“We Trust Our Belovedness”
Isaiah 60:1-6
Matthew 2:1-12
Mark 1:4-11
Advent and Christmas may feel like distant memories now that we are well into the season of Epiphany, a time of revealing and of our coming to recognize and follow the Love-Light that has come into the world. According to the calendar, the Feasts of Epiphany and the Baptism of Christ are also behind us.
And yet, thanks to last Sunday’s snow day, we find ourselves today still wanting to reflect on journeys and baptisms, joy and solidarity, even as we also need to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and recommit ourselves to the ongoing struggles for racial justice.
That’s a pretty tall order, not unlike so much of life these days, which often seems to be pulling us in different directions all at once.
A couple of weeks ago, at the beginning of the monthly meeting of the church’s Elected Leadership Team, we took a little time to check in with each other. By the time we were done, three of the eight of us had spoken directly of carrying a mix of feelings:
On the one hand, we were experiencing so much joy and gratitude for how our lives and the lives of our families and friends and our church were going. On the other hand, we were feeling utterly gutted by all the violence, pain, suffering, and division happening in our world.
Neither kind of feeling—gratitude or grief, delight or despair, anticipation or anxiety—cancels out the other. All of it is valid. All of it is real. Every last bit of it demands and deserves acknowledgement and expression.
The carnage in Gaza and Israel, the serious threats to our democracy, the fragility of our planet, ongoing institutional racism, increasing attacks on the rights of women and LGBTQ-plus folks—all these things command our attention and our action.
As do the smiles and laughter (and tears) of our children and grandchildren. As does the way the sun hits the raindrops on tree branches just so, making it seem that suddenly there are diamond trees growing in the front yard. As does the gentle brush of a partner’s hand against ours. As does an unexpected call or text from a friend. As does the satisfaction of a job well done, a challenge met, a goal achieved, a passion pursued.
And still: As people who care deeply about the world, as people who are passionate about justice, as Jesus followers determined to do the sometimes-hard work of loving our neighbors and our enemies, as salt-of-the-earth people who think we should always be doing something, we can feel downright uncomfortable about joy. When we’re feeling joyful while others are suffering, we might even feel a little guilty. And so we might decide to keep our joy to ourselves or to downplay our sense of blessedness.
I think that would be a mistake. A big mistake.
The story of Jesus’ baptism, and the meta-story of God’s love for us as told throughout our scriptures, suggests that being loved by God—no matter what—is the foundation of our identity. That we and all creation belong to an endlessly, universally, radically loving God, is the root of all that is good, including our joy and strength, our longings for meaning, our natural predispositions to love and to hope, and our capacities to both care and carry on.
The problem, it seems to me, it that it’s easy for us to lose sight of these essential and foundational truths. It can be hard to remember that our God-given name is Beloved when our culture finds countless ways to tell us that we are less than, other than, and not enough.
So on this day when, on top of everything else, we are concluding the Advent series that asked how a weary world can rejoice, let us consider one more answer, one more spiritual practice, one more tool for living with love and hope, purpose and joy, compassion and solidarity: that we trust in our belovedness.
Now I want to be clear: This “trusting our belovedness” business is not some whistling-in-the-dark strategy, a way of managing to carry on by pretending things are not so bad. It is, rather, a way to faithfully and hopefully find and follow the light through the darkness, a faith-based decision to remember and then lean into the reality that we and all creation were made in love, for love. It’s about remembering that, no matter what anyone else says about us, no matter how tempting it is to put all our energy into chasing after fleeting happiness, we have something much better than that: a constant joy born of knowing that we belong to God.
And when we are clear about our belovedness, when we can stay rooted in our belonging, when we can allow our sense of belonging and belovedness to transform us, we can become a light in the darkness, a balm for the wounded, and rest for the weary.
The late Jesuit priest, writer, and activist Henri Nouwen spoke of our belovedness “as the foundation for our lives." When we are clear about that, he said, our eyes are opened to see others as beloved also. “When our deepest truth is that we are the Beloved,” he wrote, “and when our greatest joy and peace come from fully claiming that truth, it follows that this has to be visible and tangible in the ways we eat and drink, talk and love, play and work.”
And if that’s too hard to grasp, consider the experience of writer, poet, and professor Ross Gay, who has begun telling all his students at the beginning of the semester that they will get an A in his class. What some people might consider cheap grace has liberated his students to devote themselves to actually learning and being formed and transformed by both the process and the content of their learning. No longer worried about what will be on the test or how they will be graded, his students thrive.
Beloveds, God has given us an A-plus-plus-plus. In this classe called Life, God has said, You are mine and I am yours. In the gift and freedom of that reality, go forth and thrive. Go forth and love. Go forth and shine.
It was, among other things, a deep trust in his belovedness, an abiding faith in the belovedness of all God’s children, that enabled Dr. King to say—while still bound and oppressed by the evils of racist segregation, poverty, and violence, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!”
It was, among other things, a trust in inherent belovedness that empowered Rosa Parks to sit down at the front of the bus, that inspired Fannie Lou Hamer to persist in the struggle for voting rights, that motivated Harvey Milk to keep pushing for gay rights.
In our time, it is, among other things, a belief in universal belonging and belovedness that fuels the Black Lives Matter movement, struggles for the protection and equal rights of trans folks, and marches for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Jesus waded into the waters of the River Jordan not because he needed to be forgiven for his sins, but because he was secure enough in his belovedness that he could stand in humble solidarity with those who had forgotten, or had perhaps never known, of their own belovedness.
Friends, how does a weary world rejoice? We trust our belovedness, and we trust that the One who created us in love and for love.
How do we summon the courage and commitment to make peace in a world at war? We trust that all people are beloved, and live accordingly.
How do we begin to heal a world on fire? We trust that all creation is beloved and holy and worthy of our best efforts to preserve and protect it.
How do we build beloved community in a nation divided by politics, race, religion, gender identity, income, and education? Rooted firmly in our own belovedness, we, like Jesus, stand in solidarity with those who have yet to discover or recover theirs.
And how do we learn to trust our own belovedness? We strive to put ourselves in the path of the Light, and we do our best to follow that Light, even when it means going home by another road. We immerse ourselves in communities that affirm our belovedness, and we commit ourselves to affirming and lifting up the belovedness of others.
And, when we can, we remember our baptism, which was an affirmation of our belovedness and a symbol of our belonging.
And in a few minutes, we will all have the opportunity to do just that.
After you have received Communion, you may come here—to this bowl of water and light and Spirit.
Come to the water for a blessing, to remember who and whose you are, to renew your promises to God and to Christ’s church, to re-claim your identity as God’s beloved, to know that with you God is well pleased, and to take full hold of the abundant life God wants for you.
Arise and shine, beloveds, for your light has come.
