Dance of love
Venerable Joan Clark
John 14:1-14
Space is what keeps the world in balance. Everything, even molecules, have space between them. Space is what defines matter. Without space, individual quantities of matter don’t exist. Our sense of self, our individualism, our sense of community, our sense of reality, our sense of who we are in relationship to others, is all dependent upon space.
You may notice, now that you’ve been in quarantine for about one and a half months, that you are either seeking more or less space, depending upon your situation. Space defines our relationships. Too much of it, and we long to see the people we love. Too little, and we are ready to flee to the hills just for a moment’s alone time. Space is something we take for granted in our lives and in our world. But space requires constant awareness, because space, in reality, is a relational dance that we do with each and every object –and person— in our lives. Depending upon which partner we engage with, the dance looks different.
Ever come across someone who just gets too close into your personal space? Stands too closely to talk to you? If we were cognizant of that before, now we are more than ever aware of how close someone is to us, who is in our space, who has invaded our invisible boundaries. “Social distancing” has brought our awareness of personal space to a new high.
Think about the people in your lives right now. Some may reside together with you in your household, in which case, your personal space has increased. Others, including family members, may reside in other households, in which case, you may be wishing you could see them physically instead of merely online right now.
Space is defined partly by time. Right now, time has slowed down in a sense. We have been accustomed to fast-paced lives in our 21st-century, internet-driven world. Our days were filled with activities, with various types of community, with individual preferences, with lots of choices, with busyness, with travel.
Due to COVID-19, we now are spending our time differently. And our space has changed. The more time has slowed down, the more we become aware of our special changes. No longer can we go out to the movies, sit in a café, play and attend sports, gather for parties. Home is our new hangout. Although we may have loved time online before and lamented the amount of time our children spent doing it, now we are finding, they long to be outside, to see people, even if only at the supermarket.
We talk to those who pass by just to engage with another person. And our families have suddenly been thrust into a pattern that our grandparents must have been familiar with but we have not been –spending evenings gathered around the news, sitting on the deck, playing family games, cooking food and gathering around the dinner table, talking about everything imaginable, doing the gardening, spending intimate time together.
As we spend more time in close proximity to our closest family members –our spouses, children, partners, we find, our relational dynamics are changing. Families are spending time together and getting to know each other in ways we never have done before.
For some, this increase in time may mean, our marriages and families may be drawing closer. For those in conflicted relationships, it may mean, we are forced either to confront issues and resolve them or flee to separate rooms and risk further isolation. We are learning more about each other. We are forced into a shared reality, sheltering against a shared invader, and we are re-learning to value each other in new and surprising ways.
Love has taken on new meaning, as we see each other day after day in confined space. Limiting space however makes the dance of love more challenging too. How can you create space within your household? How can you honour individuality and difference within an increased spacial environment? These are all questions that require loving responses, as we re-learn to respect each other in our family sardine can.
But love isn’t just about confined space, but also about distant space.
In WWII, as young men left their wives and lovers, sisters, and mothers to go to distant shores to fight on behalf of their country, they would often take pictures that they carried close to their hearts of their beloved ones. Without the internet we have today, they were limited to occasional letters and even more occasional visits during their long time away.
Their family members had to spend long weeks and months waiting, hoping they would be alright, longing to see them, biding time until they would come home. When they did, it was cause for celebration. When they couldn’t, people had to mourn without closure, grieve and hold memorials often without a body to view or a hand to hold. Children sometimes only saw their fathers after they reached the age of 4 or 5. Families needed to adjust to new dynamics, and changes from distant to personal space.
In early New Zealand, as European immigrants became the norm, people flocked to take advantage of new opportunities. Working class tradesmen and entrepreneurial spirits launched businesses and companies in towns, and often men would sail ahead of their entire families, so they could get established, find work, prepare a home, and gain resources in order to send for the rest of their family members. Often, they spent months, sometimes years apart. And when they came back together, dynamics changed. In a new country with new laws, new neighbours, new ways of living, and the changes that had taken place in each other, people needed to readjust to living in personal space with new dynamics.
Love is a dance that sometimes requires distance, and sometimes requires close proximity. How well you can dance that dance will reveal how well that relationship can manage through changes and adversity.
Jesus had spent three years in close proximity with his disciples when his death shocked them. He had been ripped away from their sides, and their small community had felt shattered. No longer would he be with them. They had just been in the midst of grief, in the midst of adjusting to a new kind of normal, when Jesus returned.
Jesus’ post resurrection appearances to his disciples required them to think of him in a new way, to readjust to him in ways they were not accustomed. Not only that, he told them, as we see in our scriptures for today, that he was not back to stay, but only here for a brief visit. Soon he would be returning to heaven to sit at the right hand of God. But he would send the Spirit to be their guide. In this way, he told them, he would be with them until the end of the age. But unless he would go, things could not progress.
Jesus told them, he was going away to prepare places for all of them, and when the time would come, they would know how to find him, how to follow him into the realms of eternity.
Like a brief visit from afar that we endure with a confined relative, someone perhaps that we wave to through a window but can’t be close to, Jesus was there, and yet he wasn’t. He was alive, and yet, he couldn’t be with them as he once was.
No longer could he walk with them through the hills of Galilee or sit with them in a boat by the lake, or engage with them in laughter, or meals, or conversation.
And yet, he could. Yet, he would. Not in the way they were accustomed, but in a new kind of way.
Jesus, in the form of the Holy Spirit, would always be with them, guiding them, comforting them, talking with them, infusing them with trust, and courage, and strength. They may not see him in the flesh, but he would be always there with them.
Our discipleship relationship with Jesus is much like the relationships we have with others. It’s a love dance, a very special love dance. When we can’t see Jesus, we can’t touch him, we can’t know physically that he is there, still we can feel the Holy Spirit with us, we can trust that Jesus is merely away for a time, preparing a place, a space for us to be with him in close proximity when the right time comes. In the meantime, we share our love of Jesus with the ones we are close to – with our family, our loved ones, our children, our friends and neighbors. And we let them know he’s there.
For the thing about Jesus is this –He is always there, in our minimal space, in our distances, in our close quarters, and in our communities. He is everywhere we need him to be, even if we can’t see him there.
And while we wait in our homes and in our bubbles, we can know and trust that God is busy constructing a new reality for us. And that when the time is right, we will emerge into it, and adjust to it.
Jesus, in the form of the Holy Spirit, is like extra insurance. He fills our space when it gets to be too much. He creates space for us when we begin to feel confined. When Jesus is part of our space, part of every relational dance, part of our world, part of our spirit. He can show us the way to dance. For Jesus is our dance partner, our home away from home, our destination and our rest.
This Sunday as we celebrate Mother’s Day, may your homes be filled with peace, with music, and most of all, with the most exquisite dance of love. Practice your steps, for someday soon, you can dance not only in your home, but you can take your dance into the world. Your love dance. Your Spirit dance.