Sermon
Pentecost 23: October 23, 2005
The Rev. Melissa M. Skelton
From Irving Berlin:
How much do I love you?
I’ll tell you no lie
How deep is the ocean?
How high is the sky?
How many times a day do I think of you?
How many roses are sprinkled with dew?
How far would I travel
To be where you are?
How far is the journey
From here to a star?
And if I ever lost you
How much would I cry?
How deep is the ocean?
How high is the sky?
And from the Gospel according to Matthew:
Jesus said: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
I grew up on love songs—lots and lots of love songs.
I don’t exactly know how it happened, but instead of walking around with my ears full of the other popular music of the time, I grew up with the clear, cool voice of Ella Fitzgerald in my head singing the songs of Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Johnny Mercer.
Through Ella and through parents who incessantly hummed the love songs of the ’30s ’40s and ’50s, I learned to see the world through the lens of romantic love and to expect that life fully lived included all its yearning, its desolation, its ecstasy and its intensity.
And so when I came to spiritual life, the metaphor of romantic love as a way to experience and to talk about God came quite naturally to me.
My first time in an Episcopal Church, therefore, I’ve often described as feeling like falling in love because, well, it did feel that way, complete with flushed face, weakness in the knees, teary eyes, and a mild nausea—all while juggling the prayer book and keeping up with when to stand and when to kneel. This was the same thing I felt when I sat in a pew for the first time at St. Paul’s, though I knew a little more about the order of service and what to do with my body.
Spiritual life; finding oneself in the presence of God and feeling as if falling in love; St. Paul’s.
And so it’s very interesting to me that on this Sunday as we begin our stewardship season, a time to reflect on the stewardship of our lives—what we give our time, energy and resources to day in and day out—and the stewardship of this parish—what we want to give for the support of our common life at St. Paul’s—that we get a gospel lesson that’s all about a different kind of love.
In this passage, Jesus is asked by a lawyer which of the 613 separate laws in the Torah is the most important. And he replies that there’s not one but two: loving God with everything we’ve got in us and loving neighbor as we would love ourselves. As commentators are quick to tell us, the kind of love Jesus is mentioning, the kind of love that our Jewish heritage would reference in any kind of law or way of living, is not the Ella Fitzgerald, weak-in-the-knees kind of love I’ve just described. Instead, it’s the kind of love that is better defined as commitment, an unwavering commitment that makes the daily decision to take the relationship, the needs and demands of the other seriously, whether we feel like it or not.
So, of course, such a reading makes a lot of sense on a Sunday focusing on stewardship, right? For where we can go with this is to a talk about our commitment to God (whether we feel like it or not), our commitments to each other (whether we feel like it or not), and our commitments to this parish (whether we feel like it or not). And, oh, by the way, here is your pledge card.
But if I were to take that tack with you, to talk only about commitments and obligations, whether we feel like it or not, I wouldn’t be telling the truth as I know it or as experienced in the totality of our spiritual tradition. I also would not be telling you the truth about this parish, what’s unique and mysterious that is going on here, and why you and I might feel moved or even called to give it our generous support.
So let me tell you a more complex story: a story both about falling in love with God and living a life of commitment to God and to neighbor, whether we feel like it or not.
It’s a story about a God who draws us and other human beings through the longing of our hearts, through an Ella Fitzgerald, weak-in-the-knees kind of yearning. It’s a story told in the voice of the psalmist who yearns for the living God, is desolate when feeling separated from God and ecstatic when restored to God’s presence. It’s a story told in the lives of mystics who when they run out of words, and they often do, stand silent in the presence of their divine beloved. And finally, it is a story told in the Anglo-Catholic tradition in which we stand, the one that draws people through enflaming their hearts and firing their imaginations with a liturgy that is all about beauty, mystery and grace, all about celebrating “the splendor at the heart of things,” (Evelyn Underhill as quoted by John Orens) revealed to us by a God who takes on our flesh, dignifies our humanity and opens for us the way to participate in the divine life.
But it’s also a story about a God who calls us in another way: through the making and the living out of our commitments—on the one hand, through spiritual disciplines that we undertake whether we feel like it or not and, on the other hand, in the habitual acts of relationship, civility and mercy we extend to our neighbor, to strangers and even to those we consider to be our enemies, again, whether we feel like it or not.
Both of these dimensions of experiencing God, of living out a life in God, are what this parish is all about. For we are certainly about a weak-in-the-knees longing for God within communal worship that is grace and flow, silence and chanting, incense and bells, music and mystery. And we are about the habitual acts of relationship, civility and mercy as we live together in our dignified differences: differences in gender, race, age, sexual orientation, politics, ability and personality.
Today marks the beginning of our stewardship season, one that very appropriately for us ends on November 20, Christ the King Sunday, with a festival Eucharist followed by a festive sit down meal. Those of us who are working on the materials that will be sent out to you in the next week or so will not be coming at you with a kind of formula for what we are hoping you will give to St. Paul’s for this next year. Instead we’re asking you to reflect on two things: first, the gratitude you feel for the experience of an enfleshed God of mystery, beauty, grace and human dignity that is mediated by and comes to you through this parish, and, second, the on-the-ground bond of relationship and intimacy that is forged in the act of committing your time and resources to something.
I still adore all those old love songs. In fact, I ended up looking up lyrics and singing them to myself quite late into the evening last night. It reminded me of how I feel sometimes when we chant the psalm refrain here at St. Paul’s on Sunday morning, an experience I give thanks for. But I also give thanks for the other path of love that we are walking together: the path of commitment, staying in relationship with God and one another in a way that does not depend on the passion of our hearts.
God, grant us the grace to embrace both of these dimensions of our life with God and with one another. God grant us to be faithful stewards of our lives and of this parish.
Sources Cited
Irving Berlin, “How Deep Is the Ocean”
Evelyn Underhill “Corpus Christi” as quoted by John Orens in “The Anglo Catholic Vision”.
For a copy of Orens article, see: http://www.allsaintssanfran.org/anglo_catholic_vision.htm
