LOVE-INTIMACY. . .

For we who espouse to be followers of Jesus-the-Christ, the message is clear: We are loveable/love-able.  We are here to love.  What keeps us from embracing both of these simple, yet life transforming messages-invitations?  There are many hindrances that get in our way of ‘hearing,’ embracing and living into and out of these messages-invitations.  A common hindrance is fear.  Fear is the enemy of intimacy. Love is intimacy’s abiding companion.

Love-Intimacy exists beyond fear (or resides behind fear waiting to be called forth).  For we who espouse to be Christians, when Jesus says: ‘It is I; do not be afraid,’ he reveals to us a new space in which we can move and interact without fear.

When St. John says that fear is driven out by perfect love, he identifies a love that comes from God, an abiding, faithful love that will never be compromised and will always be available to us.  This abiding love – this perfect love – embraces and transcends all, including fear.  This perfect love drives out fear and invites us to become perfect love’s participants.

This perfect love is God and is available to us in many ways.  For we Christians, God so loved us that he came, literally, to be among us.  He came to demonstrate perfect love among us.  He came to show us the ways to love.  A powerful metaphor for us humans is home.  At its most powerful ‘home’ connects safety, inclusion, acceptance, honoring, intimacy, and love.  To make his message clear to us, Jesus used this metaphor; he is preparing a room for us in his own home – in God’s home.

It is significant that St. John describes Jesus as the ‘Word of God’ who is pitching his tent among us (John 1:14).  John tells us that Jesus invites him and his brother Andrew to stay in his home (John 1:38-39), he also shows how Jesus gradually reveals that he, Jesus, is the new temple (John 2:19) and the new refuge (Matthew 11:28).

For me, this is most fully expressed in Jesus’ farewell address.  Jesus reveals himself as the new home: ‘Make your home in me, as I make mine in you’ (John 15:14).  By making his home in us he allows us to make our home in him.  By entering into the intimacy of our innermost self he offers us the opportunity to enter into his own intimacy with God.  By choosing us as his preferred dwelling place he invites us to choose him as our preferred dwelling place.

God so much desired to fulfill our deepest yearning for a home that God decided to build a home in us.  Thus we can remain fully human and still have a home in God.  God, who is transcendent, came close to us by taking on our mortal humanity.  A powerful symbol and act of abiding love.  In loving as God invites us to love we become more of who we are called to be – loving – and to then to be more like God: loving.

For me, Jesus says: ‘You have a home…I am your home…claim me as your home…you will find it to be the intimate place where I have found my home…it is right where you are…in your innermost being…in your heart.’

I can – I have – become so possessed by fear that I do not trust my innermost self as an intimate home; I anxiously wander around hoping to find it outside of myself.  When I am fear-full I try to find that intimate place in knowledge, competence, success, pleasure, dreams, and distractions.  I become a stranger to myself; I become a stranger to abiding love.  I forget that I am love-able, loveable and that I am here to love.

I leave us this morning recalling Henri Nouwen’s words.  Henri writes: ‘You are loved long before other people can love you or you can love others.  You are accepted long before you can accept others or receive their acceptance.  You are safe long before you can offer or receive safety.’