Rev. Juan Huertas
In many Christian circles we find an obsession with heaven. The way many of these Christians put it, becoming Christian is about earning an entrance ticket into heaven. This easily becomes a reason for not engaging the world, for ignoring its plights, and for a self-centered life of faith. Eternity becomes something that will happen someday, that we will enjoy at the end of time.

The world in this point of view becomes a place for “passing thru.” So human reality, earthly reality, embodied existence becomes another stumbling block to the real life promised some day, to the real concern of God, to our “spiritual life.”

In today’s reading on our journey Scott McKnight gives us a helpful corrective. He tells us that “[w]hat is finally eternal is love, and heaven and eternal life are terms that house what is truly eternal: love.” (168) In loving God, neighbor, self, we are participating in the divine life, we are participating and inaugurating eternal life. Love keeps us centered, hopeful and inspired on being about God’s own nature in the world. We, as embodied beings, making incarnate God’s nature for the many who are not yet responding to God’s initiative in their life.

We might be at a point in our Lenten journey where tiredness is beginning to set in. We are ready for celebration, we are ready to take on that which we gave up, we are ready to sing Alleluia once again. Those things might seem like the heaven that we are waiting for, so near and yet so far away.

The promise of the Gospel is the promise of eternal life that begins today. We do not have to wait. The God we serve gave us an embodied savior and through that savior has taught us to love in the same way. Let us go into these last days loving. Knowing that in our loving we are participating in God’s own nature, knowing that in loving we are making possible heaven right here on earth.

As we prepare to hear the story of Jesus’ last days let us also remember that our embodied existence is no stumbling block. In fact our savior reminded us in his suffering and death that this world, this created order, is worthy, sacred, God’s own image in the world. God’s love for that world tells us something about the power of God’s Spirit within us that allows our loving to be an agent of participating in the eternal life of God-self. Thanks be to God!

 

Rev. Valerie Robideaux

I actually laughed out loud when I read Scot McKnight’s title for Day 32 of 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed. “The Optimism of Love.” I find it rather ironic, or perhaps perfectly divinely inspired, that I was (randomly?) chosen to blog on “The Optimism of Love.” Those who know me can attest that I am rather quick to complain, roll my big brown eyes, and give painfully honest answers to difficult questions. Over dinner with a friend, she asked about pregnancy and motherhood. My response, “ah! It is so hard!” After my tell all of pregnancy woes and baby blues, I did make mention of the splendid aspects of each as well. Small mention.

It is not that I do not believe in optimism or expressing the joys in life, I just find it really challenging to speak about them. The good is almost too private for me, while I am all too quick to make public life’s difficulties. Within me is actually a deep well of emotion, but to share that is too risky. So, I skillfully and strategically side with pessimism as a defense mechanism.

I am grateful for McKnight’s emphasis on the less familiar optimism of love found in scripture. “It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” 1 Corinthians 13:7. McKnight states that the optimism of love is not “thinking positively only good things will happen. The optimism that comes from a Jesus Creed kind of love becomes optimistic because it believes and hopes in God” (McKnight, 163-64).

“It believes and hopes in God.” Loving God, loving self, and loving others does not require a constant cheery outlook on life. It does not ask for cliché and simple answers to life’s tough questions. It requires honest, purposeful and intentional living steeped in believing and placing hope in God’s promises of a new creation.

When I found myself in a deep postpartum depression, I realized no one really shared with me the painful, life changing, guilt-producing realities of motherhood. I recently received a paper from a student expressing irritation with pre-packaged theological answers like “everything happens for a reason.” Sometimes there is no “optimistic” answer to our tragedies. There is an honest, purposeful, and intentional response that can only come from optimism in love. “I don’t know, but I choose to believe and hope in God. And I have experienced God’s transformative work through the painful moments of my own life.”

God transforms nothing into something. God transforms pain into passion and death into new life. God is a God that calls for a resurrection, not easy and pleasing answers to our lives. Believing and hoping in that is an optimism this pessimist can relate to.

Love is what you do

Rev. Jack O’Dell

I am pretty sure that all moms say this in one way or another at some time or another to all their children. I remember how my mother told me. “Your actions are speaking so loudly that I cannot hear your words.”

Now as a teenager those words just strolled through the ears. But as I have grown in years, they linger more readily than I like to admit. There are times in my journey I grow pretty impatient, somewhat unkind, and yes pretty arrogant.

I think the hospital world picked the word, patient, for its clientele on purpose. When one is in the setting of a hospital, you find yourself not very patient. You are most of the time very uncomfortable dressed in a half gown that shows the world more than one wants to be seen. The answers to what has brought you there is usually not a “quick fix”. And on top of all of this, you can not sleep.

But all of life has a part of this in it. The times when we find ourselves out of Christian character—patient, kind, and humble—are times when the rough edges of life are closing in us. Relationships are not what we expected. Or maybe they have become what we expected much to our dismay.

The answer that Jesus gives to us wherever we are is love. Love can transform our rough edges into the character of Christ. When we give ourselves to the Jesus creed, the Holy Spirit creates within us the capability to be patient, to say kind words, and know humility. It is not what we do, but what the presence of Jesus does within us.

Love is what you do.

Love is what you do

Rev. Jack O’Dell

I am pretty sure that all moms say this in one way or another at some time or another to all their children. I remember how my mother told me. “Your actions are speaking so loudly that I cannot hear your words.”

Now as a teenager those words just strolled through the ears. But as I have grown in years, they linger more readily than I like to admit. There are times in my journey I grow pretty impatient, somewhat unkind, and yes pretty arrogant.

I think the hospital world picked the word, patient, for its clientele on purpose. When one is in the setting of a hospital, you find yourself not very patient. You are most of the time very uncomfortable dressed in a half gown that shows the world more than one wants to be seen. The answers to what has brought you there is usually not a “quick fix”. And on top of all of this, you can not sleep.

But all of life has a part of this in it. The times when we find ourselves out of Christian character—patient, kind, and humble—are times when the rough edges of life are closing in us. Relationships are not what we expected. Or maybe they have become what we expected much to our dismay.

The answer that Jesus gives to us wherever we are is love. Love can transform our rough edges into the character of Christ. When we give ourselves to the Jesus creed, the Holy Spirit creates within us the capability to be patient, to say kind words, and know humility. It is not what we do, but what the presence of Jesus does within us.

Love is what you do.

Insatiable!

Rev. Elaine Burleigh

“The common good? But we’ve worked hard to acquire our gifts and now you tell us they are meant to be used for the common good? Well not until I’ve secured my future…then maybe I’ll help those less fortunate. But I don’t want to hear talk about “the common good. That just smacks of socialism!”

I’ve heard variations on this theme for as long as I can remember. Reading between the lines what I hear is anxiety and maybe even a little anger. We’re anxious about many things, but we’re especially anxious that there won’t be “enough” to go around. Not enough power, not enough wealth, not enough security. So we jealously guard what we have and reach for even more. And we respond with anger when someone suggests that we have a duty to share our resources or use our gifts to help someone else. Especially if we don’t know or like that someone else.

But then the Jesus Creed begins to move through our anxiety and our anger, bringing the promise of redemption and the power of a new perspective. As our love of God and neighbor increase, anxiety and anger decrease. Soon, the lens of scarcity through which we have viewed the world is transformed into an awareness of abundance – God’s abundant love and attentive care for us and for the world. And this is what I love about the power of the Jesus Creed — the more we for God and neighbor, the more joy we find in using our gifts for the common good, and the more we use our gifts for the common good, the more deeply we desire to love God and neighbor. One feeds the other. May our appetite for God be insatiable!