Creator, we give you thanks for all you are and all you bring to us for our visit within your creation. In Jesus, you place the Gospel in the center of this sacred circle through which all of creation is related. You show us the way to live a generous and compassionate life. Give us your strength to live together with respect and commitment as we grow in your spirit, for you are God, now and forever, Amen. (A Gathering Prayer (from a Disciple’s Prayer Book))
In this beautiful space, we gather to celebrate God’s bountiful creation.
In the Gospel today, Jesus says to us, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”
Hate. Does Jesus really mean this?
Jesus who proclaimed the Golden Rule, who said we are to love God with our whole being and to love our neighbors as ourselves, who told a story of a Good Samaritan, really wants us to hate?
Jesus is shocking us! I think what Jesus is getting at isn’t about hate at all. For just as Jesus uses parables to shake things up, making a point by turning things upside down, so to with his call to hate others even ourselves. As he confronts the crowd, he does it so that all will understand the demands of what he is calling them to do. It is the cost of the discipleship. Take up your cross, give up those possessions that holds you back from honoring your Creator – Love God above all else.
Wendell Berry (poet, author, farmer) writes, “How must we live and work so as not to be estranged from God’s presence in his work and in all his creatures? The answer, we may say, is given in Jesus’ teaching about love.”
In the end it is not about hate, its about love, a love that we have for God that ultimately trumps all of our possessions, all of our selves. A love that will help heal our broken world, a love that God our potter will shapes our lives if we are willing to let God do it. A love of neighbor as much as we love ourselves.
So when we hear that voice of Christ in our souls calling us, asking us to live out of that faith, then we must as the prophet Isaiah once uttered, “Here am I, Lord, send me.”
And we do that by honoring what God has created…
And those who continue that work on Earth.
Joy Harjo poem – Honoring
Let us live out of honor and love.
Amen.
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