A Love Song

I’ve just spent a week with my family at Lake Michigan. It was a great week, relaxing, joyful, great food, great times, the weather wasn’t too hot, we did an amazing float down the White River, and we had as many Pringles as anyone wanted. Even the small complications weren’t worth mentioning. The entire week felt like a love letter. 

I can be very skeptical about love. I only occasionally watch rom coms or read something romantic. But there is a chink in my love armor. I love Pride and Prejudice. I love the book, I love rewrites, I love the movies, but in my defense, I like them more for the comedy than the romance. I enjoy the ridiculousness of Mrs. Bennett and Lady Catherine de Bourgh more than the love story between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. Very occasionally though, there’s this little bit of sparkly rainbow heart that rises up out of nowhere and I’m squinting a little funny and grinning and actually enjoying the love that comes to Elizabeth and maybe I feel a little funny butterflies too.

These texts today make me feel a little funny like the butterflies with sparkly rainbows just flew out of the page. All these texts feel like a love story. When I read them, it feels like they’re just for me, but you know and I know that these words are for everyone, not just me. But still, I read them and remember that God is crazy about me. 

But lest you think I’m that self-centered, I’d argue that this is my superpower, knowing that God is crazy about me with my whole heart, because if God is crazy about me, it’s not just me. God is also crazy about you, and about all humanity. 

Thus says the Lord:

"Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters; 

and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat! 

Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy? 

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food. 

Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live. 

These are not the words of a being who is far off, one who is aloof, one who has no care about our day to day experiences. 

These aren't the words of a politician, trying to win votes (a reminder here to vote in the primary on Tuesday) or a being who is twisting your arm. 

I know, you like me, are familiar with these gestures. They’re all around us. Advertisements, trying to win our dollars by making us want things we didn’t even know existed. Our news cycles that never stop, and we take them in, trying to filter out truth. Social media, that raring devil, always convincing us that others have it better, more beautiful, and easier. 

But these words are not those kinds of words. These are the words of one who knows our basic struggles, our weaknesses, our hungers, or thirsts, our desires — even the ones we can’t say aloud, in the secret recesses of our hearts. This is one who has empathy for those who are going without, those who don’t have enough, those who are always on the edge, always worried about how to pay rent, get groceries, pay the utility bill, those who don’t have quite enough.

All of us have spent our labor on things that don’t satisfy. 

When I finally had my own spending money from babysitting, I bought trinkets, the money burning a hole in my pocket. More often than not, I bought  things I didn’t actually want or need. The shoes pinched. I never used what I bought. In our capitalist economy, it is an easy mistake. 

“Why spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”

God speaks to us with empathy and understanding, with gentleness and compassion, especially those who struggle.

Do you hear it? This is God’s love song to people. 

When I got to go to Mwitikira in Tanzania I gave Eucharist to everyone, knowing that so many of the people were on the edge of starvation. Our church bought a meal as part of the celebration of our 10 year relationship between the churches, while knowing that meal was the biggest meal any of them would have all week, all month, all year. 

We don’t always open wide our hands, like the Psalm says. Maybe we don't have the ability or the resources. But God does. The earth itself gives what we need, like that rain we needed so badly that fell yesterday, watering the dry earth.  God’s hand opens wide, and God gives food for all creatures. 

It’s not only humans that matter. It’s the beasts of the field, the dogs of our houses, the birds that wake us up with their singing, the black-eyed-Susans, the apples, all of it. All of this matters to Creator God, the one who provides us food in due season. God is the one who is compassionate, the one who helps us when we fall down. 

Each time we’re at the beach, I see that place where my nephew, as a new bike rider, flew down the hill and crashed. He scraped himself up, and leaned on his mother, while she showed compassion for his wounds, putting bandaids on them, hurting in the shower. God’s compassion for us when we fall is even more than the hugs of a mother or father. God’s compassion never ends. We never reach the end of God’s goodness. It’s impossible to do so. God’s compassion is bigger than Lake Michigan, than the distance to the sun, than the entire universe. 

But our texts continue, like God’s love song to the universe. Jesus, in our gospel first needed some time away and space to commune with God, to remember who he was and his place in the world. 

I love this story because it’s not just Jesus who needs this time, it’s also us. We can’t live as well when things are too busy, when everything is spinning around us. We need to remember again that we are loved, that God is crazy about us. These scriptures are indeed a love story from God to all of us. 

Once Jesus is refreshed, he goes out and does the work that he was called to do. To heal those who need healing. To cure the sick. To listen to those who needed God’s love embodied. To feed those five thousand hungry people.

God’s love story continues in our world today. It will never end, and now, it’s our work, those of us who are the hands and feet of Jesus in the world today, to heal, to cure, to listen, to feed.  

We do this because we are loved. 

We do this because we are fed. 

We do this because we have enough and not everyone does. 

We do this because we’ve been healed ourselves; God has healed us through love, through therapy, through time, through different perspectives, through lovex. 

We do this because we’ve been shown compassion by God, by one another, by our community, by the world. 

We do this because we know deep in our hearts what it means to be loved by God. 

We do this because we believe that God’s love that covers the whole world. 

This love song never ends. It goes on forever.

We are part of it. We are knitted into it, through the Eucharist, through our good works, through all of the goodness that has been given to us by God and others and the world, through the past, present, and future, through the communion of the saints, those we knew and those we know only by story. 

Yeah. I feel butterflies, but not just butterflies, I see sparkly rainbows and pink hearts. And also and even better, I feel rooted, grounded, known, seen, and fed. I hope you do too.