Beloved

Sermon preached January 10, 2016 

Texts: Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-22

            It is movie award season again.  If you are not a football fan – and we will have you on your way in plenty of time to watch the Vikings game – you may know that tonight is the Golden Globe Awards show, an awards show that often gives some clues about who will be nominated for Academy Awards. 

Perhaps, like me, you enjoy both football and the movies.  Our family has had some wonderful times over the years watching movies together.  A number of years ago, we also started a tradition of watching the Oscars together, and our older daughter Beth does her best every year to see as many of the Oscar nominated films before that award show.  Last year she saw them all.

You may remember last year, the Academy Award for best picture went to a film entitled “Birdman.”  How many of you saw that movie?  It was an odd film in many ways – quirky, artsy, a little magic realism.  One of the things I particularly remember when we watched it was the flash of recognition that hit me early in the film.  The film is about an action movie star trying to produce a play on Broadway.  In an early scene in the Broadway theater, a rehearsal, we have four people seated around a table drinking and as they begin to talk, I recognized dialogue from a Raymond Carver short story.  Sure enough, the film “Birdman” was about this action movie star trying to bring a Raymond Carver short story to the stage.  By the way, I can play a mean game of trivia.

The particular Raymond Carver story the film uses is a story entitled “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”  Two couples, both divorced and re-married are sitting around a table, drinking gin and talking about love.  What is particularly memorable about the story is that one of the women talks about her abusive former partner, and then says, “Say what you want to, but I know what it was.  It may sound crazy to you, but it’s true just the same…. Sometimes he may have acted crazy.  Okay.  But he loved me.”  It is a haunting short story, and the author Raymond Carver was considered a master of the form.

Carver also wrote poetry, and some of his poetry is about love.  I have been particularly moved by a poem he wrote simply called “Late Fragment.”  I have shared it a few times at funeral services.  We used it in an Invitation to Worship in Advent.

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

            Imagine yourself at the end of life, posing that question – “Did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?”  The “even so” reminds us that life will have its ups and downs, its disappointments and heartbreaks as well as its wonder, beauty and joy.  Through it all, what might you say you wanted most?  Carver’s answer strikes a deep chord, I think.  Don’t we all want to call ourselves beloved, to feel ourselves beloved on the earth, to know deep in our flesh and our bone that we are beloved, deeply loved?

            Now when all the people were baptized, and when  Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.  The focus here is certainly on Jesus, but being beloved by God, that statement is there for us as well.

            Don’t we all want to call ourselves beloved, to feel ourselves beloved on the earth, to know deep in our flesh and our bone that we are beloved, deeply loved?  Years ago the psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote, “All other things being equal, psychological health comes from being loved rather than from being deprived of love” (Motivation and Personality, Second Edition, 186).  Maslow’s work reminds us of the deep needs we have for love, for knowing we are loved, for feeling that we are loved – a need as deep, though different, from our need for bread and safety.

            The heart of the good news of the Christian faith is that we are beloved, that we are loved by God, by the God of Jesus in and through Jesus.  Just as Jesus heard the Spirit telling him that he was beloved, so God’s Spirit wants to speak to each of us those same words – “You are Beloved.”

            The words Isaiah over two thousand years ago to a people in exile, are words God’s Spirit would speak to us today.  I have called you by name, you are mine….  You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.

            Hear the good news today, you are loved, you are beloved.  You can call yourself “Beloved.”  You can feel yourself beloved on the earth.

            To know that we are loved does not preclude the possibilities for or need for change in our lives.  We are loved, and we still mess up sometimes.  We are loved and there is still room to grow.  After last Sunday’s sermon Geoff Bell posted this wonderful takeoff of the Serenity Prayer on my Facebook page:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change,

The courage to change the one I can,

And the wisdom to know it’s me.

I find that much more helpful than the other Serenity Prayer takeoff I’ve seen:

God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,

The good fortune to run into the ones I do,

And the eyesight to know the difference.

            God give me the courage to change the person I can change and the wisdom to know that it’s me.  Growth continues. Change is possible and needed.  Yet, it begins in being beloved.  It begins in radical acceptance, in knowing that we are loved by God.

            This good news also does not preclude God’s call for us to be part of God’s work to change the world.  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his recent book Not In God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence, writes, “It is our task to be a blessing to the world” (5).  It is our task to be a blessing to the world.  It is good to know we are beloved, necessary to know that we are beloved.  Yet this same God who calls us beloved invites us, calls us, to join in God’s work in making the world a place where belovedness is more real – making the world kinder, more just, more peaceful, more compassionate.  Still, it begins in being loved, in knowing we are loved by God.  Without that inner knowing, our work in the world can easily go astray.  I am reminded of the words of Michael Eigen: You can’t just work on institutional injustices without the actual people who are involved working on themselves, and you can’t just work on yourself without working on the injustices in society….  Without work in the trenches of our nature, we may wreck what we try to create. (Michael Eigen, Faith, 96, 7). 

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

            We can call ourselves beloved, feel ourselves beloved on the earth, because God in and through Jesus calls us beloved.  One constant reminder of our belovedness is the baptismal font.  This particular font comes from the old First Methodist Church building downtown.  When I first came here as the pastor, it was not here.  When we baptized, we brought a bowl of water to the front of the church.  When I first came here I also did not know of the tradition of carrying the baby through the church.  I think I owe Emily Sapyta a walk through the church, but she is about as tall as I am now, so that would be awkward!

            Anyway, this font was in the atrium holding a plant.  I saw it one day and asked about moving it into the sanctuary.  It is a bear to move – heavy, in three parts.  We moved it in here, and moved it once since, for tile replacement.  It gets in the way a little bit with the bells, but we are not going to move it, and that is o.k.

            God’s love for you is as solid as this baptismal font.  It is as anchored in the world as this font is anchored in this place.  Here, where we use water again and again to let children and adults know that they are loved by God.  May this be a constant reminder of God’s love.  Just as the smallest of those children gets wrapped in the arms of the pastor, so God continues to embrace each of us in love.  Here God offers love and forgiveness.  Here we pledge to each other to be a community of love and forgiveness.

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

You are.  Amen.