also shouldered a good deal of ministry to the church.
Sometimes it
was just in that straight forward way that comes from doing your job well for a
long time. Shelly Ostrowski was telling me last week that when
her husband Alex died and she was in that numb phase, we were talking about a memorial
service. Wayne already knew what Alex wanted played at his funeral. There
is something grounded about being known so well at crisis times in our lives.
There is a grace and a comfort to that.
And other
times, Wayne really had to step in because of an absence of pastoral
leadership from the Clergy at the Church. We've had a few patches where the
ministers were going through some mid-life issues and there was an absence of
leadership for periods. We've had interims that just didn't work out too well.
During these seasons in his own quiet way, Wayne listened to people, Wayne supported people in the
congregation. In his own way, he kept a Christian focus and helped the
congregation to get on through. We don't always have problem free, personality
free times in our lives. Sometimes we find ourselves stuck in situations that
are not going to change for a significant period and we just have to gut it on
out and get through it. And that is as important as the times when we are
bringing our visions into a coordinated focus and accomplishing big stuff. It
is just not as much fun, not as memorable.
And there were
even a few times when Wayne made the tough choice to develop music as an antidote
to the sermons here. I am glad to report that this has not happened during the
last decade, has it Wayne? And it had better not happen today. But there have
been times when Wayne knew that the strain between the Minister and the
congregation had become so tense that he actually changed the last hymn to
provide some spiritual uplift and keep a positive focus on the Almighty because
he knew that frustration and anger were simmering to a boiling point. That was,
unquestionably, difficult. But he did it in a way that pointed towards
reconciliation and kept the focus on the higher purposes for which we come
together. Sometimes that is the best thing we can do in difficult situations at
work that simply won't be resolved in the best manner, when we would like more
than anything else to just be immediately extracted from our daily lives and we
can't. So, on behalf of the congregation, and on behalf of the Clergy at Christ Church, a deep
thanks for being present when we were not and keeping a spiritual ground in the
difficult days that we have had together. We can be like Wayne, all of us.
Secondly, we
have laughed together in a good hearted way about Wayne's shyness and his humble demeanor.
It is true that he keeps his opinions to himself for the most part and that he
does not need the lime light. As the deacons kidded him, he found a job where
he can keep his back to the audience. But a few years ago, I had to ask him to
transcend that reticence and step up to the mike.
Probably six
years ago, a gay couple came to me and asked me to bless their union. I could
have done it quietly, but it seemed to me that we needed to work this through
as a congregation because it was going to come up again in the future and we
needed to decide where we were going to be with gays out of the closet at work
and increasingly at Church. I know I was not looking for an issue to grand
stand on. Rather, it was some people who came looking for us to support them.
We went
through a long process of discussion on the bible, with parents and relatives
of gay people. After about a year of discussion, I sat down in Wayne's office and I said to him, 'we
cannot bring this discussion to completion at Christ Church without hearing your story from
you.' I remember Wayne sitting there for a while and he said, "I
know".
As I often
note about the Christian life, you don't have to go out of your way to find an
issue to stand for. If you develop a substantial spiritual life, the world
being what it is will find you. The issue that God needs you to be involved
with will find you. Mostly what God needs out of you is
for you to find your story, for you to find your voice. And
when the time comes to be authentically you.
You gave such
cogent expression to growing up in a ranching community in West Texas and the many spoken and unspoken
ways that the well meaning, kind Methodists that you grew up with made you feel
so at odds with yourself that in order to be true to who you were you had to
flee. That was the era. And coming to New York and then out to Christ Church
and the simple wonder of being able to be who you are and grow spiritually in a
model that was you and not someone else. Anyway, I really thought that you
found your story, you found your voice. And for all of us, it was one of the
most important uses of this pulpit in the history of the Church. I want to
thank you for that on behalf of the congregation. It is my hope for all of us gathered
here that we too can find our voice, find our story, and when the time comes we
will be prepared to give our witness, our testimony to what we know to be true.
Finally, a
word about what brings us together in honor of our choirmaster who quietly and
significantly kept us on cue that we worship God- The Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost or as we say today, Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.
One of the
more profound theological points of the Trinity is the doctrine of the perichoresis. The what? I know we haven't talked much about
this together. It refers to the inner Trinitarian life of God. What it means
essentially is that the inner life of God is love. The relationship between the
Father, the Son, and the Spirit is that of love – the love that creates, the
love that redeems, the love that pulls forward towards
the fulfillment of history.
It was
developed in the debates over the earliest Christian creeds to explain that God
is independent of the world. God doesn't need the world to be God. God has an
inner life that makes God self-subsistent and not contingent in a way that is
fundamentally different from the rest of the universe that is contingent upon
God.
But God does,
in fact, relate to the world. God is invested in what happens in the world. God
cries over injustice and inhumanity. God celebrates in the triumph of goodness
and new birth, new beginnings. That is because the inner life of God is love
which manifests itself in God's outer relationship to everything else which is
also love. God doesn't need us, God wants us. And God limits Godself in this relationship because of love. As William
Sloane Coffin used to say, "God leads with a light rein". God gives
us wide opportunity to discover what is inside of us, wide latitude to screw up
our lives in ways you could not make up if you wanted to.
God's spirit
is substantial but it is also subtle. There is a music that runs through the
course of our universe and you can hear the song of God's love in the birth of
a new child. You can hear it in the tears shared in an embrace of compassion.
You can hear it in the eureka of discovery when long
and difficult riddles are finally unlocked. You can hear it when people
discover their integrity, their dignity and stand for what is right, what is
humane. You can hear it when supportive friends confront one another and help
each other to grow and become more substantial people. You can hear it in the
bright hope of a new dawn in springtime. You can hear it across the wide
expanse of peaceful water. You can hear it in the giggle of little children
under the covers during a deep winter's snow. You can hear it in a young woman
finding confidence in herself off on a first adventure abroad.
It is that
song of God's love inside God and outside in the world that we return to again
and again. It is that song of God's love that we have been privileged to sing
together as a community. It is that song that we have been privileged to share.
And Wayne there is a piece of it that we sing
to each other when we let them go. And instead of our closing hymn, we want to
sing that to you today.
God be with you til we meet again
Loving counsels guide uphold you
With a shepherd's care enfold you
God be with you til we meet again
Til we me-e-e-t
Til we me-et
Til we meet at Jesus' feet
Til we me-e-e-t
Til we me-et
God be with you til we meet again.
Peace be with you, my brother.
© 2004
Charles Rush.
All rights reserved.
