The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
God loves us. Each and every one of us.
The readings today tell us this in a multitude of ways.
In James we are told that we are “a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures.”
“First fruits” was a term of art in ancient times – the first fruits were the finest, most perfect specimens of the harvest. The first born lambs, free of blemish, the first vegetables and fruits of the trees and vines, the first, most pure pressing of the olive oil – all of these were the first fruits that were presented at the temple as a sacrifice to God – the finest of creation for the creator of them all. And we people, says the author of James, are the first fruits, we are the most perfect of creation, presented back to God for his appreciation.
God created not only us in his image, but he created this world full of beautiful, wondrous things as our home, as our place to delight and be glad, and really, we shouldn’t need any more proof of God’s love for us than this world!
But, God also gave us free will and the ability to think for ourselves, and as soon as we were created, we started to out distance between ourselves and God, and in that space, evil grew.
We began to honor God with our lips, but not our hearts. We began to worship in vain, teaching human precepts as doctrine, and separate ourselves from God’s love through theft, murder, adultery, avarice, through wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, and slander, through the folly of pride.
We began to set up barriers between ourselves and our fellows, arguing over who was closer to God, who was more beloved, while insuring in our very arguments and judgments that we were each, in fact, farther out of reach of God’s healing embrace, and eventually we mastered that state of evil, of pride, of folly that we were warned against when ignored the command to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger…to rid ourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and instead to be doers of the word, not merely hearers who deceive themselves…”
And yet, while we still continue with our striving and our judging, our slander, our pride our evil – all the while, God watches over us, and God calls to us still, like a lover, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come…Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
