7 Epiphany year A

7 Epiphany Year A
February 19, 2017

    Every time I read the lessons for this week, I found myself getting stuck at the Collect of the Day…”O Lord, you have taught us that without love, whatever we do is worth nothing….”  If I had to sum up all that I know about prayer, about Jesus, about worship… and if I only had one word to do it with, I think my word would be love…

    And today, scripture gives us a look into what the life lived in God’s love looks like.  Now, I have to say, that reading Leviticus is not an easy proposition… but… it is something that everyone should do at least once; it will help make some sense out of Jesus’ actions… but along with that, it is important for us as Christians to know the law, and to know how it has been lived out in the lives of God’s people.

    It’s easy for us to think “We have Jesus, we don’t need the law”.  Well… it’s not that simple, really.  Jesus himself says that he has come to fulfill the law, not to abolish it.  For us, what is important to understand about that, is that Jesus embodies the law; by that, I mean that Jesus has become the law in his very person…

    We all know those people who are living examples of something wonderful; people who by their very lives and nature bring to mind concepts that are bigger than themselves; icons, if you will; and there may be different icons for each of us; when I think about rock and roll music, my first thoughts are about the band U2… for others it’s the Beatles or the Rolling Stones; but we all have those symbols in our lives, icons that point to something bigger.

    Jesus is so much more than just an icon or a symbol… Jesus is the law in his life and in his body… He lives his life not just in accordance with the law, but does even what the law cannot do for us;  he shows us how to live the law in every aspect of our being…
   
    Whenever I hear a scripture passage begin… “You have heard that it was said”…. And continue, “But I say to you….” I get a little tense, because I know that Jesus is about to issue a serious challenge.  He is well aware of what the law says, and well aware of what we all find to be acceptable behavior… While loving our neighbor isn’t always easy, we know that it is something we are “supposed to do”.  Well… Jesus wants us to go an infinite number of steps further… that’s what happens when love becomes incarnate; that’s what it means to have love be the absolute driving force in our lives… it demands that we do things that go beyond what is expected.  When love becomes incarnate, when love takes on a human body, and God and humanity collide in that same body… things are likely to get pretty crazy… what’s acceptable by human standards, is not always acceptable by God’s standards… love means so much more than it does on a Valentine’s day card, as wonderful as that is… love, for those of us who are followers of Jesus, becomes a difficult thing; it becomes something that transcends our emotions and becomes something that we, like Jesus live out in our bodies and our spirits.  You and I are called to internalize, to embody God’s holy law so that everything we do is informed by the law… living the law is so much different than just adhering to the law… Like Jesus, we are to take the law into our being and act intentionally, not just in ways that society deems as proper, but in ways that God deems as proper.  That means that the law has infused us… all of us, so that our bodies, minds and spirits are one with the law…
    Love, seems to be, the way that Jesus embodies the law, and calls us to do likewise.  Love, is not simply about our emotions; it is about how we act even when it’s hard to do so.  Giving your cloak when you have already given your coat is hard to do...We may never get to be perfect as God is perfect…. Only God has that distinction, but our life’s work is to journey toward the goal; to go the extra mile, to love those who hate us, to not harbor evil thoughts about others… it’s difficult work;  It’s necessary work for the kingdom of God to spread.
   
    I received a package from amazon yesterday, and they apparently have been using some Valentine’s day themed boxes.  On the box it said, “Three words to describe love” with three lines I suppose that were for me to write three words that describe love.  Since I was in sermon mode, I said to myself, well, there are three words that we as Christians have to describe love… They are, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Love and law really aren’t different in the kingdom.  The law was given to us to help us know what God wanted from us… Jesus came in part, to give us a living example of what it meant to truly become the law, to have love be the driving factor for all our actions, and the Holy Spirit, also a gift of Love, helps us to live into the embodiment of the law that we have been called to.  The goal is to have others recognize the law embodied in us as love… a love that is often hard to live into; who wants to love those who persecute them?  But Jesus prayed even for them as he hung on the cross… ‘Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing….”  It’s the ultimate icon of love, and it shows us just how far reaching the law is.

    It is good for us to remember that the law is there for us to guide our actions; it’s also important to remember that Jesus himself, embodied the law and gave it a new and difficult interpretation.  I hope that each of us will figure out how to embody the law in our own lives.  Who do we need to love today?  How will be become icons of God’s holy law?