ST. MICHAEL & ALL ANGELS EPISCOPAL CHURCH
  • ABOUT US
    • WHO WE ARE
    • 2023 Annual Meeting
    • Leadership
    • Newcomers
    • Pastoral Care
    • Faces of Our Community
    • Contact
  • Transition
  • Worship & Prayer
    • Download Service Bulletins
    • Daily Prayer Services - The Daily Office
    • Sermons
    • Art, Music, & Literature
  • FORMATION
    • Adult Formation
    • Retreats
    • Family & Youth
  • Outreach & Social Justice
    • Casa San Miguel Food Pantry
    • The Landing
    • LGBTQ+
    • Immigration Ministry
    • Navajoland Partnership
    • Senior Ministry
    • ALL ANGELS EPISCOPAL DAY SCHOOL
  • Give
    • Annual Pledge
    • Stewardship
    • Gifts & Memorials

Sermon, The Rev. Susan Allsion-Hatch, May 31

6/1/2015

0 Comments

 
In the name of God—Lover, Beloved and Love.

I’ve been remembering love stories all week long.  Those stories long-married couples like to tell about their lives together.   Perhaps you’ve heard some love stories yourselves.  Perhaps you’ve lived one or two.  Love stories.  They’re a genre.  Though they take different forms and follow different twists and turns, they always include a demonstration of a deep love shared.

Many begin in a moment, a flash of attraction.  An attraction not always felt by both characters in the story.  A love story I know well began in a Sunday School class.  He saw her and knew, just knew in the way thirteen-year-olds do, that he had to spend his life with her. He kept knocking at her door until one day she said “yes.”  The way she tells the story, she married him to get him off her doorstep.  The way he tells it, he knew that one day she would come to love him.  And so she did.  You can see it in the picture taken on their last wedding anniversary spent together.  An old man and old woman sitting together on a sofa, sharing a laugh, their arms entwined, their bodies leaning in to one another. 

Other loves start slowly, almost imperceptibly.  A gradual growing together like two small shoots of trees that come together to form one trunk.  An old woman tells the story of her first love.  They met as students.  Young people.    Sharing a passion for the Bible, they grew to love one another through their shared love of the word of God.  Then he became sick.  Very sick.  She nursed him until he died.

Some years later she met someone else who loved the Bible as much as she did.  They married, built a life together and a house too.  Both scholars, they used to meet over the reference works housed on the landing between their offices.  His last major project undertaken as he was dying from lung cancer was traipsing through the streets of Geneva in search of a gift that would serve as a token of his love for her. She wore that necklace until the day she died. 

Love stories—they usually involve a coupling.  Sometimes it’s a coupling of parent and child or grandparent and grandchild. or mentor and mentee  Perhaps you have felt a mother’s love in the look she wears as she cheers you on.  Perhaps you have noticed the delight in a grandfather’s eyes as he watches his grandchild encounter the world.  Maybe you’ve seen the pride in a mentor’s eyes as her mentee assumes his own place in the world.

My favorite, my very favorite love story is a very  different sort of a story.  A story an elderly woman told about her younger self.  A story of a woman in love not with a man or a woman or even the Word of God.  It’s the story of a woman in love with life itself.  A young woman, a model, a woman suffused with a love a life that knew no bounds.  A story set in London during the Blitz.  Bombs falling night after night after night.   Bombs stopping the music but not the dance. 

The story she tells is a story of love and life and joi de vivre bursting forth in the black-out night.  A young woman on a date.  A model given a night out.  A mink coat on loan.  A night clubbing in war-time London.  Then the sirens sounded.  Planes overhead.  The sound and lights of bombs falling.  A young woman dashing out to the street.  Lunacy.   A young woman dancing in the light of the falling bombs. 

Tonight, as we gather here for worship, all around us love stories are unfolding.  A stirring in a human heart, an encounter that transforms, a kindness extended and a life changed, a tenderness shown, an awareness dawning, a life ending and a grief erupting, a creation groaning as the Creator both weeps and wipes away tears.  Love stories taking their course.  Lovers and beloveds together dancing that sacred dance of love.  God, the Lover of us all, whispering in the ear of God’s beloved, “Let us love one another.”  In our loving, the world is made new once again.  

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011

    Categories

    All
    Advent Season Year A
    Advent Season Year B
    Advent Season Year C
    Baptism Of Our Lord
    Baptism Of Our Lord
    Blessing Ceremony
    Brian Taylor
    Children Of Live At Five
    Christmas Season Year A
    Christmas Season Year C
    Easter Season Year A
    Easter Season Year B
    Easter Season Year C
    Easter Sunday
    Feast Of All Saints
    Feast Of Christ The King
    Feast Of Epiphany
    Feast Of Epiphany
    Feast Of Pentecost
    Feast Of The Virgin Of Guadalupe
    Jan Bales
    Jp Arrossa
    Jp Arrossa
    Judith Jenkins
    Kristin Schultz
    Larry Gallegos
    Lenten Season Year A
    Lenten Season Year B
    Lenten Season Year C
    Live At Five
    Michaelmas
    Palm Sunday
    Pat Green
    Randy Lutz
    Rob Clarke
    Season After Epiphany Year A
    Season After Epiphany Year B
    Season After Epiphany Year C
    Season After Pentecost Year A
    Season After Pentecost Year B
    Season After Pentecost Year C
    Susan Allison Hatch
    Susan Allison Hatch
    Transfiguration Sunday
    Trinity Sunday

    RSS Feed

Questions about the life and ministry of St. Michael's?
Contact Us!
Click here for information on
​legacy giving.
Picture

505.345.8147                601 Montaño Road NW, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87107                  office@all-angels.com

  • ABOUT US
    • WHO WE ARE
    • 2023 Annual Meeting
    • Leadership
    • Newcomers
    • Pastoral Care
    • Faces of Our Community
    • Contact
  • Transition
  • Worship & Prayer
    • Download Service Bulletins
    • Daily Prayer Services - The Daily Office
    • Sermons
    • Art, Music, & Literature
  • FORMATION
    • Adult Formation
    • Retreats
    • Family & Youth
  • Outreach & Social Justice
    • Casa San Miguel Food Pantry
    • The Landing
    • LGBTQ+
    • Immigration Ministry
    • Navajoland Partnership
    • Senior Ministry
    • ALL ANGELS EPISCOPAL DAY SCHOOL
  • Give
    • Annual Pledge
    • Stewardship
    • Gifts & Memorials