Seven centuries ago the Persian poet Hafiz wrote this:

            Out of a great need

            We are all holding hands and climbing.

            Not loving is letting go.

            Listen, the terrain around here is far too dangerous for that.

Indeed…the terrain around here, the world we inhabit, is far too dangerous to let go of one another.  Even when we stand no closer than 6 feet apart, we are in this life together and we need each other.  That has become abundantly clear in recent weeks.  We all have access to the Coronavirus and the suffering it creates, a suffering that bypasses race, gender, nationality, religion and social class.  We are, very literally, “in this together”, and there may be something here for us to learn.  Contemplative teacher Richard Rohr put it this way when he wrote earlier this week:

            We are in the midst of a highly teachable moment

            There’s no doubt that this period will be referred to for the rest of our lives.

            We have a chance (right now), to go deep and to go broad because

            globally, we are in this together.

            Great depth is being forced on us by great suffering, and great suffering

            always leads to great love.

We are in this together – not just the global pandemic – but in this life as well.  We are on this planet together, and if we could learn that lesson through the suffering of social distancing, through the suffering of disease and loss and economic instability and grief,

then perhaps we could begin to understand what the Bible means, what Jesus suggests, that we should lay down our lives for one another.

We may not be risking our physical lives for another, but we still lay them down in love

Whenever we live in community and work at the hard parts to be together and to stay together.  We lay down our lives in love when we intentionally take the back seat, letting someone else drive every once in a while.  We lay them down in love when we recognize the beauty of second violin, and give up trying to be the concertmaster every day, and when we don’t pick up our ball and go home at the first sign of disagreement, or at the expense of our neighbor who still wants to play.

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggeman suggests:

There is a way into the future of your life, because God is at work doing strange, wondrous things for you and in spite of you, and your job is to get your mind off your ways of need and control, to give your life over to God’s large, hidden way in your life.

When Brueggeman wrote those words as a devotion for the  third Tuesday in Lent, the world was different.  We were not practicing social distancing; we were not sheltering in place or isolating ourselves in a frantic race against disease, yet they sound like prophetic words for our ears today…

Your job is to get your mind off your ways of need and control and give your life over to God’s large, hidden way.

I believe God’s large, hidden way is the way of love; not just some sentimental claptrap kind of love.  Rather, the love of God – which Jesus models and 1 John’s letter promotes – is a sacrificial love. It is a stewarding kind of love that turns our often myopic vision outward to focus on someone other than just myself or yourself.  It is a love poured out without regard for the cost, a love that goes beyond ourselves, all the way to the world itself.

This is love that says it doesn’t matter if the glass is half empty or half full, because my glass (and yours) is always full enough to share.  It is love that knows there is no need to hoard our time, or our talents, or even our toilet paper!  One of our members sent me a photograph this week of love in action she came across, outside an elementary school this week.  It pictures a “free pantry”, offering various soaps and disinfectants and paper products, with a sign that says  “give what you can, take what you need…and if you need a delivery or something not here text XXXXXX”

This morning, the author of 1 John gives us what for him, at least, seems like an obvious conclusion:

            See what love God has given us, that we should be called children of God,

            And so we are…

As if to say why bother arguing about it?  Why waste time worrying about it?  Why not just live it… for we are God’s children NOW, right now – we don’t have to wait until we are perfect to claim our identity.  We are God’s children right now – we don’t have to wait until we have all the answers, or even until we know all the questions.  Right now – we don’t have to wait for the stock market to rebound, or the Coronavirus to subside;  we don’t have to wait for social distancing to end; we don’t have to wait until we can go out of our homes and back to our schools and our offices.  We are God’s children NOW.

Thinking of myself as a child, I immediately begin to imagine endless play, and one game in particular comes to mind – hide and seek.  You know that game; I’m sure you’ve played it.  You might even be busy playing it right now.  Robert Fulghum tells this story…

A man I know found out last year that he had terminal cancer.  He was a doctor, who knew about dying, and he didn’t want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him.  So he kept his cancer a secret.  And he died. 

Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody…but privately, his family and friends were furious that he didn’t need them and didn’t trust their strength.  They were deeply hurt that he didn’t let them say goodbye.

This man was playing a game of hide and seek where he simply hid too well.  Getting found would have kept him in the game.

Hide-and-seek is a game we play at any age.  You want to hide but you also know you need to be found.  You are embarrassed or ashamed about some failure or foible, some fault real or imagined.  You are lonely or afraid about what tomorrow might bring.  Maybe you’re not sure what might happen if you let yourself be found.  After all, what would people think?  How will they react?  I wouldn’t want to be a bother, or a burden to anyone else!

Here’s the thing… however you may be hiding, God is going to be seeking, and God is not going to give up or call the game off.  God does not give up simply because you have been fearful or deceitful, nasty or cruel.  God does not leave the game because you are selfish or ungrateful, petty or lazy.  God does not abandon you, even when you abandon yourself, because you are God’s child now… that is one of God’s promises in Christ.

You are God’s child now… we all are God’s children now… maybe it’s time we started acting like it.   Amen.