“Turn Around and Be Love”

A Meditation by

The Rev. Karen Hill

February 28, 2010

Let us pray. 

O God of Love, you are the one who has taught us to love.  Help us to live into that love.  Help us to rest in that love.  Help us to be that love.  We pray all of this in the name of our savior Jesus Christ, Amen. 

This morning, this 2^nd Sunday in Lent, I want to share with you a reading from one of my favorite authors, Kathleen Norris.   Kathleen Norris is a poet, a memoirist and a spiritual writer.  Here is her Lenten reading, called, “Repentance.”[i] This is from a book called Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter.  (Reading)

Lent is that time of the church year for spring cleaning.  We get a chance to dust and mop and pick up all our clutter.  We can throw out our bad habits, wash away our lame excuses, and finally stop hiding our sin under the bed.  We can freshen and neaten and finally make our house “a place where God might wish to dwell.”  Like that boy, in the reading, who destroyed his house, sometimes we look around our own messy lives and think to ourselves, “I shouldn’t have done all that.”  We are sorry for what we have done, and we repent. 

Repentance, true repentance means to turn around and go a different way.  What if I while talking on the phone, I hurt my sister’s feelings?  I say something that is mean and hurtful.  Well, immediately, I recognize what I’ve done, and I apologize for hurting her.  But the next time we talk, I do it again – I say that same mean and hurtful thing.  Would my apology have any meaning to her?  Would it seem sincere?  No, it wouldn’t, because repentance, true repentance means to turn around and go a different way.[ii]

When we turn around and go a different way, we find God there, waiting, ready to walk with us and help us when we stumble.  Because, it is inevitable that I will hurt my sister’s feelings again, and I will need to apologize, to repent and go a different way, one more time.   

Our 2^nd reading of Psalm 27 describes God as Love.  And we know that God is love, but do we really know God as Love -  God as pure love, true love, steadfast love – love of a kind that is above us and beyond us, but infinitely available to us.  This is the love that offers relationship to us – no matter the mess we’ve created, no matter the mess in which we live.  This is God’s love. 

In this 2^nd reading of Psalm 27, the author writes,

“Teach me to be love, as You are Love.” 

So what if on our Lenten journey, as we repent of all that separates us from God, what if when we turn around to begin afresh and anew, we ask God to teach us to BE love, as God is Love. 

What if each one of us leaves this place determined to offer God’s love to each person we meet?  What if we offer God’s love to our family and to our friends?  What if we try to accept God’s love for ourselves – as messy and destructive as we are?  

I wonder what sort of Lenten journey we might take together.  Amen.