The Imperishability of Love on September 11

Ephesians 6: 4 -24/Psalms 11

Today's New York Times homepage features a question from a journalist: Do we need more September 11 stories?

It depends on your lens. Are you still too close to the tradegy? Are you healing? Have you just entered a journey of understanding the human heart or are you old to it? Closed to it? Done with it ? Down with it?

Pastor Mark ended the summer sermon series on Ephesians mentioning Tychicus, a friend Paul thought worth mentioning. Pastor Mark found his name worth mentioning again 2000 years later for the imperishability of the deeds he did long ago which reflected his Master whose love lives on. Imperishable love of a servant for a Master whose love is imperishable.

How does this work? How do you get love that does not show bruises? How does love live on in me? In you?

Funny how startlingly death of a stranger answers this: I was at Von's. Again. I need a parking spot marker with gold stars. A checker was interviewing with intensity the other checkers: "Did you know her? She was the one over in Oxnard. She transferred. It was so sudden. She's so young." Under flourescent lights where cellophane is pulled tight in refrigerated lockers keeping out any hint of decay on the red peppers, apples, broccoli or cheese, there was an outburst of death. The interviewees didn't seem to know the deceased checker, but the interview seemed to compelled to tell her story. She didn't know her that well.

We of human heart seemed fashioned for telling stories: our own, the ones of others lives that change us, invigorate us, tic us off. Paul found in Tychius a love worth mentioning. This begs the question from Pastor Mark's sermon: how does one love in life-giving outbursts?

David, a violent warrior, a lover, a father, a singer, a poet, a king and a Lover of God teaches us from Psalms 11 about the source of imperishable love on the day of our remembering September 11. When David was sick of running from evil and considering the evilness in the hearts of those in his world, he counted on God. He sings. He counts on singing about God's holiness and knowing where God's presence rests on earth. (v. 4, 5.) He remembers God does not forget the righteous.

David chose singing and worship as a lifestyle. The point was to not rest until he found a dwelling place for the Lord. (See Ps. 132.) Sounds like a man driven. A man driven in hunger for God, a man stirred up with zeal, as the prophet Isaiah put it, to make a parking spot for God. And God remembered David for his imperishable love. As He remembered Cornelius and scared him with a vision. God spoke to Cornelius: Your prayers . . . have come up for a memorial before God. (Acts: 10:2 - 4.)

There are ways to live. Ways to pray. Tychicus, David, Cornelius. Warriors of a type: servant, lover, prayer. Jesus Himself hinted violence does get our story told. Consider John the Baptist, he says. "And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force." Matt. 11:11 -13. Jesus has something to say about violence on September 11. Lawlessness creates cold hearts. Imperishable hearts seek a lifestyle of spiritual violence: a commitment to "taking much trouble, as the Warrior-King David says, " to prepare for the House of the Lord." (I Chronicle 22: 14 - 19.)

I am waiting and praying for a continuous, imperishable song, a new song, that is so inviting to Jesus that He will finish His story in us, on earth, jostle worship some, cause collusions of love that counter taking knives to the skies. "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. (I Thes. 4:16.) The dead seem to be those that put the life of Christ ahead of theirs and love above all else.

I think I may have heard the beginnings of the song from the piped in CD's rotating in Von's: "Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the light in your eyes. . ."