Back to the Basics

I am reading a book about the theology of sport. (It is called A Brief Theology of Sport by Lincoln Harvey--see, I wasn't kidding, it really is about the theology of sport!) Now, any of you who know me at all are currently asking yourselves, "Why, Kathy, why???" because you know how very little passion I have for sports in general (except, maybe, for curling--which hard-core sporty friends usually argue hardly counts. But it totally should!). That disinterest can probably be traced back to an unfortunate experience in early elementary school involving extra phys-ed classes during lunch hour for the coordinationally-challenged. (Bad idea. Bad, bad idea...)

Well, anyway, I'm reading it for a book group that I'm part of this winter, and for no other earthly reason. Although, I'm sure it's not a terrible book, if you care about things like sports and theology. (I'm partial to the latter, but still not sure why we have to bring sports into it.) There are three chapters left, and the promise of tea and dessert to come will probably urge me on to the end--plus, presumably there will yet be someone who will be happy to tell me why this book was important to read.

However, even in the midst of my moderate disinterest, I ran across this quote tonight:
God, though completely perfect in himself, freely elected to open up his life, making room for the creature to share the endless life of loving communion. (p. 82)

God is love, the author has just finished pointing out. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in perfect communion of self-giving and self-emptying. God, in God's very nature, is love. And just because God can, God makes space within that communion for us, his creation, to experience and join in that loving communion.

If you're wondering what this has to do with sports--I'm not sure, I haven't made it that far yet.

But this idea that God freely and voluntarily invites his creatures to share in the loving communion that is God--this stopped me in my tracks tonight.

It stopped me because it speaks so powerfully of welcome, of self-giving, of making room, of sharing, of hospitality. After a week-end that was filled with images of airport protests and a terrorist attack at a  Quebec City mosque during prayer--a week-end in which I couldn't quite bring myself to believe that this really is the world in which we're living right now--it spoke a message of prophetic hope to my troubled spirit.

It strikes me as a much-needed reminder that as God's people, we are called to radical hospitality. As we learn to lean into God's welcoming love, and as we ourselves experience communion with the God who loves us more radically than we can fully comprehend, how can we help but open the circle and make room for one more, then another, then another to join in loving community with God and with one another?

I don't quite know what this looks like, in terms of my regular daily life. Theology for me has to meet the ground. I'm a practical theologian--tell me how to do it, or I'll quickly lose interest. I suspect that, rather than it being inaction as I'm sometimes tempted to believe, the most important action that any of us can take--in these days or in any days--is to make space to receive God's invitation to know the love of God that is for each one of us. Prayer, meditation, worship--these are not wasted time, but the most essential groundwork we can lay. Unless we can ourselves rest in God's love, we won't be able to truly extend the kind of radical loving hospitality that our world so desperately needs.

And as we come to know God's love in our own lives, then I think it's a natural next step to mimic that love and that hospitality, by inviting our neighbours into that same communion--into community. To welcome the stranger, to practice hospitality, to seek out relationships with those who are not at all like us--people of all kinds of walks of life. As God welcomed us, we who are wholly other than God, so we will learn to welcome those who are other than us.

28 One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12: 28-31)

Maybe it's not so complicated after all...