In a book of stories, Reaching Out in Love, reportedly told by Mother Teresa of Calcutta is this story:

In one of her newsletters, Mother retold a story told by her Sisters working in Australia:
There was a man on the street and nobody touched him. The Sisters picked him up, took him to the House of Compassion, our home. Here the Sisters loved and cared for him. One day, after sixteen long years, he said: ‘ Sisters, I am going home and I will never, never drink again. The way you loved and cared for me, I suddenly realize that God loves me.’
He went home but returned with his first salary. ‘ Sister, he said, Here is my first salary. Do to others what you did to me.’ That man not only understood God’s love, but put it into action.

We cannot predict how long it will take us to discover that God loves us, or how long we must love, in the Name of Christ, another, before they will discover that God loves them.

In the adult class that I am facilitating we are reading Verna Dozier’s The Dream of God. She talks about the desire of God to have a free relationship with us in which we have the choice to respond to his love for us. Creating us with that kind of freedom is both risky and deeply loving. It is the same when we choose to love another and give them our trust and commitment.

The scriptural readings we heard today indicate that, that is how the Hebrew people understood God’s intention. He created us to have communion, to be drawn toward each other, to recognize our oneness with each other and with God. While the story focuses on the explanation for the fact that there are men and women in the world, and it helps explain how the human race perpetuates itself, it is greater than that I believe. It is about recognizing our bond as children of God. “ This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. “ It is that recognition which is the source of our ability to love our neighbor. I hear it in the charity which led Mother Teresa’s Sisters in Australia to take that man in for 16 long years until he discovered through their love, the love of God.

As we read the scriptures we can see this reality held up for us again and again. Jesus’ story of the prodigal son, the book of Hosea which portrays God’s unceasing love for a people who continue to court other lovers, the foundation of the laws of Judaism which place such emphasis on obligation to the neighbor and stranger as the reflection of our love of God. It is all interwoven, you cannot love God whom you have not seen if you do not love your neighbor who you do see.

The pharisees pressed Jesus about the law, as we heard in the Gospel reading, questioning him about whether it is permissible for a man to divorce his wife. Jesus fires back at them that Moses granted it because of their hardness of heart. God did not create us to be at enmity with one another, though reality is that for a whole host of reasons we end up pushing away from each other causing pain. Jesus’ remarks are not intended to be an end to the question about divorce or relationships, as I think may often be interpreted by some. He redirects his challengers and hearers both to look at our motives/ at how we develop a hard heart against one another, and at how we were formed, how God desired for us to be - made in God’s image, a little lower than the angels. In other words, we have to look to God to find ourselves.

When we look to God we see Love beyond comparison, we see an eternal desire for us which is revealed in his incarnation, his willingness to sacrifice his very self that we might not only have no barrier between us but that we might discover again the Love that formed us and makes us what we are created to be.

When we see and complain about the suffering in the world caused by people, the words of Jesus to the Pharisees should ring in our ears - “it is because of your hardness of heart.” In the words of the Rev. Richard Helmer who serves a multi-cultural church in San Francisco, “ It’s the hardness that we struggle with as we watch the painful realities of conflict between Palestinians and Israelis and so many others throughout the world; as we reckon with hunger and disease in so many parts of the world as wealthy and poor become further divided; as we suffer fear and the cold heartedness that brings war and terrorism to us and our sisters and brothers abroad; .... We are a family, a people, and a world that suffers from divorce of all kinds. But it is precisely that world that God in Christ enters-and not just with a hope to ultimately end divorce, but with a mission to heal all of us who suffer, from the various kinds of divorce from what God calls us to be; to heal our hardness of heart, and to help us recognize once again that we truly belong to each other,... and we belong ultimately to a God who has, for all eternity, refused to divorce us.

The God to whom we can pray in confidence in his eternal desire for us to come to him -
“ Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than either we desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior. Come Lord Jesus, let us find ourselves anew in you.

Amen.
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