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Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places Old Testament: Proverbs 9:1-6 When I was young, I just wanted to grow up. I wanted to act mature, even when I wasn’t yet mature. I started everything early. I went to kindergarten at age 4, and wanted to have my own child by the time I was 18, which I did. By age 20, my husband and I were foster parents for teenagers from the probation department. By 21, we were training potential foster parents. By 25, I had worked in a hospital, been a bartender, served on the Presiding Bishop’s Task Force for Lay Ministry, worked for a psychologist, given speeches to high schools about underachieving teenagers, taught ballet, started a non-profit corporation for crisis intervention, become the Business Manager for a Consultant for car dealerships, and applied to the Diocese of Chicago to enter seminary--even though the Church had not yet approved women’s ordination. By 28, I was in seminary, and by age 33, I was a Canon to the Ordinary--or Assistant to a bishop. At 36, I was in my first bishop election. I just wanted to grow up. I wanted to be taken seriously. I wanted to get gray hair. I wanted to be mature. Now that I am at an age when I should be mature, I realize I’m only just beginning to learn what maturity is. I’m keenly aware every day that I can act so immature at times. I still lose my temper, insist on having my own way, behave foolishly, act selfishly, argue with my spouse or friend and waste my days. I find it difficult to lay that immaturity aside so that I can live and walk in the way of insight, as the passage from Proverbs suggests. So I ask myself several questions: Why is it so hard to grow up? Why does maturity and wisdom elude me even though I am finally of a chronological age to say I am mature? Why do I still behave in childish ways that sometimes even surprise me? Why am I still so self-absorbed and self-indulgent? I suspect that these are questions we could all ask of ourselves. I once wrote a short poem that, I believe gives us a clue to finding the answer to those questions:
From the moment we come screaming out of the womb we begin longing for love. We yearn to be pulled in, embraced, held in the great warmth of love, because in the deep silence within there is a nagging sense that it is only love that will make sense out of our existence. But also from the very moment we come screaming out of the womb, we are being assaulted by forces that mitigate against that simple cry of the soul to be loved. Sometimes it is our own selves that get in the way, sometimes it is others around us who can’t seem to show us love, sometimes it is our inability to receive the love that others offer, and sometimes it’s what the Country and Western singer Waylon Jennings wrote:
We behave in childish ways, we are self-absorbed and self-indulgent, we find it difficult to embrace wisdom and maturity because we are so hungry for love that we will search even in the wrong places for it. We’re so pre-occupied in our search for love, that we hardly hear the sweet seductive voice of wisdom and maturity crying out to us. When we hear its faint call, we’re tempted to turn away because it can feel so restrictive and constraining. We’re not sure we’re really interested in following the course of maturity. It seems onerous, joyless, and humorless. After all, how many mature people do you know that are the real life of the party? So, we know intellectually that the teacher of heavenly wisdom has a treasure house of holy images, but we, we stumble about only longing for love. Only longing for love. Consider Martha, the sister of Mary. You remember the story of Jesus being invited to dinner at their home. Martha prepared all day--cooking and cleaning, wanting to provide a delightful, hospitable environment and meal for Jesus. At first glance, it seems that of the two sisters, Martha was the mature one. She had a strong sense of responsibility. She knew how to be a good hostess. She was willing to give her time and energy to provide for the needs of others. Mary, on the other hand, barely involved in any of the preparatory activities could not even seem to give her hand and time to the work of hospitality after Jesus arrived. She simply sat down and looked up at Jesus--obviously more immersed in her own desire to be in Jesus’ presence than in caring enough to help her sister serve the meal. Surely, Mary was self-absorbed, selfish, self-indulgent. Surely, Mary was displaying immaturity that day. Let me suggest to you that it was just the other way around. It is true that Martha was being hospitable, but she also wanted to impress Jesus. She wanted Jesus to notice her work. She wanted to be accepted and praised by Jesus. When that didn’t happen in the way she expected, she whined to Jesus that her sister was not helping her. This was just another way to tell Jesus to notice her - Martha. She wasn’t really concerned about having another pair of hands to help with the dishes. She wanted Jesus to “ooh” and “ah” over her labor and make it count for something. It was Martha that displayed immaturity that day, not Mary. Martha was looking for love, but she was looking for it in the wrong place. She was trying to force Jesus to love her, rather than simply turning in to the open arms of love that were right before her. It was not her domestic work that would secure for her the love she so intensely desired. It was being in the presence of Jesus that alone could secure that love for her. In contrast, Mary heard the whisper of wisdom; it came quietly in the deep place inside her heart. ‘Mary, the love you seek can only be found in my presence. Don’t worry about feeding me. Instead come and let me feed you.’ Mary heard the whisper and listened carefully to it. Mary made a mature choice. Instead of looking for love in all the wrong places, she began to look for it where it was – within her own self. She chose to listen to the need of her own heart rather than her sister’s compulsiveness. She ignored the other voice that surely was present in her--the voice that seems etched in us all--the voice that tells us we must prove that we are worthy of love. She knew she was worthy and simply took her place in God’s presence. And there in the presence of the teacher of heavenly wisdom, she tasted the treasure house of holy images that he gave her. For Mary there was
In addition to love, we also need time in order to mature. The Latin word maturus actually means to become ripe, and ripening is a process – it’s time-dependent – we just can’t force it to happen in our lives as I tried to do when I was young. We all know that it is not merely chronological age that brings us to maturity. But, the passage of time is critical. Time works on the fibers of our soul, exposes us to ourselves and our world, helps us distinguish truth from falsehood, reality from pretend promises. It is the continuum of time that makes it possible for us to sort out the good and the evil and to have the razor’s edge understanding of how little separates the two. It is time that leads us to the place of wisdom – the place of vision – the place of holy love. As Cervantes wrote, “Time ripens all things – no man is born wise.” When we look at our own lives, it’s easy to see how rarely we listen to that voice of wisdom that reminds us that we do not need to prove our worthiness in order to be loved and we fail to give ourselves to time – to the ‘ripening’ process. All of my frantic activity to try to grow up was really nothing more than feeling that I had to prove myself in order to be worthy of love, and to do it without the gift of time’s gentle chiseling. What I really needed to do was to turn away from all the places that promised but did not deliver love, and simply go where love was – into the heart of God. The truth is that when we find our longing for love truly satisfied, we stop stumbling and when we allow time to work her magic on us, we begin to ripen. A soft peach relies on moisture and the warmth of the sun to ripen. Time and love are the moisture and warmth that mature and ripen us. We will still be immature at times--we will look for love in the wrong places. There will be times when we’ll stumble about like clowns on display and wonder why our hearts seem empty and our souls seem flat. We’ll wonder why we seem to be wearing nothing more than a painted face, while our true self lies hidden like a precious gem in the darkest soil of our own soul. And then in a flash, we’ll come to ourselves. We’ll realize that the gem that is in our soul is the love that is there already. We’ll understand that wisdom is doing what Mary did--choosing love for ourselves, choosing to be in the presence of love, accepting that we are worthy of the love of God, that we don’t need to try to become worthy through some specific action or attitude. All we need do is sit at the feet of Jesus and look up. In the precise second we look up, love will bend down.
In the precise second we look up, love will bend down. We will be held in the embrace of wisdom and our immature actions will slip away like clouds passing through a quiet sky. Copyright ©2003 Calvary Episcopal Church Old Testament: Proverbs 9:1-6
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