God’s Greatest Gift
20 January 2022
Epiphany 7C
The Rev. Anthony Hutchinson, SPC, Ph.D.
Genesis 45:3-11, 15; 1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50; Luke 6:27-38; Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42
God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
Today’s lessons all talk about relationships, how we define ourselves in them, and how ultimately right relationships are the glory of God.
The collect for the day reads:
“O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you. Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”
The Hebrew scripture lesson is the climax of the story of Joseph and his brothers: how he forgives them for trying to kill him and then selling him into slavery, and has to dissemble and wait patiently to see whether they have changed enough for him to build a relationship with them. In today’s reading, he reveals all to them because he has realized based on overhearing their conversations that they regret their past and want things right in the future. The Psalm tells us to have a right heart and all else will follow: don’t be envious or jealous, or fearful, of the wicked. Trust in God frees you to love and be equitable with those who would be your enemies. “Leave rage alone. Do not judge,” it says. The epistle, part of St. Paul’s defense of faith in the resurrection of Jesus, says that the conflict between the imperfect in the world about us and the perfect in the world we hope for should not stand as an unbreachable wall, disallowing resurrection in principle: “what is sown corruptible become incorruptible; what begins in being subject to death ends in life never ending.” The Gospel has Jesus teaching about giving up self-absorbed and grasping ways to allow room for grace in our own lives as well as in the lives of others.
As much as we like to romanticize and idealize relationships and especially, love, these passages tell us that all of this is very messy, but true nevertheless. Brokenness in relationships and deficient love do not mean right relationships cannot exist in the real world, or that real love is somehow beyond us in the here and now. What is sown in corruption grows into incorruption, what is sown in death, grows into life.
And the heart of it is letting go of the things that encumber us, changing our hearts so we are not so focused on ourselves and what we want. As the Psalter says, “put your trust in God” and “You shall be given your heart’s desire.”
In the last couple of months I have become acutely aware of just how much our identity and sense of self is a social construction of us responding to those with whom we are in relationship. Just as I have a slightly different personality when I speak French, Chinese, or English, even so I am a slightly different Tony now that I am a widower and live alone. Many of the bits of myself that came from being in dialog with my beloved Elena are weaker now, reflecting the 47 years we had together but not gaining new breath and life with each day’s new interactions. A friend asked me if it was worth it, if we only are to end up finding ourselves alone in the end. I have to say most definitely YES. It is worth it, not the least because of our hope that truly meaningful relationships last beyond death.
Without love, the collect says, we are counted dead to God. Love truly is the greatest gift. Thanks be to God.
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