Monday, May 1, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Fortress of unity, clothed in springtime green
I am the good shepherd, and I know mine, and mine know me, and I will lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep not of this fold, and these also I must lead. There will be one flock.
Sunday morning we talked about unity. In John 17, Jesus prays for the unity of God with his disciples. In Ephesians 4 Paul claims for us one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, God, and Father of us all. Greg talked about how the humility and strength of Christian community allows our momentary selfishnesses to be submerged and eliminated in our communal kingdom of God. Philip Britts in 1948:
Against the multiple weapons of division, love constructs the fortress of unity. This, too, has its foundations way down in the practical things of daily life. Mine and thine are done away with, in material as in spiritual things. Property divides men, the haves from the have-nots-or-not-so-much. It is one of the first barriers that melts in the glow of love. But individual pride and self-respect are properties of the heart. They vanish too, in the realization that we are all weak men, and there is none good but God; that we are all brothers and one is our master, even Christ. We are no longer separated individuals, each with a slightly different “kingdom of God” within us. But we are all members of one body, with a common purpose and a common source of strength to follow it. Thus each shares with the other, goods and work and table, for everything belongs to the spirit of love. Each helps the other, and accepts help, for the victory is not unto us. There arises brotherhood, as the true calling of man, as the fruit of the spirit of love, as the unity that establishes peace.
Many of us get a taste of this with our families, and some drink more deeply in looking into the eyes even of strangers, as God guides. “There is always this insistence of Jesus upon deeds, not words. Even the cup of water to the least of these my brethren.” What do you need? Can I hear you, help you, hug you?
As the deer pant for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and behold his face?
This is not the unity of war, which requires the wanton gathering of thousands on two opposing sides who then hammer on each other not to lose. Britts says, “It is the significance of the savor of the salt. The vital thing is not the bulk, but that the salt be salt.”
Looking out the window during his renegade celebration of spring on a train to Peekskill, New York beside the Hudson River, Garrison Keillor can’t help but rhyme his prose, as he too rejoices in one Lord, one faith, one hope:
A person walks outdoors and feels the equinox, and the juice rises and life gets loose, the kiddos skip and hop across the blacktop to hip-hop and bebop and shrieks of delight, caged birds taking flight. People sneeze, releasing their anxieties in the syncopation of creation. Enough cold rain and gloom, now we resume the journal of the vernal. Henry Hudson thought he’d shine a light and find a line to China but who needs to see Beijing, our destination’s here, it’s you, my dear, and spring.
So here we are, too, on the first day of May, listening for rhythms of grace not just beside us but inside, God breathing in and out, in and out, knowing All is Well.
The Holy Spirit fell upon them as it had upon us at the beginning, and I remembered the word of the Lord.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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