7/2 Lectionary Notes: Necessary Losses
Lectionary Texts for July 2, the fourth Sunday after Pentecost
These texts seem to explore the paradoxical relationships between pairs of opposites that have been significant in my life lately--life and death, joy and grief, certainty and doubt, abundance and want, ephemeral and eternal. We seem to desire to organize the world into these opposing pairs out of necessity. It is our way of understanding, of making sense. However, these passages address the nature of God (present to us on earth as Jesus Christ) to transcend these definitions, to blow our carefully crafted boundaries out of the water. In some sense, we mature into this attribute of God as we outgrow the need for such black and white clarity. I've been exploring a book lately called Necessary Losses by Judith Viorst and there are several passages that come to mind in reading these texts. First, related to maturing into a more complex understanding of the world:
As healthy adults we can integrate the many dimensions of our human experience, forsaking the simplifications of callow youth. Tolerating ambivalence. Looking at life from more than one perspective. Discovering that the opposite of a very important truth may be another very important truth. And being able to transform separate fragments into wholeness by learning to see the unifying themes.
Also, some of Viorst's words on friendship come to mind with David's exultation of Jonathan:
Greatly beloved were you to me;
your love to me was wonderful,
passing the love of women.
Viorst writes in her chapter on friends:
To take the view that friendship is a diluted version of love, 'much as pink is regarded as a dilution of red,' is surely to do it a serious disservice. Comparing the intimacy of friends and lovers, analyst James McMahon observes that friendships 'differ from one's main relationship in that they generally do not involve the revelation of one's character and most basic needs in an often primitive and regressed way,' meaning by this, I believe, that we can indulge ourselves, with a lover, in significant lapses of manners, control and dignity. ... But in spite of what we reveal and expose within a love relationship, McMahon points out what all of us very well know: That no two people can hope to gratify all of each other's needs. That 'no man or woman can be all things to another.' Thus, even if lover-love is red and friendship is merely pink, pink saves us from a life of monotone. Our friendships can help to provide--in sometimes crucial and central ways--what lover-love lacks.
Which gets at some of what David was alluding to in the difference between the relationship of friend and the relationship of lover. Might be a provocative topic for a sermon... And more from Viorst on friendship, just because I think it rings true, particularly in the context of David's lament:
Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there. Friends furthermore take care--they come if we call them at two in the morning; they lend us their car, their bed, their money, their ear; and although no contracts are written, it is clear that intimate friendships involve important rights and obligations. Indeed, we will frequently turn--for reassurance, for comfort, for come-and-save-me help--not to our blood relations but to friends...
I think there are strong themes of grieving in these texts, as well--of "necessary losses", if you will--and the power of God's love to be present in and overcome grief.