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It’s spring! Flowers are blooming. Trees that were bare just weeks ago are filling with new leaves. Fuzzy ducklings toddle behind their parents. The sun feels warmer. If colors had scents, I imagine green would smell like sweet spring air and fresh cut grass.
The renewal of life that happens in spring reminds us that we are still in the Easter season. Our “Alleluia” refrain, which was so jubilant just five weeks ago, has already gotten a little less exuberant. Resurrection and new life have gotten to be old news. Reveling in spring this week is a good reminder that new life isn’t old news – it is THE news.
The GOOD news that God loves us and wants us and all of creation to thrive and grow. To sprout flowers and new leaves and shoots. To be transformed, just as we see the creation around us transforming.
Transformation. Being changed into something new. That’s the essence of the resurrection – that our old lives that are so focused on ourselves and our desires and our accomplishments can die and become alive again in God. Not through anything we do or say, but by the grace and love of God, made known to us in the loving embrace of Christian community. We are nurtured and transformed, always in the process of becoming something new, something more, something holy. It’s what we hope, why we show up to St. Hilda St. Patrick for worship or companionship, for fun or ministry together.
Transformation has an aspect of grace to it. The kind of grace that gently, and sometimes not so gently, confronts us with our prickly sides and loves us as we learn new ways of being human beings and being in community with one another.
Transformation requires giving up some of ourselves. When we welcome new people into our community, our identity as a community changes. We become something different because of the strengths and needs of the new people who come in. It’s like welcoming more people to the dinner table – we all have to move our chairs a bit and jostle and re-adjust to welcome someone new to sit next to us and join in the conversation. That same kind of adjustment happens when someone leaves, and we re-adjust again. Christian community is always changing, as a community and as people in community.
Whether we are the new people coming in and finding our seats at the table, the ones leaving an empty chair, or the ones staying, we find that the relationship we desire with one another and with God requires us to give up some of who we are. We might give up a preferred style of music, a particular pew location, or an expectation about our clergy. Our community is transformed by whomever joins us – and it is our call to love them as God loves them, as they are. To be transformed by them, even giving up part of ourselves, to know and love them, so that we too may be known and loved.
Christian community isn’t just about the personal transformations. As givers and receivers of God’s love to one another, Jesus’ invitation was to “Love one another” in a way that changes the world. We are here to transform the world, as well. The kingdom of God is not just for us, but for ALL of God’s creation.
We are not called to conform the world to us, to make the world look like us, but to transform the world and to be transformed by it. That same relationship which we have in community about being transformed and transforming one another, it is that same relationship mirrored when we go out into the world in love.
Transforming the world is not a task that we will accomplish in our lifetimes, which is one good reason to stay in Christian community – as a place where we find hope and strength to persevere in our witness of love. The witness that we bear in every small step that we take, every hand we extend in kindness and generosity.
We transform the world when we work and pray and advocate for justice for all of God’s creation. We transform the world when we create ways to show God’s love to the world. We transform the world when we love people just as they are, even though they don’t look like us, even if they live on the other side of the world, even when they may not worship the same form of God we do, and when we are told they are our enemies. We change the world when we love as God loves.
We are doing all of this right here at St. Hilda St. Patrick.
- This world transforming love looks like feeding hungry women and men, children and elders with hot food, a warm smile, and friendly conversation.
- It looks like a persistent dream to use our prime location to house and support our neighbors who live on the margins of self-sufficiency, so their lives can be transformed.
- It looks like welcoming our transgender siblings and their friends and allies to a service to remember members of their community who have died by violence.
- It looks like using our educated, privileged voices to draw attention to those invisible and voiceless people, whose stories maybe made the news on page 4, but whose lives are deeply affected by war, by natural disaster, or by violence.
That’s what transforming the world looks like. Are we doing it? Yes. Is there more to be done? Yes! Is God done with transforming us and using us to change the world? Definitely not!
Back at that table, Jesus ate with his disciples, with his friends, with the ones who had been there all along and those who just showed up that day. Jesus washed their feet, humbly recognizing the God-given dignity of every person at that table.
Jesus kept his message focused: Love one another! Love one another so much and in such a way that it will transform the world. In the process of learning how to love one another that much, you will yourselves be transformed. And because of that love, the world will recognize you as Jesus’ followers.
The transformation of the world through God’s love is a never-ending story. Resurrection and new life are not old and tired stories – they are THE story. Let’s go tell and live and become that story of life and hope and transformation that the world is waiting to hear.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
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