e-vo for week of October 3

Dear e-votees-

Life is meant to be lived in community. God desires us to live into rich and healthy and fulfilling relationships. The assigned texts for this Sunday of the revised common lectionary have themes of relationship between people and relationship between people and God. In all these things we do no better than to look to Jesus for examples of how to do this well.

A word to RLC members who have been receiving e-vos: As I complete this call at Resurrection on October 14 I will be culling RLC members from the distribution list. October 10 will be the last Wednesday that I will be sending an e-vo to you. It is important to make the cleanest and healthiest break possible when a pastor leaves so that all can move on to the next season to which God is leading them. It has been a joy to serve as one of your pastors. Godspeed as you press into the next steps of your long, storied and faithful journey.

Peace,
Karl

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18 Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner." 19 So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken." 24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Genesis 2:18-24, NRSV

It is not good for us to be alone.

Yet, we live in a culture that glorifies the strong, silent, self-sufficient types: think Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino or many of his roles in westerns, think most of the incarnations of James Bond, think Mad Max or Dirty Harry or most of John Wayne’s characters. The model is held up that we should be able to do it all by ourselves, without help, without partners, without support, without desiring things to be different. So many of us shun help. We distrust motives of those getting too close. We work like it all depends on us and drive up stress and heart attacks and depression and loneliness. We have bought into the lie.

And the Lord God looks at us and again says “It is not good for humanity to be alone”. Jesus came to make community with the lonely, the broken, the outcast, the self-righteous, the wealthy, the maimed, the seemingly in perfect health and everyone else—the world in all its forms and characters. He came to bring help and to be a partner. He came to give company and solace and support and encouragement. He came to show us the need for the cross and then to take his place on the cross in our stead. Jesus became bone of our bones, flesh of our flesh. So we are called to leave the broken ways in which the world tries to raise us and to become one with Jesus. That was his lingering prayer for us all in John 17.

There are all sorts of images of brides, bridegrooms, weddings and feasts in the Bible that show us some of the aspects of God’s coming and already kingdom. Mostly, I think, we can take comfort that God seeks the church like husbands and wives seek each other—in supportive love, in healing steadfastness and in ever-increasing joy. To be sure human marriages often miss the mark of the hopeful vows but when we get close there is a holy glimpse of what God is creating in us and for us unto eternity. Thanks be to God.


God, forgive our lonely and solitary ways. We choose safe over good (in the words of Mr. Beaver); we choose stubborn over humble; we choose stoic over sometimes ham-handed loving overtures. Break our stony hearts that we might love one another. Break our stony hearts that we might love you. Bring Jesus’ lingering prayer to bear in our broken ways. Amen.