Sermon - 2/14/21

<p>This past week, I have been very aware of the way pandemic fatigue is increasingly becoming an ordinary aspect of daily life.  The endless number of Zoom meetings, the isolation, the ordering of groceries online, the lack of being able to see people’s faces in person, our collective deep brokenness as people, and the sadness and yearning I feel as I want to be with our kids and grandkids, all are increasingly becoming a darkened scar on our lives. In some ways, the light of hope just seems dimmed, and we cannot clearly see what is real. As we live in this pandemic bubble of constraints, the daily challenges sometimes are like a dark veil that covers up what is truly important and what is truly real.  Laden by what has become an ordinariness of pandemic routine, we often do not see the deeper truth and reality of God’s presence with us, <strong>the immeasurable love in which God holds us,</strong> the Love that dances at the very heart of existence. </p> <p>Quite frankly, most people seem to think God is out there somewhere.  Maybe way up there, but far removed from our everyday experience.  And, far too often, religion teaches that we should <strong>seek out</strong> the presence of God.  However, the <strong>reality</strong> is that we cannot seek out God’s presence, we cannot earn God’s presence to us, we cannot prove ourselves worthy of God’s presence, <strong>nor can we do anything to prohibit God’s presence to us.</strong>  The deepest truth given to us in today’s gospel reading is that we are totally and completely <strong>enveloped</strong> in the presence of God and God’s immeasurable love. <strong> That</strong> is what is truly <strong>real</strong>.  Yet, those moments of transparency that enable us to see more clearly seem few and infrequent. New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright, describes those moments as points in time when “the veil of ordinariness that normally prevents us from seeing the ‘inside’ of a situation is drawn back, and a fuller reality is disclosed.” </p> <p>As we look at today’s gosp