Today, we are exploring the vulnerability and weight of having abundance. 

Today, we are exploring the vulnerability and weight of having unmet needs. 

A presence that does not let go. A Holy Someone who has come near to us — who waits in the space between vulnerable people, hoping that peace might be shared across a table, but not forcing anything.

We worship a God who is, at their very core, a community of love who shares power in deference and delight, who listens and exalts rather than dominates. As followers of Jesus, we, too, are welcomed into this deep, collaborative communion. 

Today is Pentecost.  Today a new community is being birthed into being. Today, we experience a God who does NOT fit into our boxes, categories or the constraints of our binary male/ female language.
Today, God is wind.
Today, God is fire.
Today, God blows where they will. 
Today, our young people prophesy. 
Today, our elders dream dreams.
Today, we are caught off guard by the possibility of impossibility. 
Today, Big Love comes, places their hands on either side of our faces, and says, “So, what’s your new name? And what are you doing with your big, beautiful life?” *

*The bold words are two lines from a poem Maya Kostamo wrote and read on Sunday. Thank you, Maya, for this beautiful, generous offering.

What if the oneness that Jesus prays for us and for the world is a whole lot messier than we’ve often taken it to be? What if this oneness is not the tidy togetherness of a potted plant, but rather an ongoing, shapeshifting process of listening and revealing, giving and receiving, as we seek to inhabit the position of guest and neighbour in places that aren’t our own, those that we come into? 

“What does love look like now?”

We’ve been asking this question while moving through the liturgical calendar this year. The lectionary passage for this past Sunday is found in John 13, the account of Jesus’ last supper with the disciples. The chapter shows that Divine Love in this text looks like One who serves, speaks truth, shows compassion, and builds community.

After asking “What does love look like now?” is the equally important question, “Will I choose love?” ie. Will I exercise my own moral agency, at this moment, by choosing love?

As we come to God and to each other, celebrating the love we have managed to share, naming and taking responsibility for our mistakes, asking for forgiveness, and realigning our lives back to Love, we are amplifying love. Even our mistakes can be a place where we choose love.

In this passage, people come to Jesus. They don’t know if he is the messiah, and they want proof so they can get their head around Jesus. “Tell us who you are!”

Jesus' response points to a different kind of knowing, not one based on a cerebral understanding but one based on the attachment of the heart: “My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them… life… no one will snatch them out of my hand.” 

Some of us have lost our mothers recently, and we are missing the secure attachment that our mothers gave us. Some of us did not have a secure attachment with our mothers and grieve a kind of love we did not have. Some people long to be mothered. Some people long to mother. 

Mother’s Day stirs up grief as well as gratitude. 

Into these longings, Jesus comes near to us. “I know you. I hear you. Come, know me. Come, attach yourself to me. Come let me mother you.” This is the embodied, heart-patterned knowing Jesus is offering us.

In John 21:1-19, Jesus gave Peter the invitation that would shape his life from that moment onwards:

“Do you love me, Peter? Then feed my sheep.”

Verbs, not nouns, drive the storyline forwards, yet is the presence of Jesus that provides the wild abundance. As we align our actions with the wisdom of Jesus, what wild abundant love might Jesus draw us into?

This Easter we are reading from Luke's gospel: we are witnessing—with the women—Christ's resurrection from the dead! Christ is alive, the Holy Spirit is at work, and the love of God is on the loose. And although we see death around us today, we proclaim that death will not have the last word!