The Rev. Canon Kimberly
Reinholz
May 10, 2015
Cathedral Church of the Nativity
May 10, 2015
Cathedral Church of the Nativity
John
15: 9-17
Helen Fisher an
internationally recognized anthropologist who has studied the evolution of
human emotions, especially the notion of romantic love, has recorded a number
of TED talks, and acts as the chief scientific advisor for Match.com. In her 2008 “The brain in love” she concludes
by saying that love is deeply embedded in our brains, but our challenge is
understanding one another.
She hypothesizes that
women and men attain intimacy differently.
Women become intimate from face to face contact. We practice what is called the “anchoring
gaze” when we talk. She believes that it
has developed over millions of years “of holding
that baby in front of your face,
cajoling it, reprimanding it, educating it with words.”
On the other hand men tend to get intimacy from side-by-side interaction. Which she posits comes from millions of years of hiding in wait stalking prey in the bush, looking straight ahead trying to ambush wildlife for food, “for millions of years, men faced their enemies, they sat side-by-side with friends.”
When I first watched Fisher’s Ted Talk, my gut reaction was, well duh. That makes sense, of course men and women process the world differently. That’s nothing new, right? Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.
On the other hand men tend to get intimacy from side-by-side interaction. Which she posits comes from millions of years of hiding in wait stalking prey in the bush, looking straight ahead trying to ambush wildlife for food, “for millions of years, men faced their enemies, they sat side-by-side with friends.”
When I first watched Fisher’s Ted Talk, my gut reaction was, well duh. That makes sense, of course men and women process the world differently. That’s nothing new, right? Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.
But as I read and
re-read the Gospel for this week and considered the Love of God in the light of
the secular observance today of Mother’s Day, I found myself wondering. What if…
What if when we read Genesis we believed it to be true and we lived our lives as if it were true, that God so loved the world that we were created male and female in God’s image. That indeed we are not created as species who are alien to one another, but instead we are masculine and feminine two sides of the same coin and who we are, and how we love is actually a reflection of God’s love for each of us. That we are chosen by God to be beloved, not because of anything we have done, can do, or will do, but because we are.
What if as God’s beloved, we are called to live into a complete intimacy with God.
What if we are invited into a relationship with God as a child to a parent, or a student to a teacher? What if our relationship with God can at times be like that of a child in elementary school—one who absorbs knowledge, and recites it but does not necessarily have a personal relationship with the instructor? What if our face-to-face relationship with God begins with us understanding God as the ultimate authority, a being with whom we have seemingly nothing in common.
We all remember that jarring moment when we saw an elementary school teacher outside of school for the first time and realized that he or she was not only a teacher but a person too. Similarly, when we first encounter God, it is as the all knowing, all seeing, all powerful otherness, and this Other feels completely different than us. It takes a drastic change in circumstances for this relationship to change, to a relationship more like what takes place in say medical school, law school, or an other postgraduate program, an environment where a student who has learned the essentials and is instructed by a professor but is closer to a peer or colleague than a subordinate. This is the kind of relationship which I feel is precipitated by the incarnation of Jesus, because God is no longer completely other we begin to believe that we have a more equal relationship with the divine. We can at once learn from and learn beside the Messiah, our savior.
What if after we experience the resurrection in our own lives we grow in faith and we begin to gain a greater understanding of God’s infinite love for us? We experience the infinite love of the resurrection through the intervention of the Holy Spirit. Who does this in many ways, but chiefly in our tradition, we expect to experience the Holy through our liturgies and sacraments. We experience and profess the promises of our fullest nature as Christians in baptism and confirmation, through communion and reconciliation we return again into relationships from which we have strayed. Through divine action, ultimately grace, we can begin to encounter God not as the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent completely other God, but as some one with whom we can sit side by side, as a friend.
Jesus himself demonstrates through out the Gospels this complete intimacy. The transition from master and servant to friends—is clearly the objective of his teaching today: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know that the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” Prior to the crucifixion and resurrection Jesus loved the disciples as a parent, a teacher, a master. He expects them to follow him, to mirror his actions, to do like he does, to follow the commandments without necessarily embodying them. However, after the resurrection and before the ascension Jesus shifts this feminine face to face instructive intimacy from master to servant to side by side intimacy that of friends. This masculine intimacy allows for the disciples to walk along side Jesus and to inwardly digest the commandment, to interpret what it means for themselves and in turn be able to teach others what observation of the commandments looks like.
In order to live in love, in order to abide in love, we need to not only learn to understand one another, but we need to learn how to be intimate with one another on our own terms, in order for our joy to be complete.
We need both the maternal, feminine, “face-to-face” love, as well as the paternal, masculine, “side-by-side” love, in order to know God’s love. We need to both experience this love, as well as, be agents who share these kinds of love. It is in the balance of the face-to-face and the side-by-side intimacy that we who follow Jesus Christ, we who know him, and we who proclaim him as the savior and redeemer of the world can obey the commandments. It is in the love of God—both Motherly and Fatherly love—that we come to know that we are chosen.
In this life we can only catch glimpses of the love of God through grace and through the intentional observation of the various forms of love which are observed in our culture: the love of a parent to child, a child to a parent, a teacher to a student, a student to a teacher, a pair of friends, a pair of lovers, a pair of enemies. Through out scripture we are told time and time again how to maintain proper relationships through the commandments. The essence of which focuses on the Love of God and the love of one another as the extension of that love.
So beloved, I invite you to love one another head on, as a mother cares for her children gazing into their eyes and helping them to recognize the nurturing love of God. Also beloved, I invite you to love one another as companions on the way, as a father cares for his children sitting along side raising one another up helping them to know the supportive love of God. Finally beloved, I invite you to love one another as God loves you, in whatever way you intimately know that without a doubt you are uniquely loved, you are uniquely created, and you are uniquely chosen. Abide in this love, beloved, live into it, grow into it and know that you have done nothing to earn it, can do nothing to loose it, and all that God asks in return is that you teach others about this infinite merciful and gracious love, and be a companion to one another along the way.
Abide in love brothers and sisters, because by living into an equal and intimate relationship with God our joy will be complete.
What if when we read Genesis we believed it to be true and we lived our lives as if it were true, that God so loved the world that we were created male and female in God’s image. That indeed we are not created as species who are alien to one another, but instead we are masculine and feminine two sides of the same coin and who we are, and how we love is actually a reflection of God’s love for each of us. That we are chosen by God to be beloved, not because of anything we have done, can do, or will do, but because we are.
What if as God’s beloved, we are called to live into a complete intimacy with God.
What if we are invited into a relationship with God as a child to a parent, or a student to a teacher? What if our relationship with God can at times be like that of a child in elementary school—one who absorbs knowledge, and recites it but does not necessarily have a personal relationship with the instructor? What if our face-to-face relationship with God begins with us understanding God as the ultimate authority, a being with whom we have seemingly nothing in common.
We all remember that jarring moment when we saw an elementary school teacher outside of school for the first time and realized that he or she was not only a teacher but a person too. Similarly, when we first encounter God, it is as the all knowing, all seeing, all powerful otherness, and this Other feels completely different than us. It takes a drastic change in circumstances for this relationship to change, to a relationship more like what takes place in say medical school, law school, or an other postgraduate program, an environment where a student who has learned the essentials and is instructed by a professor but is closer to a peer or colleague than a subordinate. This is the kind of relationship which I feel is precipitated by the incarnation of Jesus, because God is no longer completely other we begin to believe that we have a more equal relationship with the divine. We can at once learn from and learn beside the Messiah, our savior.
What if after we experience the resurrection in our own lives we grow in faith and we begin to gain a greater understanding of God’s infinite love for us? We experience the infinite love of the resurrection through the intervention of the Holy Spirit. Who does this in many ways, but chiefly in our tradition, we expect to experience the Holy through our liturgies and sacraments. We experience and profess the promises of our fullest nature as Christians in baptism and confirmation, through communion and reconciliation we return again into relationships from which we have strayed. Through divine action, ultimately grace, we can begin to encounter God not as the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent completely other God, but as some one with whom we can sit side by side, as a friend.
Jesus himself demonstrates through out the Gospels this complete intimacy. The transition from master and servant to friends—is clearly the objective of his teaching today: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know that the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” Prior to the crucifixion and resurrection Jesus loved the disciples as a parent, a teacher, a master. He expects them to follow him, to mirror his actions, to do like he does, to follow the commandments without necessarily embodying them. However, after the resurrection and before the ascension Jesus shifts this feminine face to face instructive intimacy from master to servant to side by side intimacy that of friends. This masculine intimacy allows for the disciples to walk along side Jesus and to inwardly digest the commandment, to interpret what it means for themselves and in turn be able to teach others what observation of the commandments looks like.
In order to live in love, in order to abide in love, we need to not only learn to understand one another, but we need to learn how to be intimate with one another on our own terms, in order for our joy to be complete.
We need both the maternal, feminine, “face-to-face” love, as well as the paternal, masculine, “side-by-side” love, in order to know God’s love. We need to both experience this love, as well as, be agents who share these kinds of love. It is in the balance of the face-to-face and the side-by-side intimacy that we who follow Jesus Christ, we who know him, and we who proclaim him as the savior and redeemer of the world can obey the commandments. It is in the love of God—both Motherly and Fatherly love—that we come to know that we are chosen.
In this life we can only catch glimpses of the love of God through grace and through the intentional observation of the various forms of love which are observed in our culture: the love of a parent to child, a child to a parent, a teacher to a student, a student to a teacher, a pair of friends, a pair of lovers, a pair of enemies. Through out scripture we are told time and time again how to maintain proper relationships through the commandments. The essence of which focuses on the Love of God and the love of one another as the extension of that love.
So beloved, I invite you to love one another head on, as a mother cares for her children gazing into their eyes and helping them to recognize the nurturing love of God. Also beloved, I invite you to love one another as companions on the way, as a father cares for his children sitting along side raising one another up helping them to know the supportive love of God. Finally beloved, I invite you to love one another as God loves you, in whatever way you intimately know that without a doubt you are uniquely loved, you are uniquely created, and you are uniquely chosen. Abide in this love, beloved, live into it, grow into it and know that you have done nothing to earn it, can do nothing to loose it, and all that God asks in return is that you teach others about this infinite merciful and gracious love, and be a companion to one another along the way.
Abide in love brothers and sisters, because by living into an equal and intimate relationship with God our joy will be complete.
Amen
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