Let It Rain

Bishop Andrew Dietsche, the new Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, was visiting a church I attended yesterday. The message he gave confirmed something that I had written here a few days ago in my message titled "A Friend In Need." I asked him if I could quote him here because I thought it was important that people who are reading my words know that it’s not just crazy Jannie who is writing about God’s love and forgiveness, but that it’s coming from the leader of the Episcopal Church here in New York as well. He spoke on John 13 and the last supper, when Jesus washes the disciples' feet, and about God’s commandments to us. When he started to speak, I started to thank God, because through Bishop Dietsche's message He confirmed what I had said here and added more to it for me to share now. It's not only other people who I worry might think I'm crazy -  sometimes I wonder myself if I am really hearing from God. He speaks so clearly, but in my weak moments I think maybe it's just something I want to believe, and then the confirmation comes, and in such powerful way that I know it's His voice and His alone, and that I'm sharing an important message that He wants me to share.

I had been speaking about obedience, and the words that we use in church and Christian circles that sometimes people have a hard time accepting because they sound like something authority figures have said to us that we might not necessarily want to follow because of our experiences with people who have been in authority over us. Bishop Dietsche spoke about commandments in the same way – that when we hear the word "Commandment," we think of someone in authority telling us what to do, and it makes it something that we don’t want to do. He also said that he was bothered by the way that the commandments are written – that they are written in the negative, “Thou shalt not . . .” over and over again. It is a list of things we shouldn’t do, and so in a very human rebellion against authority, we could feel somehow that we want to do them, even though they are all things that it would be healthier for us not to do.

He then started to talk about Jesus at the last supper, and set the scene for us about the moment when Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment, John 13:34, "A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." He connected this to the message Jesus gives about the greatest commandments of all from Luke 10:27, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself," and how these two commandments, if we fulfill them, will fulfill all the others. In Bishop Dietsche’s words, "If you love your neighbor, you won’t steal from them, if you love your neighbor, you won’t lie to them." He also spoke about the context of Jesus giving us the commandment to love – that it was just after Judas left to betray him to the Roman soldiers. Jesus sent him away to do what he knew Judas was going to do, and yet still He loved him. At the same time, Jesus was talking about how Peter would betray Him, and yet He still loved Peter, even in that moment. And then the following day while He was on the Cross, He forgave and loved the world that had sent Him to the Cross. It was a powerful message from such a sweet heart of a man. Bishop Dietsche has a heart for the earth and for creation, for the people he serves in the communities who are in need in many ways. This message was given so simply and easily, it was from the heart and went straight to my heart.

There are people in my life who are easy to love. Friends and people I meet who I connect with, people who “speak my language, “ even if their language is not my own, even if we have difficulty translating words, there is an unspoken language that connects us in love. But there are always people who it is difficult to love, people who have caused pain or harm, or have done things that have caused trouble in my life or threaten to. It is at those times when I am asking God for vengeance that He says to forgive and pray for, and I have to ask for His help because in my own strength I can’t do it. There have been times that I have felt hatred in my heart, a desire for harm to come to a person who has harmed me or someone I love. I know at those times I have to go before God – He knows what I am thinking, so there is no way that I can hide those feelings from Him. I have to bring them before Him and in all honesty I tell Him that though I know those feelings are not of Him, I still have them and I don’t know how to change that. How do I pray for someone who is cursing me? How do I find it in my heart to love someone who treats me with contempt? How can I be kind when someone is being cruel? How can I open my heart to someone who is being heartless?

Bishop Dietsche talked about this with a similar message that I had shared here, and in His wonderfully kind and beautifully simple way he added something deeper. He said that when we follow Jesus and accept His commandment to love, we start to understand that it is not the easy love of romance or of liking a friend that He is asking us for. He is asking us for a more difficult kind of love to feel, the love that He felt for Judas, for Peter, and that He feels for all of us even at those times when we are walking the furthest away from Him. When we are able to love in the way that God loves, when we allow Him to work in our hearts, Jesus tells us in John 13:35, "By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another." And it is that love that is the light that can light up the world and bring heaven closer here on earth. It is that love that can help us to wash each other's feet and that connects us in a profound way to people who we might otherwise exclude.

Yesterday I wrote about watching the flood gates of Heaven open and pour down a blessing, and I ended my message with the words, “let it rain.” I almost titled the message after that same Eric Clapton song, and all the way home today I had it in my head.

The rain is falling through the mist of sorrow that surrounded me

The sun could never thaw away the bliss that lays around me

Let it rain, let it rain, let your love rain down on me

I know Eric Clapton’s music so well. One of my older brothers was a rock guitarist, and I grew up with some of the best rock music of all time. There are lyrics we can find to everything now, but it used to be a challenge to learn them just by listening, and my brother used to tease me if I got something wrong so I got into a thing of always getting them right. He used to have all kinds of nicknames for me, but the one I loved the best was little rock and roll. I was certain that the next line was: "My life was like a desert flower burning in the sun," but I looked it up and found out that it was “Her life.” I felt when I saw that word "her," that it really was about me. The Holy Spirit was telling me it was for me. It wasn’t about Eric Clapton, he had written it with several other people. And just as the words I write here can be for anyone, that song can be for us all.

The next line I knew: "Until I found the way to love, it’s harder said than done," but I hadn’t ever thought about that line before, as much as I have loved and sung that song for years. It’s harder said than done – I had never really heard that before the way I did when I looked it up and read those words. It’s not hard, God was telling me – it only seems that way. We can love as He loves, because He’ll help us every step of the way.

In the next line I saw a promise:

Now I know the secret there is nothing that I lack

If I give my love to you, you’ll surely give it back.

There is a popular book called The Secret, and while I don’t have any problem with the idea of a book that encourages people to think positive thoughts, I have a problem with that book because it takes away the idea of a loving God. There is no God to be found in that book because it is all about self-actualization and self-manifestation. Knowing what I know and having had the experiences I have had, taking a loving God out of the picture, taking a Christ who loves us away from us, takes love out of a world that is in desperate need of more love. The secret that I read about when I read those lyrics with the eyes that God gave me to read them said that if I give my love to Him – the you is God. If I give the love that I have in His service and to those He asks me to love, I am giving it to Him. He tells us in Matthew 25:40, “whatever you did for the least of these, so you did for me.” If I do what He asks and am obedient to His commandments, those two top priority commandments to love Him and love my neighbor, there is a promise in those words of that song that He will surely give it back. And when He gives back to us what we have poured out to others, He always multiplies it, pressed down and overflowing, and then we can say, let it rain, let it rain, let it rain, rain, rain.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan