You shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart.

Thankful for the opportunity to worship with the people of God at Zion Lutheran Church in Jonestown last night.  Rejoicing Spirits was a joyful, spirit-filled worship service where we learned about the 10 Commandments.  Singing Holden Evening Prayer in a new setting felt welcoming and comfortable.  

I'm deeply thankful to all the lay leaders - worship leaders, cooks and clean up crew, musicians, lay readers, and the people of Zion who made the evening run smoothly.  I was present to share some words of love and grace in the midst of Holden.  Here is what I shared. 

Midweek Homily

February 28, 2018

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Please pray with me,

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen. 

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. 

As our Lenten journey continues, so does the theme of covenant. 

Last week you heard about God’s covenant with Noah…and in essence, all of God’s people. 

Tonight, we hear about the covenant God made with Abraham and Sarah…and in essence, again, all of God’s people. 

It starts off with God appearing to just Abram saying I will make my covenant between me and you.  A little while later, God says, I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you. 

And even later in our passage God says to Abraham, ‘As for Sarai your wife, I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations…

The covenant, begun between God and Abraham gets bigger and bigger, to include Sarah and all of their offspring, in essence, all of God’s people.   Are you picking up on a theme here? 

Yes, that these covenants, that God makes with specific individuals, are covenants that God makes with us as well. 

God reaches out, time and time again in hope and unconditional love to save God’s people. 

It’s a theme that continues throughout the Old Testament.  My seminary roommate, Steph, taught her confirmation classes about the sweeping saga of salvation. 

God creates God’s people, calls them to live lives in response to a God of love and inevitably, God’s people mess up.  And so, God sweeps back in love to save God’s people…the story continues like this all the way to us. 

Just like Abraham and Sarah, we are not perfect.  The story with Abraham and Sarah includes incest, horrible treatment of slaves, mistrusting God, and even laughing when hearing about God’s promises for them and their future. 

They were far from perfect, yet God chose Abraham and Sarah to be part of God’s mission to love and bless and save the world. 

We, too, are far from perfect. 

We fall into sin each and every day, yet God chooses us, through the waters of baptism to be part of God’s mission to love and save and bless the world.  

And isn’t that just one of the amazing things our God does out of great love for us.  Isn’t that crazy on some levels?  Even unbelievable?  That we could be loved and called to be part of God’s family…to be children of God? 

But that is who we are…

Over the past week, I have had a song stuck in my head called On Children.  The version I have is by the musical group Sweet Honey and the Rock.  A few years ago, I learned that the lyrics for this song come from a poem by Kahlil Gibran (from the book The Prophet) simply called, Children. 

Kahlil writes,

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

God made a promise to Abraham and Sarah….to bless their offspring, their children…children of God. 

God made a promise to us….to bless our offspring…our children, the children of God. 

Even as the children in our lives are ours, they, too are children of God.

We will love them and care for them. 

We will hold them and teach them. 

We will protect and heal them. 

We will lead them through our words and actions…we will care for our children

the children of the world

the children of God. 

We will do this out of our response to God’s light and love in our own hearts. 

We love, because God first loved us. 

In spite of our humanity and our sinfulness, God continues to love and bless and save us.

God made a promise, made a covenant with us, and God will not break that covenant. 

Try as we might, we will attempt to live up to our end of the covenant through compassion to our neighbors, service to those in need, feeding the hungry, being the voice for the voiceless and protecting and caring for the vulnerable in our community and world. 

We will do our best…but we will fall short. 

We hurt others, we are silent when we should speak, or we speak when we should be silent, we think of ourselves first…we are captive to sin. 

But thanks be to God who continues to forgive us, love us, save us and bless us for service in God’s kingdom today and all days. 

We love, because God first loved us. 

As our Lenten journey continues, may we prayerfully respond to God’s love out of the depths of our hearts.  May that love transform a broken world with forgiveness, hope, grace and love. 

May our hearts reflect God’s unconditional love in our homes, community and world. 

And may the peace, which passes all understanding keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus and let all God’s people say, amen.