My family went through a phase where we were quite determined to watch a certain home tranformation show. This was not one of the daytime TV paint a few shelves shows but rather a prime time production where whole houses were demolished and rebuilt – often to stunning specifications. In the early days it was quite amazing to watch the faces of people who were expecting very little, had often been let down in life and suddenly realized that everything had changed as the large bus, which had been put in place was driven away to reveal a new home, and often keys to whole new life.
Time for the big reveal – the presenter would say. And in his letter to the Romans Paul is at the big reveal – everything, he says, is part of the plan of creation. God wanted God's people and still does, always has and always will and creation is uneasy in this interim time whilst it waits for its creator.
We probably all find ourselves from time to time longing for things. Perhaps it is as simple as a bar of chocolate or as complicated as a new relationship. Sometimes we want things because we have thought about it, sometimes we can find them and at other times, and too often in our world, we want things because we think we should have them or because someone else we know has something and we want to go one better.
This rather petty gambling on possessions is far from the sort of longing which Paul is talking about and is precisely what the Gospel tells us not to engage in. Why worry about earthly things when there is so much more to us than that. This passage has been used in many different ways but when we link it to the idea of revelation, to the idea that God has a plan for us, that our inner being will always yearn for God – it becomes not just about a rejection of the things which ties us down here but an acclamation of our true worth and beauty.
The reading from Romans cuts off just before Paul finishes his big reveal – but don't worry Romans 8 will come back in the summer as several weeks after Trinity are devoted to the middle chapters of this book and we will look at them then. Perhaps the Lectionary holds us back from the big reveal so that we are on the edges of our seats for next weeks readings about Transfiguration – that great mountaintop revelation of who Jesus is and is to be for us. It is a carefully woven canvas which will lead us to the greatest acclamation before plunging us into Lent and a careful and timely examination of who that Jesus is for and with us as individuals.
But today focuses on who God made us to be and in the most wonderful sense of that. For all the beauty which there is in nature – God finds us more beautiful. This should be profoundly reassuring to us – it is not about what we look like, or what we wear or even how clever we are – although all to often we get horribly caught up in all of these things – it is about the fact that each of us is carefully and lovingly made – if God clothes the lilies of the field which are stunning, then how much more will he clothe each one of us?
The Gospel tells us that in many ways we ourselves, in live devoted to God are the big reveal which Paul is giving us in Romans. We are the big reveal because the heart of God is about relationship. Covenant is about relationship and God's promise to us that God is God and we are God's people no matter wherever or however we are.
As we look around the world it can be difficult to understand how God sees human beings as beautiful at all – as a race we do some pretty terrible things – and yet if we ever stop long enough to listen to God, to feel God as God is, we will only feel love. This is a mystery – how we can be people of such hatred and yet subject to such love. It can make us feel hopeless and worse than that it can actually make us want to hold onto those very worries which we are told to let go of.
At least if we can worry about food and clothes we have some hope of being in control – love on the other hand is so much bigger than what to have for dinner, or how to earn enough money to pay for that holiday somewhere hot and far away. Love leaves us feeling helpless – but if we will only allow love in, not hopeless. Somehow, even in the worst tyranny, there can be hope, because even in the darkest places of human existence, somehow there is God. I cannot hope to explain this to you, but I hope that these do not sound like easy words, like an excuse to walk away from places of pain and terror. Love is not an excuse for anything – not an excuse for ignoring ourselves or other people. Love demands and honesty and transparency which we can find hard but Jesus says, how much more will God do for you that for flowers and birds – how much more are you worth than the things you claim to value and want to worry about so intensely.
George Herbert wrote a poem about Love and his own unworthiness:
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.
"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"
"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.
We are invited, we are not imposters and all the worrying and arguing and cleverness in the world will not change that. The big reveal is that we are already here, that God already loves us and always has. The big reveal is not that everything has changed but that we realize more and more closely each day that the love which is now is something which has surrounded us from our first moment of life and will through eternity. We may change as we come to know the light and the presence of Christ but that light and that presence are simply revealed – that light and the presence are true on the mountaintop and in the valley.
Somehow all of this is true, somehow we are invited to this feast of Christ as who we are and from where we are. Somehow we are made wonderfully as who God wants us to be and somehow God will make us more that we could ever worry ourselves into. The house God builds for us is eternal – it is love and somehow we are beautiful enough to be invited in.
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