Sept. 6, 2015

He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, because we are members of his body. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself (from Ephesians 5) Sex is a sacrament of unity Being “one flesh” is not just a metaphor – people really are joined together, knit together.

Our shared glory with all humanity

Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner…. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.’ Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.

Celebration of the depth of unity that could be experienced regardless of ethnicity or background or gender Both spiritual and very real/practical Communion is the sacrament of unity – it’s the act that declares these people, sharing my table (i.e. Christ’s table) are now family – bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh

When Jesus said “Love your neighbour as yourself” he meant everyone (as the Good Samaritan made clear) From marriage to family to religious group to humanity Jeremy Rifkin’s “Empathic Civilisation” -

Marriage Family Religious Group Nation Humanity

The unity of humanity Participating in darkness (violence, exploitation) Participating in light (love, empathy Participating in darkness is denying our shared humanity Participating in light grows out of our shared humanity

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream.

Picture of drowned Syrian boy (Breaks through our denial of our shared humanity – our emotional response is so visceral, so real, that we can’t minimize the suffering being experienced.) Shared celebration is an experience of unity, but shared suffering goes deeper. It’s when we suffer that we most need to know that we are not alone

Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to understand it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.... Things flow and are indirectly linked together, and if you push here, something will move at the other end of the world. If you strike here, something somewhere will wince; if you sin here, something somewhere will suffer.

If sex is the sacrament of unity in marriage and communion is the sacrament of unity in church, what is our sacrament of unity with the world?

We know we’re doing it right when our feeling of connectedness increases with those we’re closest to at the same time as our connectedness with those who are very different or even our enemies. “love our neighbour as ourselves” Of “love everyone (incl enemies) as our own people as ourselves”

We all experience fundamental aloneness despite all these levels of shared unity Probably one of the necessary costs (along with the possibility of evil) if we are to experience the gift of individual freedom along with our shared humanity But if we can experience, believe in, and trust our shared, image-of-God humanity, then we can overcome our aloneness and the temptation of evil and choose love instead.