Inclusive Love
“Inclusive Love”
Second Sunday of Advent, Year C December 9, 2018
Malachi 3:1-4 Luke 3:1-6
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Pastor Andy Kennaly
The Modernist/Fundamentalist Controversy has been part of church history for decades if not centuries, depending on how far back you trace. The larger Church continues to struggle with different visions, assumptions, and faith perspectives that sometimes lay just below the surface and other times boil up into full blown controversies which often lead to schisms. I heard somewhere, what for me, has been helpful definitions trying to explain what a fundamentalist is and what the modernist is. (Steven Pressfield, see notes) This definition describes Fundamentalist as a view that looks back. In the past is where Eden is found, and perfection has fallen away due to sin and other failures. Restoring God’s vision of righteousness is possible if only people get back to observing the fundamentals. God’s people can be great again if only the influence of truth can spread, especially as people are introduced to and accept Jesus as Savior. God is calling us to be strong and faithful. Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, as spiritual battles rage and Satan seeks to deceive. Jesus is the Way as he leads us away from God’s judgment and wrath and back to everlasting righteousness.
The definition also describes Modernists, but it doesn’t use that term. Instead the word artist is used. Artists also recognize struggle and pain, and have a desire for God’s intentions to be fully realized. But artists look forward. Jesus is the Way as he leads us on the Path, as our calling to participation as co-creators with God brings into being something that has yet to be birthed and fully experienced. An Edenic vision is possible, but it lays ahead of us and Jesus teaches us how to do this work and what the costs involve as we are invited to participate in the struggle of life’s miracles. Evil is certainly real but has no lasting hold as the only power with eternity to it is love.
As this Controversy plays on, these definitions are limited and faulty, but they hint at a deeper unity in Jesus that seeks life’s faithfulness and trusts God’s providence. Yet there are qualitative flavors to each view. As fundamentalists, for example, tend to look back, this has a contracting effect where boundaries are drawn and differences are highlighted as the desire for purity of restoration creates distinctions which are judged as either fitting the idyllic vision or not. Any corruptions must be swept away. Artists, on the other hand, who tend to look forward, lean towards expansion as their vision embraces even things that may not belong at first glance as somehow fitting in to an inclusive culmination that depends on everything having its place in the process. Fundamentalists may use the word, “plan,” while artists would prefer the word, “purpose” when it comes to what God is doing and has for us.
This historic Modernist/Fundamentalist Controversy is at the heart of Church struggle, religious history, Gospel story, and prophetic proclamations. You can see it expressed in our own times and throughout our community as culture evolves, lurching its way into the future.
Salvation is one of those words that gets caught in the fray and in the season of Advent we’re plunged right into the middle of it as God’s call to Prepare rings out across the generations and the Jordan where John, son of Zechariah, proclaims “repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” He lifts up Isaiah’s vision calling for straight paths as
“Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
This is not optional material, using may or might or possibly could, but John says, “Shall” and “Every” and “All.” John is the son of a priest, Zechariah, yet this son has turned his back on the certainty of prestige, wealth, and power that comes with positions of priestly privilege on the Temple mount in Jerusalem. He’s crying out from the wilderness, out away from the very center assumed to be where God dwells on a hill in the Ark of the Covenant within the Holy of Holies. Yet in this Jordan realm, pinned with detail to a specific time and place, John’s voice cries out as God’s messenger preparing the way for the Lord to do God’s work on a grand scale.
Not only are hills made low and valleys filled, but Every is the word that qualifies. Thus the challenge and thus the rub as John keeps his head just a little longer.
Jerusalem is built on a hill that ascends to God’s place, exclusive in style. The High Priest even had a sky-walk of sorts to get, from what we might call, their gated community, to the church, untouched. The wealth and opulence of religious devotion wouldn’t risk becoming ritually unclean by bumping into people on the streets. Contrast this, with that other image of valleys, and as gravity leads you and raw sewage out the city gate, the low land collects outcasts, trash, and dead bodies of the poor left to decay. People with leprosy and other diseases begged scraps to survive on each day. Gehenna means “hell” and it’s a specific place, John knows. Level it all! Bring the mighty down and lift up the outcast. Concentrated wealth has no place in a kingdom vision from God. Abject despair will not last as the afflicted find comfort and the comfortable have their blinders removed, as God’s Presence is no longer exclusive to the privileged.
“Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low” is another way of saying we’re all on the same plane. With equal footing, all shall see inclusive love and unity. As crooked is made straight and “rough ways smooth” no obstacles obstruct connection as everything comes together on equal and sure footing. No bandits around the bend, no need to hide behind a corner; no fear involved as One. With “All flesh shall see,” John’s meddling’s complete as he topples exclusive claims.
Here we are on the Second Sunday of Advent and in anticipation of the birth of Jesus we light a candle symbolic of love. Yet the scriptures don’t mention either Jesus or love by name. They are talking about effects, the affect this birth will have as God’s plan takes place or God’s purpose unfolds. These scriptures show us that love is less a noun and more a verb. Not only that, but this verb, this energy and action, changes everything as salvation is enacted on a cosmic scale.
Inclusive love is another way of saying universal salvation. Many Christians do not believe that God has saved the world for they promote limited atonement of only those who have personalized Jesus at an individual level. All flesh is not only all people, but could include every living thing, which is in fact, everything. Even physicists know that energy is neither lost not destroyed, but simply changes form. So too, the Christ breathing into existence all things, is in all things, sustains and brings all things back into it’s Source. Without even saying it, John is proclaim God’s love in his own way as he comes into that line of prophetic witness that helps us see God’s reality, even now.
“Francis of Assisi understood that the entire circle of life had a Great Lover at the center. For Franciscan John Duns Scotus, before God is the divine Logos (rational pattern), God is Infinite and Absolute Friendship (Trinity), that is, Eternal Outpouring (Love). Love is the very nature of Being itself. God is not a being who occasionally decides to love. God is “the one in whom we live, move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). God is Being Itself, and by reason of the Trinity, Being operates as Infinite Love, emptying and out-pouring like an eternal water wheel—in one positive direction.” [1]
As Richard Rohr, another Franciscan comments on this, he says,
“Outpouring Love is the inherent shape of the universe, and only when we love do we fully and truthfully exist in this universe and move toward our full purpose. […] God’s purposes are social, cosmic, and universal, not just to hold together a small group of so-called insiders. Love is the very meaning of Creation.”
But even though Love is the theme of this Advent Sunday for us, let’s not stop there. Let’s come alongside John and in the unbounded wilderness proclaim that
“Because God loves, [God] wills that […] creation should also be infused by love. […] The incarnation […] is the whole purpose of creation. Christ is the masterpiece of love in the midst of a creation designed for love, not a divine plumber come to fix the mess of original sin. [1]
As Rohr says,
“In other words, many of us Christians settled for Plan B, or Jesus as a mere problem solver after we messed up. The Good News is that the Christ is Plan A from the very beginning, and Jesus came along much later to make it all visible, lovable, and attractive. Salvation is a historical, social, and universal notion, which is made very clear already by the Jewish prophets. But when we make Jesus very small, then the good news of salvation becomes very small too.” [1]
The light of Jesus sets us free. Love has effects, and affects everything. May we continue to grow into love which unites all things and includes all flesh as we participate in the miracle and joy of Incarnation through Christ. And may God be glorified, NOW, even as forever. Amen.
[1] Philippe Yates, “The Theology of John Duns Scotus,” http://www.franciscans.org.uk/userfiles/pdf/Franciscan%20January%202006/Articles/The%20Theology%20of%20John%20Duns%20Scotus.pdf
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), 182; and The Cosmic Christ, disc 2 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2009), CD, MP3 download.
All these references brought together by Richard Rohr, in his Daily Devotional via email or online, https://cac.org/outpouring-love-2018-12-05/
Definition of Fundamentalist and Artist is from a book:
The War of Art, Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield, Black Irish Entertainment Publisher, NY, 2002, pg. 33-37