Unitive Field of Love
“Unitive Field of Love”
Acts 16:16-34 John 17:20-26
Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year C, June 2, 2019
Pastor Andy Kennaly
Sandpoint, Idaho
The Facebook vortex is easy to get sucked into if you’re not careful. A vortex is like a whirlpool or eddy in a river, a circular current which draws anything within its influence toward itself, holding it there. I call it the Facebook vortex because if you go online to check something on Facebook, after a click here, a click there, a little video stream, a couple of pages, and before you know it an hour has gone by and you may or may not remember why you went on Facebook in the first place.
It is nice to keep track of friends from life’s journey in ways that may, otherwise, not take place. For example, this is now my ninth year in Sandpoint, which means many of the college-aged summer staff I used to hire at the camp in Minnesota (where I moved from) are now married and having children. A couple of camp counselors who fell in love and got married just had their first baby last week. On Facebook, I could see pictures and make comments, and I sent a message of congratulations. So even though there is a danger of getting caught in the Facebook vortex, one aspect of social media involves maintaining relationship.
What is at the core of relationship? What would compel me to send a digital note to former staffers at this important point in their lives? What inspires people to post pictures of new babies, weddings, or other events? Why do we even use the term “social” when we call it “social media?” What is at the core of the human need to notice and be noticed?
There is a connecting energy, and this is called Love. Love in the form of unity in a mutual giving and receiving is at the core of meaning’s source. Love truly defines what’s important in life, what has value beyond the monetary, and love fills all things with purpose.
The mind simply cannot comprehend the depth and breadth of dynamic love. Although our mind can participate in love, make decisions and have will power toward loving expressions and intent, love is most at home in the realm of the heart. Not that love is a gushy emotion and Valentine’s Day is the defining look to this; that’s only romantic love. Unconditional love, a larger, creative love, the Reality of love, and love as action rather than noun is much broader, deeper, and pervasive, more like the air we breath because everything is sustained by love as a field of energy. The mind and heart, united through contemplative practices, becomes a new operating system to allow this larger unified field of love to take hold in our lives.
A couple of years ago, Shawna and I went on a Sabbatical to Europe and in many places we took trains, buses, or simply walked. When you use systems like the underground Tube in London, or the train station in Berlin, or the buses in Dublin, it helps to see a map, laying out the grid, color coded, especially if you see the “You are here” emblem. Staying orientated by knowing where you are relative to where you want to go; this helps in the process of knowing how to get there. It takes practice to get familiar with any given system, but it is possible to learn if you remain open, curious, and humble when you recognize those times you’ve taken a wrong turn, missed your stop, or got off at the wrong place. Sometimes it’s actually the detours that have the most to reveal.
In terms of where we are right now in the Liturgical context, for the church calendar, we also have markers and colors and themes. The paraments are white to symbolize Christ’s resurrection and the season of Easter. Also, last Thursday was Ascension Day, 40 days after Easter remembering the Risen Christ ascending into the sky, beyond the clouds, becoming present to disciples in a new way. Next Sunday, we change to red as we celebrate Pentecost. Wearing the color red is symbolic of the Holy Spirit coming as tongues of fire to those first Apostles gathered in Jerusalem. In one sense, this can be interpreted as equipping the community of faith to share about Jesus around the world. In another sense, Pentecost is symbolic of the fact that through God’s Spirit there is only unity. Even though life is expressed in many unique ways, such as languages or cultures, these are no longer meant as barriers or divisions, especially if we claim love as the core of life.
In this context of transition between Easter and Pentecost, the scriptures present stories, share visions, and evoke prayer, all part of asking questions which the early church needs to wrestle with, as we do in our own context. Questions like, how are followers of Jesus to be? What defines the world after the life of Jesus? What really shapes a worldview in the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit? Where is true security actually found?
Last Sunday, I ended the sermon by saying,
“May we, like Paul, be responsive as God shares visions, even in ways that may surprise us. May God continue to speak to our hearts. May we take courage to respond to God’s vision of love and community by shaping our actions and responses in ways that bring healing and hope. In humility, may we explore and critique the many ways we invest our lives to show an authentic witness of trust in the greatness of God,”
and I went on to say,
“May our love for God through Christ continue to grow, so we experience unity as Jesus says, “we will come to them and make our home with them.”
Today Jesus shares a great prayer for the disciples and all who seek a vision of love and unity. He prays,
“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us…may they be one…as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be completely one…so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
It seems most people still assume they are separate from God, not good enough to be called divine, spiritual being in the image of God. Even if we do trust this reality, sometimes our ego-struggles become our go-to response to what life presents. We judge, categorize, defend, or get aggressive as anger and struggle can even create violence, even if only in restless thought, or a grumpy mood. We see in Acts, Paul and Silas are beaten by those trying to control. But all those measures, such as stripping, beating, imprisoning, even in the deepest and darkest cell, chained hand and foot; all these cannot contain loving Presence and humble joy. The Holy Spirit shapes reality, and God helps our heart learn to open. This does not promise to be an easy road, it’s a lifelong journey, and there are many detours and we can become disoriented or get sucked into one type of vortex or another.
But in a post-resurrection world, a post-Pentecost experience, once you know, you can’t not know. Unity, connection, oneness, love. These are gifts from God, hallmarks of relationship, and cornerstones of active interaction with the Living God. Once you know, in the sense of once you have experience, for example, that God is in all things, and all things are in God, then something like Earth Care takes on a whole new meaning, especially toward the more vulnerable participants of our world as we experience the Sixth Mass Extinction as part of global warming changing patterns of climate. Or another example is that once you know, in the sense of experience, that we have unique individual identities, but not distinct individual identities, it puts our ego in perspective, especially ego’s desire to feel separate and superior. Once we notice the Noticer, we can critique our own initial responses to strangers, for example, through a new measure of a deeper connection with others. Even though it may feel gratifying to label people, or write them off, or keep them away; at a deeper level we learn and are equipped to relinquish this ego desire and not play those games. We really need to learn this, otherwise we end up angry, wounded, and bitter, destroying ourselves and others. In Christ, we’re called beyond externalized faith or measures of meaning, beyond merit-badge religion, and through internal transformation, we become, and are aware of, living expressions of God’s love. This is, perhaps, one of the greatest meanings of salvation.
In the context of a consumer culture based on individualism, measuring worth on merit, and viewing resources (including people and other creatures) as expendable commodities, Western society continues to lose a shared sense of unity. But there is one place that in some sense provides a commons, shared experiences bringing people together. In the United States, it has to do with entertainment, like concerts or film, but especially sports.
Sports, on one hand are an exciting distraction to life’s difficult challenges. But sports also provides, in some ways, connection. Although its based on competition so it can only get you so far, up to a point, sporting events have a way of uniting crowds at an emotional level. With professional leagues organized around stadiums, gathering large crowds seems like a normal thing.
In Denver, Colorado, for example, the American Football team, the Denver Broncos plays at what’s been called many things, but currently is officially called, “Bronco Stadium at Mile High,” but most people call Mile High Stadium. That one venue has a capacity to seat 76,125 people! This is about half the population of Kootenai County to our south. If all the population of our Bonner and Boundary County to our north combined (55,000), it would still leave 20,000 vacant seats in that one stadium. For north Idaho, its harder to find that sense of society, and we get a worldview influenced by rugged individualism.
Each summer, we get a treat. The Festival at Sandpoint, one of our biggest events, focused on music entertainment, has a capacity of about 4,000 people per concert, which is half the town of Sandpoint’s population. So we get a sliver of a glimpse at how stadiums in cities seating tens upon tens of thousands of fans, capture a sense of community connection as people share experiences at levels deeper than simply the rational level.
God is the connection. God is the relationship. The context, of a competitive sporting game, a concert, a movie block buster – these all shift depending on the interest or the season. That which is deeper than shifting contexts or venues or levels of cultural evolution is the depth and source of life: love, rooted in the living Christ, breathing all things into being.
Our calling as Christians is to skim off the superficial, to not get sucked into the vortex and trapped by that which holds us down. In Christ we find the freedom to love, and through the Holy Spirit we find the source of a deeper unity which redefines value, worldview, and morality. But its more than finding; it is being given. Growing in faith, love, and unity is less something we do, and more something we are invited toward, as an invitation to an invitation. We are invited to invite God to change us from within, to allow love to shape us. Such awareness has the possibility to wake us up to that which we simply couldn’t see or experience before.
Jesus prays that we know love, and come to experience our oneness with God and each other, through Christ. Love is our destination. Love is our current location. You are here, held in God’s love. This is our true identity as unique creations and members of one another. As we share life and love and invited to deep joy and peace, may our awareness continue to grow as we live out the prayer of Christ’s heart. As God becomes vulnerable to share through humility, may the Living Christ awaken and illuminate us, NOW, even as forever. Amen.