
Last Sunday after church, one of church members, Bob Aydt, asked me about the benediction that I say at the end of our Sunday services each week, where I say, “Live Fully and Love Wastefully.”
Well, I told Bob that I couldn’t take credit for those words. Those words are actually the words of one of my spiritual mentors, the late Bishop John Shelby Spong.
What he meant by “Love Wastefully,” is that we can be wasteful with love because love never runs out.
Some of you may remember the story from the Bible about the woman with the alabaster jar who washes Jesus feet with a bottle of expensive perfume.
Some people in the crowd called the woman “wasteful,” because the perfume was so expensive, but Jesus told the crowd to “leave her alone,” because she was showing extravagant love.
I learned so much about “loving wastefully” from Bishop Spong.
He was one of the foremost Bible scholars of our time. In fact, he dedicated his life to studying the Bible.
Bishop Spong wrote many wonderful books about the Bible. His very last book, published just a year before his death is called Biblical Literalism.
In Bible Literalism, Bishop Spong reminds us that the Bible is a book of symbolic stories that are rich in myth and metaphor and meaning.
The Bible, Spong said, is a spiritual guidebook meant to be taken seriously, but not a history book meant to be taken literally.
In fact, he says that to take the Bible literally is actually harmful and dangerous.
In the book, Bishop Spong gives example after example of how Biblical literalism has been used over the centuries to divide people, rather than unify people…to categorize people as ‘clean or unclean,’ ‘worthy or unworthy’ of God’s love.
Reading the Bible, Spong said, should make you more loving, more compassionate, more accepting. Not more judgmental and self-righteous.
And I share this with you today, because the gospel reading from today’s lectionary for the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany is one in which Jesus reads from Scripture, and it upsets the literalists in the crowd.
As we just heard, Jesus returns home to Nazareth, his boyhood hometown.
He had been away for a couple of years, teaching and healing and amassing a large following, and now he’s come home to his hometown temple to worship on the Sabbath.
And, the rabbis there invite him to come up and to read from Scripture (from the Hebrew Bible – what we now call the Old Testament) and to give a little sermon afterwards, if you will.
The rabbis hand Jesus the scroll and Jesus chooses a passage from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah.
He says: “I have come to bring good news to the poor, the sick, the marginalized and the oppressed. God’s favor is upon them.”
Then, Jesus rolls up the scroll and gives the shortest sermon ever. He simply says: “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing of it.”
Then, he sits down.
Believe it or not, this so enrages the literalists of Jesus’s own hometown that they are going to immediately run him out of the temple and push him to the edge of a cliff!
We’re going to hear that part of the story next Sunday, so this is bit of cliff-hanger…no pun intended.
Now, why would the people be upset? Well, they thought that they were God’s highly favored ones…that God had looked with favor upon only them, the righteous.
But Jesus is announcing that the good news he’s bringing isn’t just for them: it’s also for the poor, the sick, the marginalized and the oppressed. God’s favor is upon them, too, he says.
We, my friends, the followers of Jesus, are called to continue to spread the good news. So, what is the good news?
Well, Jesus just told us in today’s reading: We are to bring good news to the poor, the sick, the marginalized and the oppressed. To let them know that they are God’s highly favored ones.
That they – the last – shall be first. That they – the least of these – will be most important.
I’ve only been here at the United Church of Rowayton for a little over a year, but I’m so proud of how all of you have been spreading the good news.
As I shared during “Joys & Concerns” today, you have demonstrated God’s love to the homeless, the hungry, the poor, and the marginalized in our community, by giving so generously of your time, talents, and treasures to all those wonderful organizations.
As the song says, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” so thank you for “loving wastefully” and for the spreading the good news of God’s extravagant love.
One my favorite prayers comes from Teresa of Avila. I say it so much that I know it by heart:
Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on Earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world. You are his hands. You are his feet. You are his eyes. You are his body. Christ has no body now on Earth but yours.
That is the Truth. We are all the Body of Christ. We are all God’s beloved children.
We are all worthy, and we are all One. One body. One family.
My friends, as you all know, we are living at a time of great division in our country and in our world…a time when we’re forgetting our Oneness.
Right now, there are many people in our country who are poor, sick, marginalized and oppressed, and they are scared.
We can respond to them with love and mercy, or we can respond to them with apathy and judgement. The choice is ours.
However, if we are to truly call ourselves Christians – followers of the Way of Jesus – then we must always choose love, for as Dr. King said, “love builds up and unites” and leads to the creation of the Beloved Community.
My friends, during this time of great division, let us bind one another together in love.
Our UCC Conference Minister, Rev. Darrell Goodwin (who, you may remember, came to our church last year for my installation service) began the New Year by calling us all to unity.
I’d like to conclude my message with his words. He writes: “We must see it as imperative to create an urgent UNITY agenda. We are called to minimize that which separates us, and rally around that which strengthens us to envision a future not yet realized.”
May it be so. Amen.