Welcome to Covenant Season of Redlands UCC!
This week, as I was driving near the church, the sky was filled with grey, stormy clouds. Instinctively, I looked toward the mountains where John and I live, and saw, breaking through the clouds, a pudgy, stocky slice of rainbow color. No other part of the rainbow was visible, only this little section, looking like it has been cut off from the rest and pasted right there in the sky. Seeing that bit of color in an otherwise dreary sky, gave me hope.
As we begin this annual pilgrimage together today, I invite us to look at another slice of beautiful color: the multi-colored cross that graces our sanctuary.
Years ago, Jim Hester, Professor of Religion at the University of Redlands—and along with his spirited wife, D, an active and vocal member of Redlands UCC—argued that the cross is an apt symbol for covenant. Two lines—horizontal and vertical—portray our relationship with God and our relationship with one another. The intersection of those two lines is the essence of covenant, Jim said. For at the intersection, each of these necessary aspects of our spiritual journey is held in balance, in creative tension, in relationship with one another. If we only focus on the vertical aspect of our covenant relationship—the one in which it is “me and Jesus” or “me and Spirit” or “me and God”—to the exclusion of human interaction, our spirits will become malnourished. Conversely, if we are only extending ourselves in service and ministry to others, we may very well leave God behind. It takes both, Jim reminded us, both the vertical and the horizontal aspects of covenant to sustain a vibrant faith journey.
Today’s scripture readings gently comfort us—whether we have been over-focusing on our relationship with God to the exclusion of others, or whether we have been overly-attentive to others to the neglect of God.
Taste and see…invites the psalmist.
Taste and see, touch and smell, that God is here.
God hears your call for help.
God is near to the brokenhearted.
God saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Be assured that you are a child of God…and so is your neighbor…and so is your enemy, chides the author of the First Letter of John. To the bludgeoned first-century Christians, and to those of us who feel attacked again by bigotry and injustice, the author of Revelation assures, You will hunger and thirst no more; for the Lamb will become your shepherd, guiding you to the springs of the water of life; all the tears in your eyes will be wiped away by God’s own gentle Kleenex-covered fingers.
And in some of the most quoted words attributed to Jesus, we hear, “bless and be blessed… heal and be healed… pray and accept prayer from others… mourn and be comforted… hunger and thirst and be filled… be gentle and inherit the earth… merciful and receive mercy… pure in heart and see God… pursue peace, for you are called children of God.” Father Andrew Greeley once observed that these beatitudes, these blessing statements we’ve heard again from Matthew’s Gospel, “…are not normative: they are not a new set of commandments added to those proclaimed on Sinai… Rather, these statements of Jesus are descriptive; they describe a portrait of the life that is possible for all those who believe in the love and compassion of God.”
Look again at that beautifully-colored cross. The vertical line—representing God reaching to us—is significantly longer than the horizontal one. In a paper about covenants written in 1993, Jim Hester states:
“Like the Hound of Heaven, God pursues human kind, offering, maintaining and re-establishing relationship…”
I’d like to believe that, today, when same-gender couples are being battered by fear, and our congregation is both pained and deeply motivated to respond in love; in this political season when each of us, to some degree, is tempted to cave in to the fear-mongering power of some of our siblings in faith, I’d really like to believe, NO, I really NEED to believe that, just as Father Greeley has suggested, God’s love and compassion are embodied in arms long enough to reach us and strong enough to protect us and firm enough to enfold us. I need to taste and see that God is good…and I need to taste and see that God’s goodness is longer and larger than any fear. When I am tempted to react in anger, I need to hear the familiar invitation from my ancestors in the Christian faith: live as the child of God that you are. When I am weary, I need to sit in the presence of the Divine Heart of God and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am loved for who I am, and not for what I produce. Perhaps you need the same. Come, all who are weary, all who thirst or are hungry. This table is spread for you, for us, in love and in hope and in the breathtaking multi-colors of joy!
