Hello on the first day of September,
As I look out my window, there is one particular tree that has begun its yearly transformation from a rich vibrant green to the colors of the impending autumn palate – something that always astounds us as humans. It is but one more reason I find the coming season so wonderful. The morning fog, blanketing the Susquehanna River and beyond as well as the need for morning wipers, perhaps some heat in the defrost, is a poignant reminder that a growing season is almost completed and harvest is on the doorstep. And yet the sun will break through, creating warm and comfortable afternoons to remind us that even in a 24 hour period there is so much contrast. From Apple pie and cider to the pumpkin spice lattes, even our pallets change. Road trips to chase the autumn colors, attending harvest festivals, and little children planning their Halloween costumes remind us that yet another year is rapidly coming to a close.
As I am noted before, it is my favorite time of year. I am quite sure that is connected to education, to the sort of oxymoron of seeing the fall as the beginning of a year versus what I just noted that it’s simultaneously a reminder that something is ending. Recently, in a specific circumstance, a close friend and long-time confidant noted that I need to demonstrate, as well as speak about, how I love something (or someone) from my heart. And I admit I have that sort of love in this particular situation, but I must also admit, it’s not something that I actually seem to portray easily even though it is deeply seated in who I am. Or at least I believe that to be the case. However, what does it mean to love someone that deeply? Does such a love radiate from us in a visual manner, that it is instantly noticeable? Is it possible that the depth of it is so profound that it is just accepted as a given, and it perhaps is the foundational piece of all a person does? I’ve always been a person who steps back and observes, ponders, and initially says little or nothing, and that is about most things. That has become more pronounced as I’ve aged, and I believe in a number of ways I’m more introverted. I think such a demeanor has allowed me to listen more carefully, more intentionally.
As I write this morning, many students are back with the first week of school completed, daily schedules falling into place, and freshmen in college still trying to come to terms with the jump in levels from their high school requirements to the syllabi they are now staring at. The reality of life hits us in different ways and at different moments. As I work through this week, there are moments where life will possibly come a bit full-circle. As I’ve noted at a number of times, I’ve seldom known where everything will go, or how I might get from one place to another, but it seems there’s a plan for me in spite of myself. Sometimes those plans are prompted or even instigated by the actions of others. For instance, I would have never heard of Bloomsburg as a place or university without my friend and colleague, a Stout colleague who arrived here before me. Now I’ve spent 1/4 of my life in this town. When I left the clergy roster in the Spring of 1998, it was one of the darker times of my life. From emergency surgery to my father passing away, from learning how my sister had mismanaged things with my father to my own struggles in a marriage, many of my own frailties would result in so many changes in my life, from location to status, from working toward one thing to finding another. And yet within the seemingly impossible survival, there were things, people, and someone (something) more powerful, profound.
From my older cousins, to whom I am still grateful even though they have passed, from the job in an area I knew nothing about, which would sustain me over the next two years until I returned to graduate school, and a seminary colleague who never gave up on me, though they would certainly admonish me when necessary, I have received, I have witnessed, and I have experienced love that sustained me, supported me, and provided me the sustenance we need to not only survive, but to thrive. In those moments, through those incidences, and from those individuals I experienced love for me that comes from the heart. It illustrates for me the truth of the First Commandment, the command that we have received ourselves that you will love the Lord, your God with all your heart and soul and mind and your neighbor as yourself. That is the love of a Savior at its purest. It is the reality of Luther’s Law/Gospel dialectic that shows us both how to live in a world that requires the law because of our human limitation while simultaneously reminding of the divine reassurance that Jesus does love us; that God is love. Our reassurance of God’s love, of God’s grace is based on what God does and not what we do. This is not a works righteousness. When I was in seminary, one of my confessions professors, and I have noted this before, Gerhard Forde, wrote, “Confessionally speaking, the answer to the question what must I do to be saved? is nothing.” He continues in his text with the following, and I can still hear his somewhat quiet, some might argue monotone, voice saying this: “Shut up and listen for once in your life” (Justification: A Matter of Death and Life). That is how remarkable the love of God is. When it comes to our life here, we have the law, but when it comes to eternity, the love of God is so boundless that salvation is already taken care of. That is love. That is the love that Jesus demonstrates, and he commands we do the same. That is loving from the heart. We begin to understand the love of Jesus through the way we receive and attempt to emulate what he has said and done. The other of my confessions professions, the Rev. Dr. James Nestigen, also an incredible Luther scholar notes how Luther’s Small Catechism is one of the ways we hand over faith (what he called “handing over the goods”) from one to the other. It is the understanding of what I came to understand for me to be the most significant element of the entire Small Catechism. Luther writes about the Third Article, “I believe I cannot by my own effort or understanding believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him, but the Holy Spirit calls me by the Gospel, enlightens me with his gifts, sanctifies and keeps me in the true faith.” That is the profound example as well as our experience of the love of Christ. If we are called (gathered together if you will), through his word and sacraments we are enlightened (offered knowledge of God’s love), and finally, we are sanctified (made holy, even in our sinfulness) and kept (not merely left flailing) in true faith. It is all we need. And it is offered. That again is love.
So what are we do understand about love in our world that is controlled by the law; how do we take the love of God, which is freely given to us, that is unconditional, and manage it in a conditional world? That is what I find myself pondering. Again, I will turn to Luther, and while his explanations of the Ten Commandments remind us how terribly we fail to kept them, it is the Eighth Commandment I find most profound as well as difficult, but it is instructive. To work diligently to never lie, betray, slander or hurt another’s reputation is not easy . . . but Luther takes it even further (and farther). We are to defend them, speak well of them, and explain everything in the kindest of terms. Seriously?? Dang!! That is really difficult, and not something we are prone to do, but that is what it means to love them with the love of Christ. During the actual semester we were sent home as COVID was overtaking our thoughts and actions (March of 2020), I was teaching a Rhetoric class, and my students brought a story to class about a couple who had been married for 71 years, and they had passed away six hours from the other. The students were stunned by this story. First, that people could be married that long, and second, that they had actually died within hours of the other. So, they asked me what I thought. I told them I was not the person to asked because both of my marriages ended in divorce, but then I noted there is an actual physiologic syndrome called Broken-Heart Syndrome. It is referred to as Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy. And it can be caused by extreme emotional stress, and it can be remedied or it can be fatal. Second, I said facetiously, “As far as being married 71 years, they were six [then they got married].” After I admitted I was kidding, I said the following, “On the morning when you wake up and you do not want to see them, hear them, speak with them, even think of them – on that morning you really do not like them and you cannot imagine what you must have been thinking to want to marry them or spend your life with them, in fact, you detest everything about them, can you remember in that moment you still love them?” I paused and then said, “If you can, then you might make it.” It is a depth of loving that knows no bounds and makes no sense. If we can love then, I believe it is the actual love of the heart, and then a broken-heart makes perfect sense. You cannot imagine life without them. I do believe that is the kind of love the God of love wishes for us, but it is so difficult to find, or more likely create.
As I ponder life, I realize there are times I believed I loved in such a way, and I believe I desired to love in such a way, and yet have I? Am I capable of such an unconditional life-changing love? It is definitely one thing to ponder and think of it, even thinking of it critically and honestly, but what makes us capable of it? That is something I am still pondering. Is it because I desire to experience such a love? Is it because I hope that such a possibility is still there? Again, I am unsure, but examining the love of a Creator and seeing how unconditional I believe it is provides a sense of solace, a sense of hope that perhaps such a thing exists. As I move through what has been an eventful, and important week, I am called in multiple ways to consider possibilities. When I consider things that are part of my Luther heritage that are significant, one of the things that always comes to the fore is Lutheran hymnody and chorale music. I leave you with this, which are two of the best renditions of this incredible hymn. One, of course, would have to be a Lutheran college choir. I am still grateful to Dr. Paul Neve, of Dana College for my chance to sing with his choirs.
Thank you always for reading.
Michael
thewritingprofessor55 