Planted in the Way of Love - Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost.
A sermon preached by the Reverend Holly Huff at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on October 29, 2023, the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost.
Note: Due to technical issues with our AV system, an audio recording of this sermon is not available. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Between my second and third years of seminary, I spent a summer in Greeley, Colorado enrolled in Clinical Pastoral Education, training as a hospital chaplain. I stayed with a retired couple from the local Episcopal church there, alternately house sitting for them as they went on a medical missions trip, building a hospital in Nigeria, and then, when they returned, being tended to after long days in the hospital by their pragmatic kindness, good humor, and culinary skill. We became very dear to each other. When they were away, they arranged for me to hang out with their friends (also retired). We went to the rodeo of course, and then Matt wanted to take me biking. A suitable lender was found, and we went on a Saturday morning. It must be said he trounced me. For miles and miles we followed the path along the canal, and for miles and miles it was lined by the most enormous willows and cottonwoods I have ever seen, one after the other. Huge rambling hulking things, these trees. They leaned out over the water, and trailed their branches through my helmet. The bike path had been rumbled by massive tree roots lifting the asphalt over the years, and we rode through a carpet of cottonwood fluff. It was August in the High Plains of Colorado, but these trees were steadfastness itself, posed there majestically through scorching heat and afternoon hailstorms alike.
I hear the words of the very first Psalm set against that backdrop, cycling through willow branches:
“1 Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, *
nor lingered in the way of sinners,
nor sat in the seats of the scornful!
2 Their delight is in the law of the Lord, *
and they meditate on his law day and night.
3 They are like trees planted by streams of water,
bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; *
everything they do shall prosper.”
To delight in the law of the Lord is to be connected to the source of life, aligned with the grain of the universe, planted by living water, just like the massive trees lining the canal. The law of the Lord is a continual invitation to walk the way of love. Jesus summarizes the law in today’s gospel, saying, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” To be planted by streams of water is to be planted in love.
As St. Catherine of Siena wrote in her Dialogues: “The soul cannot live without love, it always needs something to love: for it is made of love, and it is for love that [God] created it.” We were each created by love and for love. Love is our beginning and our end, Alpha and Omega, the place of springs where we are rooted and watered and nourished and steadied. This is the place from which all the virtues flow. Sourced in the love of God, drinking deeply from it, faith, hope and charity, spring up in us. Not through our arduous cultivation of faith, hope, and charity but simply as the fruit of love born in us in due season, the natural flourishing of a life planted in living water. God in Christ through the Holy Spirit flowing through us. Planted in the love of God, our leaves don’t wither in the heat. We can be steadfast through the hard times. Of which there will continue to be many, don’t confuse this promised prospering with a false transaction where we control God and the world through our “good” behavior. Planted by the cool streams, we slowly develop a great capacity to bear with whatever comes, to say yes to God in trusting surrender and to honor our neighbor through whatever it may be. This is something we learn, something that gets patterned in us just by staying planted at the water’s edge.
St. Benedict used to refer to monasteries and convents as schools of love. The places where in community, in stability, in devotion, in a life of work and prayer, love was stamped on each heart. Love is not an ooey-gooey idea or the stuff of bad pop songs but something that is practiced, right, and the Way of Love is not just for those called to monastic life. The church is a school of love; each parish is a school of love. And of course our own Presiding Bishop Curry has put out the call over and over: the Way of Love is the set of holy habits proper to all Christians, the practices we take up that put us in the way of love, that put us in the splash zone, where love can get at us. Embodied practices that leave us finally open enough to receive the love of God. How do we learn to love God with all our heart and soul and mind? How do we learn to love our neighbor? We let God teach us, together, planted by streams of living water. We take up the practices: we Turn Learn Pray Worship Bless Go Rest.
“We have been placed on earth to learn to love in the school of Jesus,” writes Fr. Jacques Philippe of The Community of the Beatitudes in France in his book Interior Freedom. “Learning to love is extremely simple: it means learning to give freely and receive freely. But this simple lesson also is very hard for us to learn, because of sin.” Sin is curling in on ourselves, blocking ourselves off as best we can from the love of God (though never finally), and practicing relying on ourselves instead. Putting power prestige and possessions in the place of God, relying on these metastasized forms of the self rather than on God. So that first practice of Turning is to receive each moment fresh, as an opportunity to uncurl from ourselves and find God reaching out to us, steady, patient, wanting to love us into loving. We Learn in encounter with holy scripture who Jesus is, and, finding him there, learn to see him in the face of our neighbor, too. Time in Prayer, sets us apart from the frenzy of achievement, the hailstorms of not-enough and falling-behind, and teaches us to surrender our hearts to God, and receive them back again. We Worship in community as disciples journeying along a common path. We come to the table together, remembered as One Body, fed in the sacraments, and sent to feed others. Eucharist naturally spills over into Blessing our neighbors, in acts of loving service. Love spills over as we learn to Go to the outcast and the stranger and bring them in, in imitation of the One who came running after us when we were still yet far off. Finally we always come back to Resting in the one who made us, who delights in us, whose love is always poured out without condition, overflowing before we’ve done a blessed thing.
Learning to love is learning to give freely and receive freely. We best love God not when we’re trying to do things for God but when we simply receive the love of God in trusting surrender. Loving God, we receive freely; and loving our neighbor, we learn to give freely. Planted by streams of living water, we let the love we have received flow through us and give it away again.
Love of God and love of neighbor are not separate. Most of us most of the time are most likely to meet God in the face of our neighbor. We love Christ in serving him in this one present in front of us: outside the gas station, at a crosswalk, in a loved one’s face. Paul sends us his report from years immersed in the school of love: “We were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” Love when it’s love can’t stay abstract for long. Oh the mess! No, Paul shows us the risk we’re taking in Christian community, following this Jesus and proclaiming his Good news by word and example: we are compelled to share not only the gospel but our own selves with each other. We find ourselves dear to each other, beyond words, beyond anything we might have asked or imagined. Love of God and neighbor twined together in the messy contingent reality of shared life. We are trees planted by the same stream, growing up together, thoroughly cracking the asphalt, cotton strewn through the grass.
As a school of love, St. Mark’s brings us to the place of springs, the streams of living water. This cathedral is a place where God loves us first, loves us well, loves us so thoroughly we can’t help responding in kind. We are being loved into loving. The Holy One is lending us holiness, and that holiness looks like open hearts, forgiven enemies, a box of groceries, a roof overhead. It looks like solidarity and social witness to God’s dream of justice and peace.
In this place, together, we are learning to love freely, to receive freely and to give freely. As we talk about stewardship this fall there’s a basic honest reckoning with the facts: It takes money to run this place! It takes money to fund the ministries that St. Mark’s is engaged in in our city! It takes money to be a school of love. And giving money to the church is not merely a fee for service. It’s a spiritual discipline, acknowledging in humility that everything comes from God. That we were created, that we have received, that we are sustained, moment by moment and breath by breath. Giving to the church is part of a habit of living and giving generously, in imitation of the Generous One who waters us with grace daily. Receiving freely, we give freely.
So we invite every member of this parish to make a pledge, of whatever size. If you have found a spiritual home at St. Mark’s and a parish family, if you’ve enrolled in this school of love, if you’ve met the beautiful Jesus, the come to me all you heavy laden Jesus, the beside cool waters Jesus here in this place—please make a pledge to support the good work God is doing in this community. Let’s answer the call to plant our thirsty feet deep in the reconciling love Jesus pours out for the whole world. Let’s answer the call to walk in love, to be a community where the Gospel is proclaimed and embodied and lived out, where the love of God poured out for us can’t help but spill over into a genuine love of neighbor. And let’s answer the call to share our own selves, because we have become very dear to each other.
Amen.