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May 14, 2006

Fred Heard - May 14, 2006

John 14:15-21
Father Fred Heard - Holy Trinity Menlo Park

May 14, 2006

And so in today’s gospel, “Jesus said if you love me, you will keep my commandments…They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” It occurs to me, we use this word love rather loosely. You are to love your family and you are to love your friends and you are to love Jesus and you are to love your God. But how many of us can honestly say we love God and we love Jesus? Is our love really a deep respect…like we really do like them…or is it “on fire” love?

My mother did her best when I asked her what love was. She pointed out there is a difference in one’s love for family and romantic love and love for God. Love in the minds of many is only an emotion…it is a feeling that cannot be forced and is not love if you only love someone because you feel you must or you should. Over the years, I have counseled many who feel they must love a parent and there is something wrong with them if they do not...even though perhaps that parent abused them years before. I have also known a couple of parents who felt they needed to divorce their children—one family saying, “But I do love him” and the other, not saying that at all. Love, in the minds of some, can be an emotion that comes and goes…even to the point perhaps of saying in a divorce—I don’t love you anymore. Or perhaps there is a time when one of the partners realizes they are in fact gay and they acknowledge that they continue to love that person they married so long ago.

Yet, we are commanded to love. In the Bible, we hear of Agape and Phileo love. Yet, as I found out when my mother tried to explain love to me, it is not always so clear-cut. Certainly Agape and Phileo love is often used interchangeably in the Bible and on many occasions the two are used to express love in the same sentence.
I have come to the conclusion that my love for Jesus Christ is on going and something that I can develop in more depth as I learn more about Jesus…how he was sent here by God…how he was willing to die for me…how he loved his disciples and everyone with whom he came in contact…how he taught us to walk in love. But one thing I know is that church and Jesus Christ is not something we do for our children like ballet lessons or soccer practice—it is for real—it is not something on a list that we check off at the end of childhood like we did braces or music lessons. Church is a part of our children’s lives—it is truly something that will grow with them…just as it grows with each of us even if we are 103 years old. Our love for Jesus will be tested—we will test it—and at times we may doubt that love. It is not easy to explain or to understand our love for Jesus Christ.

Love itself is not an easy concept to understand and sometimes to accept and it offers many meanings to many people. Now, this is Mother’s Day and a day when I could speak eloquently of the Dick and Jane mother appearing in pearls and high heels as she jumps rope with her children...and almost always when she is not jumping rope, she is in the kitchen making cookies. My children’s mother would certainly say, “Well you are not talking about me.” Truth is I would be talking about some mothers perhaps and be missing the boat on many others.

There are traditional mothers and there are non-traditional mothers…and who are we to say today what is traditional and what is non-traditional? There are mothers with careers outside and inside the home. There are male mothers just as there are female fathers and these are the parents who have had to slip into the role of the other as single parents and many are doing extraordinary jobs in these roles. There are people in our society who are not biological parents but still they are contributing in very special and significant ways to our children as uncles and aunts and stepparents and foster parents, God parents, nannies, and just members of the village…and they too should be remembered on days like today. There are still others who struggle as parents and perhaps some of us and we should do all that is within our power to walk with them and be there for them.

There are also those who simply don’t care and are sorry the title was ever thrust on them. We have come to recognize that it takes a village to raise a child and accordingly, we have passed laws in our state that allow parents who do not wish to raise their children for whatever reason to leave a child at a fire or police station or at a church. This is a good law.

Hopefully, we are entering a time when it is understood more and more that it is not necessary to have children if that is not your priority. We are also beginning to recognize throughout this land that some people would make very good parents and it is not possible for them to give biological birth. Our Book of Common Prayer offers recognition to this fact with its service of “Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child.” The church asks that this service be done as soon as convenient after the birth of a child or after receiving a child. The purpose of this service is to welcome the child into the church community and to give thanks to Almighty God.

On this day, I am thinking of the Eleventh Step in Twelve Step programs which reads in part, “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscience contact with God as we understood Him…” It is said that you accept a Higher Power of your own understanding…and while we obviously all started with mothers—some were sainted and some were not—and it might very well be that we have had to grasp a motherhood of our own understanding and I would add—acceptance…because the fact is no matter what our experience, motherhood is how our civilization continues.

We need to confront this thing called love. For our own growth and peace of mind, we cannot ignore a difficult relationship…and make no mistake about it, our relationships with parents and Jesus Christ can be difficult. A relationship will not be built in a day or a week or even years but we need to work at it. Perhaps we need to write, perhaps we need to pray, and perhaps we need to have a conversation with a human being even if that person is no longer living. Perhaps we need to write a letter and then burn it and let the smoke carry our resentment away. Perhaps there is someone in our lives—our birth mother—or the mother who chose us—or someone else who we dearly love because they gave us what we needed and the time to thank them is now and every day…because you see when we can tell someone we love them, we can give them the greatest gift of all. “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Grow in your love for Jesus Christ and share that love with someone else. AMEN