For the Love of God

The first Sunday in Lent. Actually, Sundays are meant to provide a bit of a breather in the midst of Lent. Even in Lent, Sundays are feast days as we celebrate the resurrection in our worship of Holy Eucharist. But saying that Sundays are breathers presupposes that you are religiously keeping Lent the other six days of the week. On Ash Wednesday you were invited by the church to the observance of a holy Lent. The observance of a holy Lent… as the Prayer Book says "by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word." We have had four days of Lent already. I hope that during those four days you have made some real effort to observe a holy Lent.

If you are like me, however, you have been tempted—even in just these few days—tempted to let it go, to skimp or cheat on any Lenten discipline you may have chosen. Or, even more likely, you’ve been tempted by the myriad demands on your time and attention just to ignore Lent altogether. Temptation is the theme of this first Sunday in Lent. We have heard about temptation in all of this morning’s Scripture lessons and the Collect for today. The classic interpretation of these lessons goes something like this: Yielding to temptation and sin produces dire consequences. The good Christian overcomes temptation through obedience. Obedience is presumably a better course of action than sin, although the specific rewards of obedience are not necessarily made clear in today’s readings. The consequences of sin and disobedience are clear, however—death. So whether our motivation is a simple heartfelt desire for obedience or whether we act under fear of death, we are encouraged to fight temptation. There is nothing wrong with this interpretation, and if it strengthens or motivates you to withstand temptation, praise God. But I also want to provide another slant on our "meditation on God’s word" this morning, another way these Scriptures might draw us towards God this Lent. I want to talk of love. God’s love for us and our love for God. Maybe a focus on love will help all of us as we seek to observe a holy Lent.

I want to come at this meditation on love in a roundabout way with a rather long quotation of a poem. It’s a marvelous poem. You may know it or know of it. It’s by James Weldon Johnson, a rich African American voice that arose in this country in the early 1900’s. It’s from his book God’s Trombones and it’s entitled The Creation: A Negro Sermon. Listen.

And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I’m lonely—
I’ll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That’s good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That’s good!

Then God himself stepped down—
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas—
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed—
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled—
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.
Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.

Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That’s good!

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun,
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I’m lonely still.

Then God sat down—
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I’ll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
The Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.

The sermon/poem speaks of a God who joyfully loves his creation, relishes the touch and look and feel of all that he has created. It speaks of a God who tenderly creates humankind out of longing, loneliness… A God who loves her human children like a mammy and yearns to be loved in return. It is a love freely given by God in infinite generosity. It is a love human kind is free to return or free to ignore. Love has no meaning unless it is freely given. In today’s Genesis reading, God’s first words to the man and the woman (more or less) are, "You are free. Free to choose how you will live. Free to choose whom and what you will love." God does not demand obedience. God does not create humankind so that God may be served or obeyed. God offers love, and creates man and woman with the yearning that we will choose to love God in return.

On Ash Wednesday I reminded myself and those who were here that the point of Ash Wednesday and Lent is to draw us closer to God… the point of it all is to unite us, reconcile us with God. Remember: God is a God who loves us with tender yearning, who reaches out to us with an ache that we may love God in return. Perhaps the love of God should be the beacon we seek to follow in our observance of a holy Lent.

What if it were love that motivated our Lenten "self-examination and repentance," our own yearning to mend the places that are broken or strained in a loving relationship with God? What if our "prayer, fasting and self-denial" were rooted less in the strain of self-sacrifice and more in a longing to be more richly, more fully united with God? What if we looked at "reading and meditating on God’s holy word" not as Lenten duty or obligation, but as something we are eagerly drawn into, realizing that Scripture is a place where we can relish and explore the tender love story between God and God’s people?

Tomorrow morning, Monday, we will once again be deep in the season of Lent. For the love of God, I invite you to the observance of a holy Lent.

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