Well it’s a big wedding weekend this weekend. Yesterday was the wedding of Lou and Teresa, today we celebrate Don and Vivian’s fiftieth wedding anniversary, and in our Gospel text for this morning Jesus told his disciples to “be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet.” Love, or at least weddings, is in the air.
I make the distinction between love and weddings, because they are not the same thing. During the offering today, Doug and Eileen are singing a song that is a paraphrase of the reading Lou and Teresa had during their wedding yesterday, First Corinthians thirteen. Even if you don’t know the reference, I’m sure you’ll recognize the words, it’s the one that goes, “love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t boastful, or arrogant, or rude.” You know that one.
I love First Corinthians thirteen as a wedding text, because it sounds so poetic, and then you really read it, and it is like so unrealistic as to be almost comical. At one point it goes so far as to say that love is never irritable. I mean, come on now. Can any of you think of a single relationship in your life where you have never felt irritable? Not just with your spouse, but with your friends, yourself, even your relationship with your dog has probably left you feeling at least some level of irritability at some point. First Corinthians is this great jumping off point to talk about how love is not a feeling but an action. Patience, kindness, not being arrogant, working on irritability, these aren’t things that just magically happen, they are actions we take. A better reading of this text is love shows patience, love acts with kindness.
And these actions aren’t something we get right all the time, but because God is love, they are things we can grow into. The first two words of chapter fourteen: “pursue love.” If love is all these things, patient, kind, etc., then our job isn’t necessarily to be all those lofty, ambitious goals, but to pursue them. There is this sense of the infinite in the word pursue, it promises that while we never quite get there, the journey itself is one that draws us closer into relationship.
This idea of love as an action and a journey we never quite reach, but one that changes us for the better as we travel, was working in my mind as I was thinking about the texts for this week. Our second reading for this morning is from Hebrews. I love Hebrews because I love good prose, and Hebrews is just beautiful writing. This section especially, and we only get a section of it, has this repeated refrain of “by faith.” By faith Abraham obeyed, by faith he stayed, by faith he received, by faith, by faith, by faith. The writer of Hebrews goes on with something that sounds right along the line of our journey metaphor from earlier, “All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them… they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.” Sounds pretty good, right? Abraham sounds like this spiritual giant, this towering model of faith. But before we get too swept up in his greatness, let’s take a look at our first reading, and see what the writer of Hebrews really is describing.
Just as some background, Abraham started out as Abram, which in Hebrew means “exalted ancestor.” Though Abram at this point is seventy-five and has no children, so exalted ancestor seems like an ambitious name. In Genesis chapter twelve, God called Abram to set out and go to the land that God had prepared for him, telling him that he would be the father of a great nation. So they journey, and some things happen, and God’s with them, but still no children for this supposed great nation. So in chapter fifteen, God again came to Abram and promised he would be great. But this time, Abram’s like, God, how is this whole descendant thing going to work out, I still have no children. So God assured him, “Look toward heaven and count the stars… so shall your descendants be. And he believed the Lord; and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Abram believed, and so the Lord reckoned him as righteous. OK, so far that fits well with the whole “by faith” theme of Hebrews, if we stop at verse six. But if we go on to eight, the now reckoned as righteous Abram was like, OK God, but, how will I know? So God gave Abram a sign of the promise. Then chapter sixteen, Abram’s like, OK, still no child, clearly God needs some help with this, so he has a kid with his wife’s slave. And God blessed the kid, but that really wasn’t what God was talking about, so God came to Abram again in chapter seventeen and was like, really, father of many nations. In fact, I’m going to call you Abraham, which means ancestor of a multitude. Then in chapter eighteen, some strangers appeared and repeated the promise of offspring, and Sara laughed, you see where this is going. Abraham’s faith is basically a series of God showing up again and again and saying, no, seriously, this is how it’s going to happen.
The faith that made Abraham such a hero was not his faith; it was God’s faith in him. No matter how many times Abraham was like, but, wait a minute, God showed up and guided him back in the right direction. The writer of Hebrews was correct, Abraham was a great hero in the faith, and as his named testified, the ancestor of multitudes, but the faith that made Abraham someone for us to emulate was not his faith, but God’s faith in him. Abraham accomplished all these great things, because God said to him, Abraham, you are the guy, and God stuck with him until it became so.
Faith is not something we do, it is a gift from God. Faith, God’s faith in us, makes us capable of amazing things, even the kind of beautiful self-sacrificial, unending love Paul wrote about in First Corinthians. Not perfectly, we fall short certainly, but we can pursue that sort of love and grace and living because God has faith in us. Martin Luther said, “God does not love me because I am beautiful, but I am beautiful because God loves me.”
Which gets us back to our Luke passage, and the faithful waiting patiently for the master to return from the wedding banquet. Our reading started out, do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. It is your Father’s good pleasure. This is something God wants to do. God’s not waiting around for us to prove our worth; God wants to give us the kingdom. So when Jesus goes on, “sell your possessions and give alms,” this isn’t the thing we have to do in order to earn God’s favor, but rather it is something we are freed to do because we already know we have it. We don’t have to worry about earning God’s love, so we can go about the good work of caring for each other. And because we are not spending our time and energy worrying, it frees us to do even more. I find in my own life that when I am worried about whether what I am doing is enough, I am way less effective then when I can get out of my own way and just try something. That’s I think the point of these first three verses, don’t wait until you have, for example, the faith of Abraham, or the faith that you imagined Abraham had, until you do something great. God already thinks you’re great, so go out and live that way.
And then Jesus told the two parables, about being ready for the master to return from the wedding banquet, and the thief in the night. Both passages feel like they are about the potential energy that we have as Christ’s followers. Because God wants to give us the kingdom, because we are already enough in Jesus Christ, we are like coiled springs of promise, ready to burst out and bring God’s kingdom to the world. We can help our neighbors, we can care for each other, we can proclaim that the reign of God has come near. I think just in our own community about the times that we have been ready for the master to find us alert, and we have been served by our preparedness. Think of the gift of the Co-op, who showed up at our door and we gave them a place. Or the gift of the garden out back, we had land and willingness to share it, and suddenly there were the Burmese, brought by God to bring our struggling garden to life. Or if you haven’t yet, check out the fruit on the Tree of Life, for other examples of God’s growth falling on prepared and unexpecting soil. So be dressed for action, little flock. And have your lamps lit. For God has faith in you, and treasure is coming at an unexpected hour. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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