“I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.”
– William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act 4, Scene 1
I have seen Much Ado About Nothing many times, and just saw it again (twice!) while at the American Players Theater in Spring Green, Wisconsin last week. I make the pilgrimage to see plays in the woods of southwest Wisconsin every September because it literally fills my bucket for the year (this year I saw 7 plays in 5 days, woo hoo). I think and feel differently about relationships, communication, what it means to be human, how good it is to laugh, how people are complicated and can emotionally turn on a dime, how people are so simple and predictable that a play written 425 years ago still captures misunderstanding, protection, longing and love.
Much like what happens when I approach scripture with openness and curiosity, even texts I’ve encountered many times, I am surprised by Shakespeare and, each year, give my attention to something I have never noticed before. I love this opportunity…and I love the way stories – tragedies, comedies – on the stage and in the gospels can transform me and open me to consider the experience of someone else, with empathy and maybe even a new kind of softness. I want to change, still, and I want to be whole. Art and beauty, and stories that are true, often help me get there.
In the gospel this Sunday, Jesus hears his disciples’ pedestrian concerns and pulls their attention back to authentic purpose, telling them that we will all be “salted with fire”…fire purifies and refines us, salt preserves goodness and pulls up the actual flavor of a thing. I want to ask each of you, dear Grace Church, what do you love with so much of your heart? How does that love refine you, preserve goodness and pull up authenticity from you and others? How does knowing you are “salted with fire” cause you to expand, to grow, to change into a more loving person for the greater glory of God?
In a verse by the Jesuit Joseph Whelan, I learned when I was young that:
Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.
What great questions for discernment, no?
What do you love? Who do you love? Why do you love it? What difference does it make? How have you let it “decide everything” in your life?
What about the story of the person of Jesus are you in love with? How do you stay in love with Jesus, even when the church or the people in it disappoint you or drive you nuts? What is it that shows you that God is still very much in love with you?
Lately I am considering how falling in love with Jesus, and the messy band of followers that have become churches in the wake of his resurrection, has decided so much in my life. I don’t always like Jesus, but I think I love him still, and this relationship does continue to decide what will get me out of bed in the morning. I start to see how everything I love is a gift from the great mysterious heart of God, the God who decided to be God-with-us in the person of Jesus in time. The God who is with us, still.
I see those of you leading the efforts for Sustaining Grace putting your hearts into preserving not just the buildings at Grace but the container of who we are, and what we have been given here, because…well, because you love it. You know it has loved you. You have let it break your heart and amaze you with joy and gratitude over time and you will give your own time and treasure to this place, to this people, whom you love.
Really, nothing is more practical than finding God and falling in love in an absolute final way. This is a love that has delivered beauty and drama to us all, made space in our hearts for hope even when hoping seems foolish, allows us to continue to reach for God and for each other when things are easy and when they are hard. What a blessed burden it is to fall in love, and stay in love, and watch it decide everything.
Honestly, what else is there?
Sarah Christopher
Associate Pastor
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