Love is Bound
May 13, 2018, 7 Sunday of Easter
Prayer: Lord God, send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone. Amen
Please make yourselves comfortable because I want to read you a poem written by the 19th century, British poet, G. K. Chesterton.
LOVE IS NOT BLIND;
That is the last thing that it is
LOVE IS BOUND
And the more it is bound
The less it is blind.
Listen carefully to the words of this poem. I’m going to read it two times so the words have time to melt into your soul and season your life.
Over the past weeks, while further contemplating Jesus’ holy words of love it gradually became clear to me that God’s love reminds me of my days as a nurse watching newborns and parents interact, the parents falling in love with their newborn and the baby learning about the world they are brought into and the people who will love that baby even to the point of death.
We call that interaction, bonding. It’s a dance of love. God loves us in much the same way that new parents love their infant and we respond to that love in much the same way that a healthy infant responds to parents, imitating the parents’ moves, learning the language of the parent and learning how to live in the parents’ world.
Today is Mother’s Day. To honor this day, I will use the name Mother as we explore this concept of bonding. This is no way to be taken as a theological statement about the God’s gender, or, to exclude those who are not mothers in the way that we usually use the term. In any case, in this love dance, we are the beloved infants of our Lord who is the parent.
So, while contemplating God’s immense love for us, I had this silent stirring of unbidden awareness about the bonding nature between the Almighty and each of us.
By fate, I came across this poem of Chesterton that describes the bond between God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and with each of us and with the church which is also the Body of Christ. It’s always awesome to clearly see how the Holy Spirit participates actively in our lives. l
Let’s take a closer look this poem of Chesterton’s in light of our bonding with the Almighty.
LOVE IS NOT BLIND.
God loves us beyond limits, way more than to the moon and back, exactly because God’s love is - not - blind. It doesn’t take much to love someone who is perfect, someone who does things the way we like them to be done, who is healthy, attractive, polite, belongs to the right family, has a nice home and has the same religious and political views as we do.
Yet, that does not describe most of us. We are flawed beings, born flawed and destined to live flawed lives. Yet, in spite of our flawed nature, we are loved beyond measure, we are loved perfectly by the Creator of the universe. As written by the psalmist, Psalm 8:4-5 (NRSV)
“4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.”
Love would not truly be love if it were blind. Sometimes, it’s often easier to love strangers than to love those whose flaws we know so well.
When we love with open eyes, knowing every flaw, we know that we are loved in a mighty way, in a Godly way. Mystic, Meister Eckhart preached, “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him.”
St. Paul says that we are often spiritual infants. God is our loving Mother. God knows the mess we make of things and loves us anyway. Just like a mother loving her infant when it spits up all over her.
God wants us to abide in that same kind of love, to love despite each others’ faults. You know what I mean.
There is the person texting in church, the person who always comes in late, the one who picks her teeth, the gossiper, the teen chewing gum, the guy who sings loudly off key, the neighbor who doesn’t mow the lawn as often as you do.
To truly love your neighbor as God loves means loving with our eyes wide open. Love others, faults, and all. That is true love and we are unable to attain that level of love without God’s help.
We know each other’s faults and God the omniscient knows our even deeper hidden faults, God examines them thoroughly.
These include, but are not limited to our prejudices and hatreds, our harmful pride and greed, jealousy, pointing fingers, our false gods of status and wealth, our addictions to all kinds of things, lies, pornography, substances legal and illegal, our excesses and all manner of unloving. God sees these faults clearly and loves us anyway.
So it is with God’s love. God knows the mess we make of things and loves us anyway.
Love is not blind, THAT IS THE LAST THING THAT IT IS.
LOVE IS BOUND,
This happens through the process of bonding. When an infant meets the Mother for the first time, the Infant’s eyes are wide open and look into the mother’s eyes. Mothers are seen holding the newborn enface, the perfect distance to accommodate newborn vision. Bonding includes talking to one another. When the baby is unhappy, or uncomfortable, he cries. As the baby gets older she coos and eventually learns to speak the parent’s language.
We, as the infant, do the same with God as we learn to pray.
Next line of the poem, AND THE MORE IT IS BOUND THE LESS IT IS BLIND
There is nothing that can separate us from God’s love. Sometimes people are afraid that they will not be granted salvation. This week, a member of SNP service died. Louis used to fear death because he didn’t think God could forgive him. Over and over he asked all of us about this and over and over we reassured him of God’s love.
Then, about a year and a half ago, Lewis died and was brought back to life, physically and spiritually, as a man transformed. He experienced firsthand God’s love and forgiveness. He came back to tell everyone to trust God’s love and that there is nothing to fear from death, not because Louis was perfect, rather, God loves us with all of our faults. God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
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