Love, love, love. Love is the theme in the last year of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada’s “Living the Faith” series for spiritual renewal.^[1] Love. How we love needs to be the driving force behind any method, means and strategy for our lives, individually and collectively.

The word evangelical is in our church name, both nationally and locally. The word evangelical derives from the Greek word meaning “gospel” or “good news.” The Greek root word is used in the New Testament^[2] and was popularized in the first centuries to distinguish the love-centric movement of Jesus followers, distinguish it from the violent Roman Empire that often made its own “good news” announcements to celebrate military victories.^[3]

The love-movement from the beginning of Christianity onward has at its root always distinguished itself–or at least tried to– from a dominant culture more interested in competition, comparison and often violent aggression in promoting itself. History shows Christians have often failed at love.

You might not think that the parable in the Gospel reading today demonstrates a truth about love. But I think it does, albeit in a subtle and not often registered way.

The dead man who was rich on earth wants to make sure his family doesn’t make the same mistakes he did when he was alive. He cares for them. He loves them. “I beg you to send him to my father’s house … if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.”^[4] You could say that even in death he is loving them, expressing his concern for their spiritual well-being.

The divine answer highlights the truth—and the pain—of being distant, cut-off from our loved ones by an impassable abyss. “Between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” 

In effect, his love can no longer control others, influence them. And this is hard for us to take. But, the truth is, love is not something we can control. Never has been. Not true love, anyway. A dimension of true love emerges in this parable, precisely at this point when the dead man arrives at the limits of his influence, when he can no longer manage others’ decisions any longer. A great chasm keeps us apart.

Sometimes we feel alone, when we are separated from those we love. Sometimes we may feel unloved, because no one or certain people are not physically beside us and doing what we want them to do for us. But is this true, that we are unloved in these situations?

Here is another paradox: In recognizing our limits in relationship, and in freeing those whom we love to live their own lives, we demonstrate abiding love. Because love inevitably finds a way to express itself, without our words and without our control. Love inevitably finds a way, even across the barriers that separate us, barriers of distance, time, and even death. Through the power of prayer. In the positive energy we put into the world. In the warm heartedness of our intentions and actions. This is faith, hope and love.

What is called forth from us, is a deep trust, shown first to us in the God of the cross. Religious people may be prone to think of God as speaking and acting from above—as an authoritative voice micromanaging everything that happens in the natural world.

But Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross paints another picture altogether: God enters our lives on earth more intimately, more lovingly, from below: the meaning of the cross, the meaning of our faith, the meaning of love.

Might God be less involved in controlling or directing than in accompanying, giving space, coming alongside, like a parent providing loving support to a growing child?

Might we find the highest expression of God’s love in a somewhat reckless gamble God takes in making the world a “free partner” in its own creation? 

Might God largely let the world operate without always directly intervening—trusting its natural powers and responsibilities to evolve into something beautiful?

This is God’s freedom. And God gives the world its freedom. 

“However, God must love with God’s heart in his throat at times.”^[5] God must shed tears and grieve. God must grieve at what God sees at times in our behaviour so rooted in the dominant culture of comparisons, competition and even violence in relating with others.

We can be consoled, I hope, in the words of the poet in Psalm 139: “Where can I flee from your presence?” The Apostles Creed goes so far as to affirm that in Jesus God even ‘descended into hell’. God participates and loves us even in our struggles, loves us even in our suffering and death, coming alongside us from below.

God wants us to be free to make choices and decisions. This is the expression of God’s love. To trust us, because God has empowered us in creating us. And so we can pass it on: To love another is to let them be free. Not to force them to conform to the way we are and want them to be. But to let them, in a safe space, express the unique beauty emerging in their own lives, to let them make their choices even if you disagree or wouldn’t make the same choice yourself. That is love. 

And God is there, even in our letting go. Trusting in God. Trusting God has given us enough—enough resource, enough skill, and the heart-capacity as a community to live out God’s good and loving intention for all creatures great and small.

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^[1] Initiated by Bishop Susan Johnson in 2018, this four-year series began in year 1 with focus on prayer, year 2 on bible, year 3 on worship and year 4 on love. www.elcic.ca

^[2] In the writings of St Paul especially (e.g., Ephesians 4:11, 2 Timothy 4:5) and Luke (e.g., Acts 21:8)

^[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/evangelical-christian/418236/

^[4] Luke 16:19-31

^[5] Beldon C. Lane, “Taking the Great Conversation Seriously” The Great Conversation: Nature and the Care of the Soul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019, kindle edition), p.263

Every year in September the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada invites members and congregations to join with Christians of various traditions in celebrating a Season of Creation.^[1] 

This year’s focus on this theme is: “Listen to the voice of creation.” Our faith calls us to listen to God, and one another. But have you ever considered listening to the voice of the earth, its trees, animals, wind, water? What would creation have to say to us?

Having been outside a lot in the last couple of months, I’ve experienced the beauty and wonder of creation—along rugged coastlines, pristine beaches, in towering rainforests and on peaceful, freshwater lakes. I’ve clapped my hands at astonishingly beautiful sunsets. My heart sang in seeing and hearing the song of a sea lion swimming close to where I stood atop a cliff overlooking the ocean. I can say with gratitude that I am fortunate to have heard a happy voice from creation.

This perspective is positive. It’s like a certain perspective on God—that God should come and be heard and known in holiness, in splendour, in riches, in wondrous miracles, in universal truth, in high, moral standards. You may have looked to hear God’s voice here. As I have in the cathedral of nature. Of course, God is present in all these.

And yet, if ever you’ve camped overnight in a tent listening for the cracks of thunder during a wicked lightning storm, canoed across a wind-churned lake with whitecaps smashing into the hull of the boat, threatening to capsize you into icy cold water, or come across the silent threat of bear tracks on your backcountry hike, you will also know that nature can be chaotic, horrific, threatening and terrifying as well.

What does this say about God? What is God saying to us through the bad things, the scary things, the uncomfortable aspects of nature?

The reality of our lives does not permit only the good, only the glorious. We know, some of us more intensely than others, that life is not just peaches and cream. Even a good life. And our relationship with God, as with nature, is not just some romantic vision bathed in radiant light, some utopian perfection where there is no suffering, no pain.

“God is more feral and blood-spattered and painstricken than most Christians are ready to admit,” confesses American writer and theologian Belden C. Lane.^[3]

In other words, both/and. We also have to learn to accept that while we live in the light as people of God, the light always casts a shadow. That’s just reality. There’s always a shadow in the light, and we have to live with both.

An important feature about the parables of Jesus is that he uses this Jewish way of conveying wisdom (called the mashal) and turns it upside down. We notice this especially in today’s Gospel. Because rather than stay in the familiar world of talking about conventional morality, he moves his listeners beyond the safety zone of pleasantries into a world of radical reversal and paradox. He transforms the traditional proverb into parable—which isn’t the same thing as a moral lesson.

The parable’s job is not to confirm but to uproot. You can imagine the effect that had on his audience. Throughout the gospels we hear people saying again and again, “What is this he’s teaching?” “No one has ever said anything like this before.” “Where did he get this?” “Where did he come from?”^[4] We feel this tension in the story of the shrewd business manager.^[5]

He is a thief and a manipulator. Shrewd, yes, but dishonest and slippery in his dealings. And yet, the rich man commends his manager’s actions. “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth,” is the parable’s instruction. The rich man is no example of righteousness himself: He decides to fire his manager before asking for an accounting of the manager’s work. Finally, the “children of the light” are relegated in the parable to a lower status than the more shrewd “children of this age”. 

What are we to make of this harsh word to us? Aren’t we supposed to be all goody two-shoes? Is Jesus justifying immoral behaviour? While our behaviour, good and/or bad, is often the substance—the grist for the mill—of most parables, maybe that’s not the endpoint of the parables. Even this one.

What came to my attention this week is a theme that weaves throughout the bible, and just below the surface in this story as well. Did you notice it? 

We don’t know what happened to those clients of the shrewd manager whose bills were reduced by almost half: The hundred jugs of oil owing became fifty; the hundred containers of wheat owing became eighty. Imagine if your banker came to you today and told you your mortgage is suddenly reduced by half? Imagine your total debt slashed in half! How would you feel? What would you do? Pretty good news, no?

God makes something good out of nothing. Even here. God makes something good out of something that is broken, weak, sinful. God takes a bad situation, a dishonest dealing, and does something good out of it for someone else.

The cross of Christ is the mark of our salvation. And the cross casts a long shadow through history and to the present day. So, it is in the vulnerability, the weakness, the suffering, the loneliness, and the dying of our lives that God comes to us. And makes something good. God has entered our pain and our losses in Jesus, in order to touch us and save us. This is not to romanticize suffering, idealizing it somehow. It is accepting the reality of our lives, even as Christians. 

“There is no pain so great, no loneliness so vast, no vulnerability so low, and no weakness so extensive that it will escape God’s presence,” writes our national bishop, Susan Johnson.^[6] There is nothing as bad, as terrifying, as horrifying that will escape the grasp of God’s grace and God’s love. Nothing and no one is beyond the reach of God’s grace. That’s the message of the cross of Christ.

All physical shadows are created by a mixture of darkness and light. We cannot see inside of total light or total darkness. As Jesus says to the rich young man, “Only God is good.”^[7] And all created things are a mixture of good and not so good.

This does not mean we stop loving other people. In fact it means we actually begin to truly love people and creatures. It means finally accepting and fully owning both our gifts and our weaknesses; they no longer cancel one another out.

We can eventually do the same for others too. We do not let another’s faults destroy our larger relationship with them. While hard work to do this, to perceive it this way, it makes love, forgiveness, and patience possible.^[8] God doesn’t need much to make something good out of it. The children of the light only need to offer a small spark for God to get the fire going.

Creation has a lot to say to us. Let’s listen.

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^[1] Visit www.elcic.ca for information and resources.

^[2]  p.262

^[3] Belden C. Lane, “Conclusion: Taking the Great Conversation Seriously”, The Great Conversation: Nature and the Care of the Soul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019, kindle edition), p.262-264

^[4] Cynthia Bourgeault, Transforming Heart and Mind—A New Perspective on Christ and His Message (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2008), 23-24,27.

^[5] Luke 16:1-13

^[6] Donald W. Johnson and Susan C. Johnson, “The Second Article: On Redemption, Day 23, Tuesday”, Praying the Catechism; Revised and Expanded Edition (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2021), p.62

^[7] Mark 10:18

^[8] The conclusion of this sermon is adapted from Richard Rohr, “A Change of Consciousness: Forgiveness” Daily Meditation (www.cac.org, 13 September 2022)

One of the most anxious moments I experienced as a parent was when our youngest went on her first school trip to the local winter festival. She was ten years old. And her class rode a school bus half an hour to Pakenham in the Ottawa Valley.

The class was instructed to pair up with a partner at all times and for all the activities. At the end of the day-long outing they were to board the bus at the appointed time, bound for home.

Except Mika wasn’t on the bus. Upon arriving back at the school and noticing her absence, the teacher-in-charge immediately drove her own vehicle back to Pakenham where, thankfully, Mika was still waiting but in another part of the park.

I remember empathizing with Mika how it felt to be cut off, isolated and by herself—apart from her community. Disturbing, to say the least especially for a young child. And for her parents! Perhaps you too can relate a story from your own life about a time when you or a loved one was lost, left behind, or inadvertently separated from family, friends and community …

On the Pacific North West coast there’s a famous beach called Rialto Beach. Part of the reason it is a popular destination is the ‘hole in the wall’—a passageway carved out of one of the seastacks (the rock formations, like little islands out in the water near the shore line). 

The hole-in-the-wall forms a tunnel that can be accessed by hikers navigating the coastal trail. In fact, it first appeared to me the only way for hikers to continue their beach walk. Because besides the small tunnel underneath, a large, mountainous rock wall blocks hikers from making their way up the beach. To access the hole-in-the-wall, you have to turn towards the ocean and walk out on slippery, uneven and sharp rocks to get to the hole, walk through the tunnel, then back to the beach on the other side.

The trick is, you can only do that at low tide. When the tide comes in, the hole-in-the-wall is filled with water swirling through and crashing into the seastack. At high tide, it is impossible to get through. Hikers on both sides of the hole-in-the-wall are cut off from each other and the path.

This is especially significant for those on the north side where you find most of the camp sites and the trail continues for tens of kilometres up the beach. If you are on the north side at high tide, you’d have to wait several hours before getting through and out of the park. You can be stuck on the northside if you need to get out quickly for whatever reason.

When we visited Rialto beach we didn’t check the tide schedule for the day. We were only concerned about getting to the small parking lot on the southside as early in the day as possible to avoid the crowds. Fortunately, when we hiked the first couple kilometres to the hole-in-the-wall, the tide was very low and we had no problems getting through to the other side. We weren’t intending to hike far up the coast, so we made it back through when the tide was just starting to climb up the rocks a bit.

Jesus tells a story about a sheep who was separated from the fold.^[1] There are different levels of approaching this story. But one perspective that doesn’t usually get interpreted is the sheep’s perspective. Why did that one sheep miss the call of the shepherd to gather?

The sheep were enjoying their grass. And then when it got cold, one of them shivered and realized that she had been cold for some time. But the grass was so tasty. Looking around, she suddenly discovered that she was alone. All the others had gone. And she began crying aloud. And then the shepherd, who had many sheep, missed her when he got back to the fold. And he left his ninety-nine to try to find this sheep that was lost. 

In this parable Jesus says, “God is like that.” Nothing heavy and theological about that. Very little that is dogmatic, technically, about it. Just that here is a shepherd who loves each of his sheep. And one of the sheep is doing the most natural thing in the world—and that is to eat the grass—did it with such enthusiasm and over a time interval of such duration that she didn’t know when the shepherd called. And she was lost.

And why was she lost? She was lost because she was out of touch, out of touch with the group that sustained her, the group that fed her, that gave her a sense that she counted. That’s all. And as soon as she was out there alone, she said, “I’m just here by myself. Nothing but me in all of this? I want to feel that I count with the others.”

Insulation—isolation—these are matters of the soul, something spiritual. There’s something inside of me that pulls up, that blocks the way. Sometimes we do it because we’re afraid. Sometimes we do it because we are self-centred and selfish. Sometimes we do it because we’re clumsy and awkward, and we don’t quite know how to establish a relationship or relationships with others that can float our spirit to them, and their spirit to us.

Jesus says that God is like the shepherd, seeking always to find those who are apart from community. And when they have found it, when they have found their community, then all the world seems to fit back into place. And life takes on a new meaning.^[2]

Standing in front of the hole-in-the-wall at low tide, I marvelled at the power of water to forge a hole through dozens of feet of solid rock over time. As I reflected on the power of God to make a way through the impossible, suddenly a few pebbles came crashing around us. Initially I jumped back alarmed at the prospect that a rock avalanche was about to bury us alive. As it were, we barely missed being pelted by those plunging pebbles of stone.

But then another thought struck me. There’s a path up there, connecting the two beaches! I hadn’t realized this at first—a forest path farther in that circumvents the rock wall altogether.

But it isn’t an easy path to find. You have to clamber over mountains of dangerous driftwood logs forming a formidable barrier at the beach head. You have to search behind shrubbery and beach stone. The pathway to connect both sides at high tide isn’t an easy way. It isn’t the most convenient. It isn’t a way that costs the least amount of energy and time. 

But there is still a way, even at high tide when the hole-in-the-wall was submerged under thundering surf. There is another way to connect beach hikers separated by the rock wall. Just knowing that gave me peace.

With the power of water over time, God made that hole-in-the-wall. God makes a way for us to connect. God finds us in our isolated, insulated selves, cut off from what is most meaningful to us. And if not one way, God makes another way. Because God is relentless in seeking us out. God provides a path for each of us to remain connected, and find our way, in the different circumstances of our lives.

Even when it appears the way is blocked. Even when we are alone, by ourselves and isolated. By illness, by fear, by our awkwardness, our selfishness. God makes a way for us. And on this way, then, God embraces us in love, forgiveness and peace.

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^[1] Luke 15:4-7

^[2] Adapted from Howard Thurman, Sermons on the Parables, ed. David B. Gowler and Kipton E. Jensen (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2018), p.22-24,25