Homily for Lenten Noonday Service at First Presbyterian Church,
Smithfield
March 4, 2015
Jim Melnyk: “I Was Outside – You Were Within”
“As the Father has loved me, so I
have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide
in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy
may be complete.
‘This is my commandment, that you
love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay
down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command
you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does
not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I
have made nown to you everything that I have heard from my Father.
You did not choose me but I chose
you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that
the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these
commands so that you may love one another” (John 15:9-17).
During the season of Lent we are encouraged to consider, among other
things, the brokenness in our lives and our need for repentance and amendment
of life. The confession in one of the
traditional versions of the Episcopal Communion service has the priest and
people pray: “We acknowledge and bewail our
manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously have
committed, by thought, word, and deed, against thy divine Majesty, provoking
most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, and
are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; the remembrance of them is grievous
unto us, the burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon
us, most merciful Father; for thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, forgive us
all that is past...” (BCP, p. 331). Yes,
Episcopalians can get downright depressing during Lent.
And
let’s face it, there is often much we need to consider in our lives – we know
brokenness in our lives. We know the “S”
word in our lives – that’s sin, by the way – even if we don’t like to hear that
word. We know what it’s like to miss the
mark – to look out for ourselves – to look out for number one – sometimes –
often times – at the expense of another.
We
are wrestle with being egocentric from the very start of our lives – though as
infants our self-centeredness is truly a survival mechanism: Hey! Look at me!
I need food! I need to be
changed! I need comfort.
As
youth and adults it becomes less a mechanism for survival and more a mechanism
for feeding our egos. We are a “selfie”
generation. Which reminds me – hold on a
second while I get this one recorded! (“selfie” snap – see above).
Hopefully
we can recognize and acknowledge that we each have a need to consider the
reality of brokenness – of sin – in our lives – recognize the need for repentance
and amendment of life.
But
I wonder if we might find a more encouraging way of meeting that need, based in
part on the portion of John’s Gospel we just heard read a few minutes ago.
In his book, The God We Never Knew, the
late Marcus Borg offers readers a wonderful quotation from St. Augustine. It speaks to the overwhelming presence of God
in our lives, giving promise to the words Dietrich Bonhoeffer would later
write: “God is the beyond in our midst.”
The following quote is taken by Borg from Augustine’s Confessions (Italics
added by Borg).
“How late I came to love you, O Beauty so
ancient and so fresh, how late I came to love you! You were within me, yet I had gone
outside to seek you.
Unlovely myself, I rushed toward all those
lovely things you had made. And
always you were with me, I was not with you. All these beauties kept me far from you – although
they would not have existed at all unless they had their being in you. You called, you cried, you shattered my
deafness. You sparkled, you blazed, you
drove away my blindness. You shed your
fragrance, and I drew in my breath and I pant for you. I tasted and now I hunger and
thirst. You touched me, and now I
burn with longing for your peace” (Borg, page 47).
To experience God in terms of this glorious
passage from Augustine, is to experience God as our lover – and to experience
ourselves as God’s own beloved. The
passage from Augustine is nothing less than a love letter to God, written with
all the mysterious intimacy we long for in our relationships with each other
and with God.
The passage by Augustine reminds me of a story I
once heard by author Kim Taylor and her young daughter, Scooter. Scooter, it seems, was having a difficult time
expressing her feelings. Kim told her
daughter to fold her hands over her heart and say, “Scooter, I love you.” Scooter was skeptical at first, but her mom told
her she had to practice. The little girl
was convinced only after her mom told her the following story. “When you were a baby, I used to hold you so
close to me, your head resting over my heart.
And I would imagine all the love in my heart pouring out into your tiny,
little heart, because I loved you so much.”
The next day Scooter came dancing and twirling across the school yard to
her mom and cried out, “I’ve been practicing!!!” (Recalled from a story told by
Kim Taylor on NPR long ago – apologies for any liberties in my memory)
Would that each of us could envisage God,
holding us tightly to God’s breast, with all the love God has for us flowing
into our tiny, little hearts – knowing that God loves us that much! Oh, how we could love ourselves, if we felt
that love from God. And, oh, how we
could love each other.
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