God is Love

God is Love

January 9, 2013

Wednesday after Epiphany

By Colleen O'Sullivan

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.  No one has ever seen God.  Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.  (I John 4:11-12)

They were completely astounded.  They had not understood the incident of the loaves.  On the contrary, their hearts were hardened. (Mark 6:51b-52) 

Piety

But you, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.  (Psalm 86:15)

Study

“Your image of God creates you.”  Those were the words that leapt out at me from Fr. Richard Rohr’s daily meditation emailed on January 4, Not to Prove Anything, but to Experience Someone.  Sometimes I haven’t the slightest clue what he’s talking about in his writings, but I had been studying the Scripture readings for today, and that short sentence seemed to sum up the essence of what Mark and John are getting at.

Today’s Gospel passage immediately follows the feeding of the 5,000.  When the crowd’s needs are met, Jesus sends them home and puts the disciples in a boat. He tells them to meet him on the opposite shore and then ascends the mountain to pray.  Later that night, a storm blows up on the sea.  The disciples are fearful.  Jesus walks toward them, but they grow even more terrified when they think he’s a ghost.  Jesus tells them not to be afraid, gets in the boat with them, and calms the storm.  Mark says the disciples were shocked.  “They had not understood the incident of the loaves.  On the contrary, their hearts were hardened.”

The disciples are clueless.  God is in their very midst, walking, talking and eating with them, performing all kinds of miracles, but their minds are closed.  They are looking for a king, a political ruler who will take Israel back from their oppressors, the Romans.  Their image of God doesn’t include someone miraculously providing a meal out of compassion for the poor and the hungry or one who would walk on water and calm the turbulence threatening them.  At that point in their faith journey, the disciples’ limited image of the Divine allows them to be self-centered and uncaring.  They had no interest in the well-being of the 5,000.  In fact, they wanted them to go find their own food, although they had been with Jesus for several days and were probably weak from hunger.  And even when Jesus calms the waters threatening them that night and soothes their fears, Mark says, at least at that point, the disciples’ minds remained closed.

John is more direct about it in his letter.  He says God is love.  When that is the divine image we hold in our hearts, how could we do anything but love one another?  In the light of God’s love, I see my sins and imperfections painfully clearly.  If God could send his Son to offer me the gift of forgiveness and eternal life, if God is always waiting with open arms to welcome me home when I have strayed, how could I dare to offer anything less to someone else?   I often fall short of being the person I’d like to be, but I aspire to being kind and merciful to others.

Action

The idea that your image of God creates you is worth pondering.  What is your image of God and how has that image shaped you?