Monday, April 5, 2010

The Love That Remains

Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010
John 20:1-18

I went looking for God this morning.

I went looking for God in the transformation of darkness into sunrise.

And cold into warmth.

I went looking for God in a plate of pancakes and eggs
and eating with friends and strangers.

I have been looking for God a lot in the past 40 plus days.

Looking for God when a small group of people sat in a circle and shared prayers
and a willingness to remember that we come from dust and stardust
and to dust and star dust we will return.

I went looking for God with a small group who ate soup together
and shared stories of meeting God in nature and
meeting God in pain and
meeting God in the act of creating and transforming mud into art.

I went looking for God in the heartbreak of Good Friday
and the grieving silence of Holy Saturday.

Ever since Lent began 46 days ago, I have been looking for God,
looking for resurrection.

The first time I experienced Easter
was during the Children’s Moment 6 weeks ago.
I said to the young ones that I went looking for God this morning.


And the clues to use in looking for God
were to find something that filled me awe, wonder, gratitude.

And I showed them a branch of a tree.
No leaves yet, no blossoms,
just the tiniest evidence of a bud,
that was weeks away from blossoming.

I said to the young ones, this is where I found God this morning.

So I asked them, “How do you think I could see God in this branch with no leaves or blossoms?”

What in this branch would make me feel awe, wonder and gratitude?

First response: Awesome in the buds knowing that they are about to become flowers.
Second response: I wonder where you found the branch?
Third response: Thankful that the tree is there in the first place.

Well, that was when I saw God again that morning.
Because that third response,
grateful that there is anything here at all,
is something that Albert Einstein said.
There I was sitting on the floor of the church on a Sunday morning surrounded by budding geniuses.

So I told them that.
I told them that I was in awe of their responses.
I told them that I wondered what they were going to blossom into.
I told them that I was grateful to be with them.

Thinking back on it, I wish I had said, you must have awesome parents.
And I felt myself get a little choked up then, thinking back on that children’s moment.


I felt myself wanting to walk out the church with them while everyone is singing.
Go now in peace, go now in peace, may the joy of love surround you, everywhere you go.

Thinking back on this moment as I was preparing
for this sermon made me realize something that I had always feared as a parent had actually happened.
My children were gone.
Not dead.
Just grown up.
They no longer run and jump on our bed in the morning to wake up Betsy and me.
They no longer run to greet us at the door when we come home.
They grew up.
And I miss their being children.

And then I wondered,
What remains constant as they grow up,
through childhood through youthhood, to adulthood?

What remains is the way that we raised them.
The love that we gave to them
The confidence, the dreams, the support,
As best as we were able to give.
As best as we are able to forgive and receive forgiveness.

And that brings me to this morning, Easter morning.
What remains after Good Friday?
What remains after Jesus is gone?

The love is what remains.

Just as the love for the child remains in the adult
So the love of Jesus, remains.

The love that Jesus shared in his teachings and healings remains.
The love remains with the disciples, the children of God.

The love remains so that we become co-creators with our children,
with our church friends, with our community,
In raising another generation of young ones who will look for God.

We can look for God…
In awe, wonder, gratitude,
In Silence, letting go, grieving
In Creativity, imagination and celebration
In Transformation, building communities of compassion.

And all the while I have been looking for God
I have to remember the one of the messages of Easter
is that we don’t recognize resurrection when it is happening.

We think we are looking at the Gardener and it is actually the messiah.

We think we that we are looking at the end of our hopes and fears of all our years and we are actually looking at the beginning of a new stage of our life journey.

We think we are looking at rejection and it turns out to be an invitation to a party we didn’t plan.

We think we are looking at failure and it is actually God’s way of getting our attention.

Wake up! Get up! Get going!

God loves us and there is nothing we can do about it.
Love, once given and received, is eternal.
Love remains. God loves us and there is nothing we can do about it.
Except for share it with others and
Keep looking for God in the morning, in the afternoon, and the evening.

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