A Tapestry of Love

I absolutely love today's second reading

from the end of the 8th chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans.

One verse in particular jumps out at me-    8:28

You may know it already.

We know that all things work together

for good for those who love God,

who are called according to God’s purpose.

 

On the face of it,

this seems like really good news.

Having a bad day?

Don't worry!

It's all gonna work out.

 

But this entire letter to the Romans

is like a needlepoint or a tapestry.

It has two sides,

Like my mother’s needlepoint.

What you see depends on how you look at it.

From the front it looks really good,

fiery,

rhetorical,

the best organized of Paul’s many

often chaotically written letters.

 

Sometimes it’s called

the greatest theological treatise in the Christian Scriptures.

 Paul wrote this theological masterpiece

to try and convince some Christians in Rome,

a place he had never visited,

to support him financially and

give him a base of operations.

 

At the time,

Paul was wending his way west once again

from Palestine and headed toward Spain,

the western most point of the then known world.

Like some spiritual Captain Kirk

the Apostle was led by the Spirit

to boldly go where

no Christian missionary had gone before.

That’s an entirely commendable goal.

 

There’s  a backside

to  “all things work together for good.”

Not only did the Romans not know him personally,

Paul faced a more basic problem.

His would be supporters were…… well.......   Romans.

THEY lived at the center of the Western world.

At this point in their history,

they held almost all of the cards in the political and military Deck.

 

Paul,

on the other hand,

was from the provincial far edge,

a distinct minority

within a minority religion

in a very large empire.

It was going to be a tough sell.

 

To add another layer to the picture,

just a few years before Paul wrote this letter

Claudius had also just dealt the entire religious community a blow

by scapegoating and exiling

every single Jew from the city of Rome.

As would happen so often in their history

Jews were blamed for society's ills,

rounded up,

displaced.

 

Why is that important?

Because the early Christians were in large part Jewish in background

the Christian Church in Rome had been decimated.

Its Jewish leaders had been skimmed off like fat from boiling soup,

leaving the small Christian communities scattered around Rome

stunned, depressed, divided.

 

Paul struggles in Romans to put and keep all of this all together.

As we learn by moving on into chapter nine,

There's another, even deeper personal problem in Paul's life.

Paul's guts also continue to be torn up

by the relations between Christians and the Jewish Community.

He’s been devastated

during his missionary journeys

by the frequent refusal of his fellow Jews

to accept  Jesus as their Messiah.

 

He writes to the Romans,

These words that we will hear next week in our second reading:

I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.

For I could wish that I myself were accursed

and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people,

my kindred according to the flesh.

 

These were just some of the messy loose ends in the beautiful tapestry of Paul’s life.

Somehow we often get the impression that

the early Christians were somehow different than we are,

more perfect,

closer to God.

But their lives are really a lot more like our own,

strange combinations

of joy and sadness,

success and failure,

divinely orchestrated heights coexisting

alongside the most profound messy depths.

Things were often not any more certain or clear to them

than they are to us.

 

I know this doesn't sound like good news,

but there will always be messy loose ends in the tapestry of all our lives.

Where are those places in our own lives?

Do we suffer from loss of job or overwork?

Family conflicts or loneliness?

Anxiety over change?

Lack of resources?

Are we overwhelmed when we

pick up the paper

Or turn on the TV or computer

And see scenes of wanton destruction and killing

Here and in other lands?

 

No matter what our loose ends are,

We will always have both sides of the tapestry to look at.

Like the Apostle Paul,

we are called to be children of God

by our baptism,

Our old lives are put to death

in the waters of baptism.

As Paul says in Romans Chapter 6,

we are then raised up to walk in newness of life with God.

So,we continue to struggle each day of our lives.

 

But we also know from Paul

that a new and beautiful image,

an image of God’s compassion

and love and care

is being sewn into us.

It will eventually emerge also,

even when we can’t yet see it.

 

I recall the life of a dear friend of mine,

Bill Storey,

who passed away in January at age 90.

No one’s life has displayed a more varied tapestry than his,

front and back.

 

He started his life as a Catholic educator,

married in 1951,

and had seven children with his wife Elaine.

In 1965 he was invited to join the faculty of the newly formed

liturgy studies department at Notre Dame.

In fact, he continued writing and publishing

following his retirement in 1985,

right up to just a few months before his death this past January.

 

Bill authored numerous prayer books

and devotional materials for students and others.

He taught generations of Fighting Irish students

about the joys of worshiping God.

 

After his children were grown,

like many other men of his generation,

Bill discovered himself to be gay.

In the 1980’s

Bill began a new life with his partner of over 30 years,

Philip Shatz.

Together they opened a used bookstore

on East Wayne St in South Bend,

Erasmus Books.

It’s still a hub of activity for students and teachers

of every academic discipline

from Ohio to Chicago.

During my own years at Notre Dame in the mid 1990’s,

Phil and Bill also touched my life.

They not only providing a poor PhD. Student with inexpensive textbooks,

but they surrounded me and my family with prayers

concern and fellowship.

 

When Bill’s former wife, Elaine

contracted cancer in 1999,

who took care of her in her final days?

You guessed it,

Bill and Phil.

Then for the last four years

Bill himself had struggled

with failing health.

His whole world was his tiny office,

where a hospital bed sat in the middle of the bookstore.

 

The last time we saw him alive,

he was still getting up from his bed

to work on a recently published book

of Notre Dame student prayers,

so weak he could only work for a few minutes every day.

 

These varied lives were woven together

with pain and change,

and coping

and love.

 

Like many of us,

Bill and Phil and Elaine and the family

often wondered together

and with others,

including me,

how to make sense of it all,

how to live together in love.

 

Each of our lives

and all our lives together

are like the tapestry

Woven on both sides,

of both beauty and of trial.

 

Both sides are a grace given to us by a God

who never, ever turns away from a challenge.

God never turns away from a challenge.

So neither can we,

who are made and re-made in God's image.

God continues to weave and sew us

at every single moment of our lives.

 

The further good news

is that this tapestry is not just our own private spiritual possession.

It belongs to the whole creation.

As Paul says in Chapter 8 right before our reading today:

 

I consider that the sufferings of this present time

are not worth comparing with the glory

about to be revealed to us.

The entire creation waits with eager longing

for the revealing of the children of God;

 

….. in hope that the entire creation itself will be set free

from its bondage to decay

and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

 

It is precisely this hope

to which Paul clung

as he wrote this letter to the Romans.

 

The same hope enabled Bill and Elaine and Phil

and their families

to meet,

accept,

and deal with God life’s messy challenges.

 

This is the hope in which we live.

 

God weaves our lives

into a tapestry much larger,

much more colourful,

Full of more meaning

than we can ever begin to imagine…

 

Still we wait.

Still we hope,

And still we say with the Apostle:

 

Who will separate us from the love of Christ?

Will hardship, or distress, or persecution,

or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

 

As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;

            we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors

through him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,

nor angels, nor rulers,

nor things present, nor things to come,

nor powers, nor height, nor depth,

nor anything else in all creation,

will be able to separate us

from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Amen.