Love is the goal

Recently I have been throwing around a thought in my head about love. 

While reading To Love as God Loves the author, Roberta Bondi, says that the desert mothers and fathers of the Christian faith "believed, in spite of society's pressures, that love is the goal of the Christian life and humility is what it takes to bring us toward it."

This is a bit different to me than to think that love is something that we do upon being a Christian. To make love the goal is to take a different posture. Which leads me to the thought.

Love is like a soccer game. Everyone on the team knows the goal is to kick the ball in the back of the net. However, not every player at every moment can achieve this goal. Some people are too far away from the net to do this. Some people have too many opponents in the way. Some people just do not have the ball. And so everyone on the team moves to support the rest of the team to reach the goal. You may have the ball but cannot kick it into the net and achieve the goal, but the next best thing you can do is pass the ball to the right. And you know what, no one is angry with you that you did not score, because everyone on the team knows what the goal is, not everyone can achieve it all of the time.

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Likewise with love. You and I cannot achieve loving as God loves all of the time. But we can position ourselves to help move toward the goal. We can work toward reaching the goal of loving as God loves even if we cannot reach it all the time. (We might call this the Way of Salvation or moving on toward perfection). 

Why does this matter? For those of us who cannot love the shooters of New Town - we are not in a position to reach the goal of loving as God loves. And so instead of writing off these shooters or saying, "I cannot ever forgive or love them" I reach toward the goal to love as God loves.

Christians do not magically learn how to love as God loves when we become Christian, rather we understand that loving as God loves is a goal that we are working toward our whole lives. 

Water into wine is not a miracle

Last week in the sermon at SUMC we had the makings of a dialogical sermon in which the community was asked for a number of responses to a number of questions. As we heard from the community there were a few things that struck me and while you can hear the sermon on the Saginaw UMC website, there is one thing that I would mention about the wedding in Cana story that came into my head as the conversation was going on. 

Jesus does not preform a miracle by turning the water into wine. A miracle is rather easy to get bogged down in. Either we are caught up in the mechanics of the miracle: I read a debate about this story in which one side argued that the wine Jesus made was not sitting long enough to ferment and so while Jesus may have made wine, it was non-alcoholic! OR we use science to dismiss the supernatural aspects of the story and we miss the point all together.

The water to wine is not a miracle because miracles are also centered on the miracle worker. When someone today preforms a "miracle" (from the miracle on ice to the miracle on 34th street) then it is that person who preforms the miracle who gets all the credit. The miracle stops with the miracle worker. 

But if the water to wine story is not a miracle, then what is it? Look no farther than what the story says - it is a sign. 

And by definition, a sign is something which points to something beyond itself.

So what is the sign of water to wine pointing us to? I submit the gospel writer leaves little guess work. Take a look at just a few of the connections to the wedding to another episode in the story:

1. Jesus' mother appears only at the wedding feast and and at the crucifiction. 
2. There are stone jars and a stone tomb.
3. The wedding happens on the 7th day of the John's story, inaugurating a new creation.
4. The wine (a connection to Christ's blood) is what replaces water that removes sin.
5. The sign takes place during a wedding, a place in which a new a "new covenant" is established between two people.

Who cares?

Well, if the story is a miracle, then we cannot participate in the miracle. It is something that is locked in the past for us to debate and get bogged in the wrong conversation.

A sign is something we can participate in. You and I can be a sign maker. 

Related post: You may recall my efforts to stop random acts of kindness?

Spa spirituality

Spa spirituality is rampant these days. Not that going to a spa is bad, we all could use a little self care that is for sure. But when we see religion as primary a place we go to in order to get our needs met or our souls tended or a place where we feel good and get our warm fuzzies, then we have fallen into trappings of spa spirituality. 

Rather than seeing religion as a spa day that we go to and get our treatment for the week, would we be willing to see religion as our workout class.

It is the place were we go to get sweaty and dirty. We stretch and even pushed beyond our comfort level. It is the place were we work hard that we might actually walk a little funny the next few days. The place where the leaders are the trainer rather than the  masseuse. The place where we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. The place where we are unwilling to settle for the status quo. 

The invitation is extended to consider religion as workout (more yoga than spin class) and not a spa treatment. 

[Echos of a 2009 post (was it that long ago!) in which I submit that Sunday might be better served at the end of our week rather than the beginning.]