Sermon: Immersed in Love

Texts: Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Date: January 10, 2010

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

 

            As if he’s talking about nothing extraordinary, the author of Luke reports that after Jesus was baptized and was praying, “the heaven was opened.”  One scholar I read translates this even more casually: “the heavens happened to open.”  They just “happened” to open that afternoon following the baptism of a crowd of men and women that included Jesus.  It’s curious to me that in the story it sounds no more momentous than the opening of a window, albeit a large window that happens to be in the sky.

            The worldview of Jesus’ contemporaries would have allowed for such a vision, since they thought of the sky as a kind of dome that was cupped over the earth.  They thought there was a water source up there above the dome, which would occasionally leak into the earthly realm in the form of rain.  They pictured God’s dwelling place up there above the dome.  So it’s within the realm of the religious imagination that when God had something to say, God might create a temporary opening to make Godself heard. 

            I’m curious about whether the heaven opening made a sound.  We have antique windows at our old house, and they make a labored scraping sort of sound when we open them.  That’s partly because we don’t open them very often; they stick a little, and groan when we insist on opening them.  I don’t suppose God had that difficulty when opening the heaven to address Jesus; it probably opened as smoothly and soundlessly as an elevator door in a new office tower.  Even if it did make a noise, the sound that got the storyteller’s attention was, naturally, the voice of God that came from heaven, saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  Now that’s a beautiful sound.  It must have been wonderful for Jesus to hear that marvelous affirmation.

            This is one of those moments in the gospel story when I thank God for sending Jesus to show us how to be really and truly human, deeply human.  Because we are made for love; we are made to love and be loved.  Words such as those recorded here fall like rain in the desert of a parched soul.  Jesus, who shared the glory and pain of being human, needed to hear words of love and affirmation just like the rest of us.  If we were brought up on the notion of Jesus’ perfection, we might imagine that he was so self-contained, so self-confident that he could have gone his whole life without hearing an expression of love and be perfectly fine.  But that wouldn’t be true humanity, would it?  Real humans all need expressions of love—almost as much as we need food and water and oxygen.  An affirmation of love is life-sustaining for the soul.  It is part of our beauty that we need to receive and give expressions of love.  We are at home in the world where love is given and received.

            It’s so fabulous that Jesus received this affirmation at this particular moment in his life.  God is “well pleased”---and Jesus hadn’t done a doggone thing as far as his ministry goes.  He hadn’t proven anything, he hadn’t performed anything, he hadn’t succeeded at anything.  God’s affirmation doesn’t have a single thing to do with what Jesus does.  It’s about who Jesus is.  It’s divine love we’re listening to here, freely given, not earned. 

            You know, most of what God says to and through Jesus is not for him alone.  It’s for all of us who are on this journey, this Christ-path.  I am convinced that God would desire that any of us, all of us, would receive this same message: “You are my child, my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  We might be so used to thinking of Jesus as something special that we might have a hard time believing that God would ever want to communicate something like that to someone as ordinary as you or I.  But the marvel of God’s love is that it is meant for all of us; that’s part of Jesus’ lesson.  It’s meant for all of us, and it’s not performance-based, not earned, but freely given.  Long before this scene in Jesus’ life, God tried again and again to speak love to the people, as in the words of the 43rd chapter of the prophet Isaiah: “You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”  Here God is addressing all the children of Israel, named as “sons and daughters.”  When God speaks thus to Jesus following his baptism, it is a sentiment that has been spoken many times before, and I believe it is a word meant for all of our ears.

            Can you believe it?  That you are God’s child, God’s beloved, and that the Lord is well pleased with you? 

            Is there some part of you that responds, “Weellll…I’m not so sure about that…”?  If so, you are not alone.  Lots of us have trouble owning such words of unstinting affirmation.   We have so much difficulty loving ourselves that we find it hard to imagine great love directed towards us.  One of my spirituality books suggests this exercise, a test one can take.  The author suggests that you go into the bathroom (by yourself).  Be sure to lock the door.  Go boldly up to the mirror, make eye contact with yourself and say, “Hey, I love you!”  That itself is not the test.  Anyone can do that.  The test is, how do you feel when you say “I love you” to the person in the mirror?   Does it feel true?   Does it feel silly or ridiculous?  Does it feel like a bald-faced lie?  What if you took off all your clothes before making this declaration (the door is locked, after all—you did remember to lock the bathroom door, didn’t you?)?  Imagine standing there in your birthday suit and saying, with feeling, “I love you!”  Just got a little harder for some of us, didn’t it, those of us who left those six-pack abs behind long ago, those of us whose once-perky parts are showing the unmistakable effects of gravity?   

            I’m going to give you a moment to mentally get dressed again.  Are you there, all buttoned and zipped?  Whew.  Now, where were we?  How does it feel to say, “I love you” to yourself?  If it feels all wrong, is it any wonder that we might have a hard time absorbing God’s message of love and affirmation? 

            But wait.  You’ve got to hear it or see it enacted before you can absorb it, right?  In the story of Jesus’ baptism and ensuing affirmation, heaven opened so God’s voice could be heard.  Where’s our portal, our opening to the heavens so that we might hear and believe? 

            Sheikh Jamal Rahman shares a bit of wisdom from the Muslim tradition in Getting to the Heart of Interfaith that provides an answer to this question.  In a Hadith (an Islamic teaching outside the Koran), God says, “between you and Me there are seventy thousand veils; but between Me and you, there are no veils.” [1]  Reflect on that for a moment.  Let’s think about it in terms of a window rather than veils.   There is an opening, a window, if you will, between us and God; but it’s got a lock on the inside.  God is voicing and showing love and affirmation constantly, but we may not be taking it in because we stand inside our own dark house behind a locked window. 

            That window may be so smudged, so filthy that we can no longer see through it to a glimmer of God’s glory, or remember that it may be opened to let the sound and light outside in.  Every time we experience some kind of rejection, or someone tries to tell us that we are not, in fact, either beloved or pleasing, a bit of yuck blows up against the window and leaves a mark.  For instance, I am a poor athlete, and when I was forced to take the field to play softball in the state-sponsored torment known as P.E. class, someone would yell to the center fielder, “If the ball goes into right field, be sure you cover for Dee—she’s worthless out there!”  That sort of thing is like a little gnat hitting my window, leaving a tiny blotch.  If a parent says to his kid, “You’ll never amount to anything, you dummy,” that’s a king-size rotten tomato hitting the window.  A whole society communicating the low value of people of color or sexual minorities leaves a smear of smoggy grit on the windows of those affected.  A dismissal by a lover or employer splats like a mudball laced with manure.  Being born with leanings toward depression may tint the window a darker hue from the get-go. 

            That’s the kind of gunk that’s caked on the outside.  Then there’s the ick on the inside.  Have you ever sneezed all over the dashboard of your car when you had a snotty cold and had to wipe off the glass over the instrument panel?  We can smear that opening between us and God with our own blech.  If I’ve done something I’m ashamed of, it’s like letting loose with a juicy sneeze on my own window.  I once told my daughter Karen I hoped she made a lot of nice friends at Olympic Community College because that was the only college that was going to accept her the way things were going.  So there’s a fly smear on her window, and an emission of snottiness on my own when I recognized what an awful thing it is to willfully discourage someone vulnerable who needs your encouragement.  Had I beat her up at the same time it would probably seem like barfing on my own window glass as I would have hated myself for losing control.  Our failures and sins splotch the window from the inside as feel remorse.  Do you see what I’m getting at? 

            Between the rejections we experience and our own fits of self-loathing we may not see or hear through the barrier between us and God to receive the message God’s attempting to send—“You are my child, my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  We may even begin to believe that there is no such message (at least not directed at me), or no such God who is singing it out.   That window blocking sound and light may have been closed so long that we no longer have confidence that it will open ever again.

            How heart-breaking it must be for God who wants so much for those she has created to know they are loved when we stand dejected behind that encrusted window, unable to see the light or drink in the musical words of affirmation, “beloved,” “pleased.”  Mystical poet Hafiz wrote this poem that speaks to all those standing slump-shouldered and bereft.  It’s called “I Know the Way You Can Get.”

I know the way you can get

When you have not had a drink of Love:

 

Your face hardens,

Your sweet muscles cramp.

Children become concerned

About a strange look that appears in your eyes

Which even begins to worry your own mirror

And nose.

 

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness

And call an important conference in a tall tree.

They decide which secret code to chant

To help your mind and soul.

 

Even angels fear that brand of madness

That arrays itself against the world

And throws sharp stones and spears into

The innocent

And into one’s self.

 

O I know the way you can get

If you have not been out drinking Love:

 

You might rip apart

Every sentence your friends and teachers say,

Looking for hidden clauses.

 

You might weigh every word on a scale

Like a dead fish.

 

You might pull out a ruler to measure

From every angle in your darkness

The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once

Trusted.

 

I know the way you can get

If you have not had a drink from Love’s

Hands.

 

That is why all the Great Ones speak of

The vital need

To keep Remembering God,

So you will come to know and see Him

As being so Playful

And Wanting,

Just Wanting to help. [2]

 

            Are you among those who feel as though you have not had a drink from Love’s hands in too long a time?  Are the squirrels and the children concerned about you?  Is the silence of your own space becoming deafening?

            Jesus and the other Great Ones hope you will learn from them to remember God and to remember God’s immeasurable love for you.  It is possible to open the window, to ease open the barrier that separates you from the Holy One.  It’s not locked from the outside; if it is locked at all the latch is on your side.  Lift your weary arms and unlatch it.  Prayer will help; remember how heaven opened for Jesus when he was praying, after his baptism.  You open the window a crack and God will do the rest. 

            God’s love comes pouring out for each of us and finds its way through any chink we allow.  Whether the window opens smoothly or creaks and groans after long disuse, when we push it open, we find ourselves immersed in divine Love. Flowing freely, a stream of love washes away the pain of rejection we have experienced and imagined that has spattered our view of the world.  A rising flood of love washes away the stain of failure and sin that has mucked up the way we see the earth and our place in it. 

Beloved, a healing river pours out from God’s great heart.  Thirsty for the affirmation we need, we drink deeply of it.  Eager to be clean and pure of heart, we wash in it.  Yearning to be fruitful, we water the fields in which the Word of God has been planted with it.  Longing to share the blessing we have received, we offer to our neighbors a cup of love from “the infinite leaking barrel…that the Beloved has tied to [our] back[s].” [3]

Crack open the window of your heart and hear again, like clear water splashing down a rocky streambed, God’s assurances: Do not be afraid.  I have called you by name.  You are mine.  You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.  Do not be afraid, for I am with you.  I created you for my glory.  I formed you.  I made you.  You are my son.  You are my daughter.  You are beloved.  With you I am well pleased.

 

[1] Rahman, Jamal  Getting to the Heart of Interfaith: The Eye-Opening, Hope-Filled Friendship of a Pastor, a Rabbi, and a Sheikh Woodstock, Vermont: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2009, p. 71

[2] Hafiz “I Know the Way You Can Get”  in I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy Renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky  New York: Penguin Books, 2006, p. 42-43

[3] Ibid, Hafiz