How do we survive in the tension of love?
Sunday’s reading from the second Book of Chronicles
tells -- in vivid detail -- yet another
story of the Jewish people’s infidelity to the covenant with God. Exile was the result of that infidelity;
Psalm 137 gives voice to the people in exile who don’t believe they can worship
God in Babylon: they hang up their harps and sit and weep
instead. But the people found hope at
the end of the tunnel, when Cyrus, the King of Persia, sent them back to
rebuild… and may their God be with them,
Cyrus tells them.
If only this were the end of humankind’s infidelity to the
covenant with God… But our lack of faithfulness has continued through the Pharisees
of Jesus’s day to our own time. We know
how the story ends, though, because we have a sense of God’s infinite
love. Rich in mercy, Paul reminds the Ephesians, God brought us to life with Christ.
Or, in John’s words, God so loved
the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him might
have eternal life. We will not perish precisely because God’s love is
infinite: Jesus, life itself, came to
reveal the truth of that love. There are
no limits on the mercy God is willing
to visit upon those who believe. Each
time we participate in Eucharist, we are reaching beyond where we are to where
Jesus is, so that we might be reconnected forever to the infinite goodness that
is that love. And, as Paul says, it is by grace that we have been saved through
faith: faith is about how we enter
into God’s activity, how we are drawn in by God’s work in us, by God’s mercy, so that
we may be conduits of that grace for others.
To survive in the tension of love is to die to what has been,
to be open to what is and what might be.
As we approach the end of Lent, may we experience God’s mercy in that tension,
drawing others with us into union with Christ, through the grace that is ours
and the love we share.
This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
Image source: Wordle
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