(Message given at Wayside Friends Church on May 15, 2022)
One of the joys of getting older is time.
Time to see more and more of what is out there in our beautifully diverse world. Time to read more perspectives and experience more things; the good, the beautiful, the mundane, the painful, and the horrifying.
One of the joys of getting older is seeing, feeling, and knowing that all wisdom and goodness and insight are connected. The same wisdom calls out to us through so many faces and voices!
Looking at our unjust world, looking at oppression and racism and patriarchy—I find myself longing for the energy to fight and transform it. I think all of us battle often with fatigue, sometimes bordering on hopelessness. Because it is a tiring and wearying road, as I’ve felt locally this week in my world in the school district, as we all feel with another deadly expression of white supremacy yesterday.
Over the last couple of months some of us have been in two different book groups—one tackling racism and one patriarchy.
I found each of them incredibly helpful, and also found they created a sense of longing in me.
Osheta Moore as a Black woman centers her Dear White Peacemakers book around the theme of belovedness, and she amazingly and consistently reminds us as white people of our belovedness, with a grace and energy I envy.
Beth Allison Barr in The Making of Biblical Womanhood meticulously documents all the ways the church has built hierarchy and oppression into our beliefs about God and humanity.
Elizabeth had the idea to connect these books with the Trinity. Going through Holy Week and Easter, remembering how it was the whole Trinity bringing hope to all of us, destroying evil’s power…how do these books connect with who God really is? Or put another way—how does more deeply understanding the nature of the Trinity help us find the energy and strength to battle oppression in all its forms?
It got me to thinking about energy, and about how most of our energy sources are consumable.
We burn coal until it’s consumed, use oil until it’s gone; even renewable sources like hydroelectric power take water away from salmon, and is itself at risk in drought.
The nuclear power we’ve figured out how to harness is all about breaking complex atoms into smaller parts, again a consuming model—using the fuel up and causing harmful radioactive waste at the same time.
But the dream of nuclear fusion is a completely different idea.
Rather than consumable, it’s regenerative. Small elements like hydrogen or helium come together and form a bigger compound, and it just keeps feeding itself while it releases energy. That’s what feeds our sun; nuclear fusion IS the heart of all the stars—and it’s a completely different experience than the consumable energies we are used to. As things come together, it’s a regenerative power source.
Belovedness, value and worth are so often tied in our world (even the world of the church) to consumable mindsets.
We see our belovedness and worth like a transaction, like a purchase, in a world with a scarcity of resources.
This unhealthy model creeps into our theology. When we have beliefs about Jesus that are transactional, it spreads out in some sneaky ways.
Often people say Jesus “bought” us. When we accept this view, sometimes our value as a community becomes centered around how we are “prized” by God and “close” to God, as opposed to those others who haven’t accepted the transaction.
Two things happen: we begin to define our own value by how we are different from and better than others, letting a hierarchy creep in. And then, because we see scarcity and consumable energy all around us in everything else, we start to see others as threats to OUR value, threats to OUR place close to God.
If YOU are beloved, maybe I’m not! If everyone has value, doesn’t that just dilute my own place in God’s world?
But what about a completely different picture?
What about fusion-like regenerative love, love that feeds on itself, growing as it is expressed over and over and over again in concrete actions?
Everywhere I look, I’m discovering that this is who God actually IS! This unstoppable, never-ending, feeding-on-itself, fusion-like love relationship IS the Trinity themself!
And it’s a love that cannot remain contained in the Trinity, cannot be limited only to God themself. This Divine Love must keep growing and creating love, creating energy, and…creating belovedness!
This is the wisdom that keeps shouting out to me the more places I look. I see it in the bible, in these medieval women I keep reading and mediating on, in Richard Rohr, in my own experience.
The energy, the life, the power, the flow of ALL of creation is centered in and bursts out of the Divine Relationship of love. And you and I are invited in! Not just to stand against the wall at some “it” party that then gives us social capital to impress others with. Not like a membership in a country club.
No! We are drawn into the fusion reactor, so that who we are gets joined in with God and all God’s people—a dynamic, alive, energizing fuel source to empower us, embolden us, embrace us. We receive a belovedness created AS God loves us, a belovedness that energizes US to create belovedness in others…to make the whole community of humanity our siblings and part of the Divine Inferno of Love.
This is why our understanding and view of God matters!
We need to get out of hierarchical, transactional, consumable views of God. We need ongoing energy, and continuing experiences of giving and receiving love. And I think this is found and rooted and overflowing from God’s very self.
This is why Wayside is not only about doing justice, but about centering everything around God, finding a strength (outside our own will power) to create belovedness—belovedness in ourselves, in each other, and even in people caught up in and perpetuating oppressive structures.
Let’s dig into this in the bible, shall we?
“I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message.”
John 17:20 (NLT)
Jesus is praying for us! Before I go on reading, have the picture of the fusion inferno of Love in your mind—Creator, Spirit, and Son, endlessly growing more unified and together and One in their love for each other. Picture that as you listen to the rest of this prayer, and pay attention to all the intertwining and unity Jesus is praying for us. Got it? Here we go:
“I pray that they will be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.”
John 17:21 (NLT)
There it is! We’re invited into Their very unity. But it’s a flow, a fusion of love, that moves in and through and over and around us. It changes us, and our relationships with each other!
“I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me. Father, I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am. Then they can see all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began!”
John 17:22-24 (NLT)
We say so much when we say that God IS love!
Love can’t exist on its own. It exists in relationship. God IS a relationship! Love is God’s nature, God’s being. Love unifies, love overflows, love delights in creating belovedness in another. It’s not a finite supply that gets used up, but rather the most regenerating force in all of creation.
When we think it’s a finite thing that is distributed (instead of a fusion-force that grows and creates), we mistakenly see it all “originating” in Creator God and being shared down to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Finite, consumable thinking forces us to see a hierarchy in God.
But the Trinity is mutual! It is flat!
There is no room for hierarchy because there is no need to think of a limited supply of love that has to start somewhere. Love burns, flows, glories, unifies, expands, and grows to create belovedness and worth in the other.
Divine Fusion-Flow Love powers and centers our entire universe, creating belovedness in us all, and making us family!
Listen to Hebrews 2:10-11 (NLT)
“God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory. And it was only right that he should make Jesus, through his suffering, a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation. So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters.”
Hebrews 2:10-11 (NLT)
WE are the ones God makes holy. WE have the same relationship with Creator God that Jesus does, because we are drawn into the fusion-flow of Love. WE are not just each others’ brothers and sisters, we are siblings with God!
WE are made beloved!
How can we accept and live into this truth, when day-by-day the world beats belovedness out of us? How can we, like God, create belovedness in others?
We must constantly fight the trap of thinking of belovedness as a status we either earn or have been given. It’s not a consumable thing that can be possessed or can go away.
How do I remember and feel and accept my belovedness? Well, by receiving love. By drinking it in, letting it wash over me, experiencing it in ongoing interactions.
We accept and live in our belovedness by letting the fusion-flow of Love that is God wash over us, and then we become a conduit as it creates belovedness in others.
Richard Rohr in his book The Divine Dance writes,
Jesus called this tapping into the vine—John 15: 5 (NLT)
“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit.”
John 15:5 (NLT)
This is the type of metaphor scripture uses—organic, not transactional. Living, not mechanical. Growth, not a “status.”
And then in verse 9:
“I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love.”
John 15:9 (NLT)
Do you see it again here? Are you starting to see it everywhere? The love that is God can’t be contained, cannot stop. It flows out unceasingly to love YOU. And me! And the whole world!
“Remain in my love,” abide in my love, live in my love, receive your wholeness and being and energy from bathing in God’s love!
This truth is everywhere!
Richard Rohr says:
And then there are the women, the medieval mystics who describe such a vibrant, intoxicating love relationship with God:
Oh how we have messed this up, in our whole world, in our churches.
All the oppression in our world (and in the church), all the systems that perpetuate racism and patriarchy and bigotry…it’s all because we have accepted love and value and worth as consumable and finite things instead of the relationship of fusion-flow that it is.
Because we have let ourselves believe that love and value and belovedness are limited commodities that need a source, we make a hierarchy out of the Trinity, making Creator God the giver of love—first to the other parts of the Trinity, and then trickling down to us.
This is no trickle down, but a flow around!
The bible, and the mystics, and I even dare to say our own living experiences with God whisper another mode of living, beyond hierarchy and a small pie of worthiness to fight over!
The Trinity itself is relational and flat, not hierarchical and transactional. The Godhead takes joy in glorifying the other Persons of the Trinity, and in glorifying us. This flat, relational God becomes the model for human relationships, and undermines the hierarchy that must exist for racism, patriarchy, and bigotry to thrive.
And the fusion-flow of Love that is God’s very being flows and grows in us, working to undermine every oppressive injustice in this broken world.
So where do we find strength and hope when oppression is winning?
What do we do to keep up the good fight? How do we dare to hope that evil will not always and forever conquer?
Rohr says:
“Being part of this cosmic dance can only be known experientially. That’s why I teach centering prayer and contemplation, and really all intelligent religious rituals and practices: to lead you to a place of nakedness and vulnerability where your ego identity falls away, where your explanations don’t mean anything, where your superiority doesn’t matter.”
The Divine Dance, p. 110
The somewhat counter-intuitive answer is to choose to go deeper into the flow. I am not going to be able to protest enough, stand strong enough, be wise and convincing enough to dismantle racism and destroy the patriarchy.
But experiencing my own belovedness as I let God’s being love me (as God’s nature cannot help but do)…receiving and drinking in God’s love for me is by no means a selfish act. It is empowerment! It is transformative, for me and for all of society!
I’m not talking about “charging up” in a ten minute quiet time to go fight the battles. Jesus and Mechthild and Hildegard and Catherine and Richard and so many others are talking about being transformed to our core by choosing day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute to join the Fusion-Flow of Love that energizes all of creation!
Unless and until we regularly receive the Divine Fusion-Flow of Love…
Unless and until we believe to our core that love grows as we give it…
Unless and until we put to death the insidious lie that value and belovedness and worth are consumable and limited commodities…
Unless and until we practice remaining and abiding in the Vine, we will internalize and perpetuate oppression—because we will try to hoard love for ourselves and for those like us.
Bathe in God! Rest in God! Catch fire in God! Turn to God.
May we dare to trust, dare to risk trying new ways to experience the love of God. May we dive in each and every day and find and feel our own belovedness. And may that experience energize us to create belovedness in others and undermine the selfish fear of “not enough” that drives oppression.
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