A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew At that time, Jesus said, father, lord of heaven and of earth, to you, I offer praise. For what you have hidden from the learned and from the clever, you have revealed to the merest child. Father, it is true. You have graciously willed it to be so. Everything has been given over to me by my father.
No one knows the son but the father and no one knows the father but the son and anyone to whom the son wishes to reveal him. Come to me, all you who are weary, and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon your shoulders and learn from me, For I am gentle and humble of heart. Your souls will find rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
And this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Today is the feast of the sacred heart of Jesus. A feast that is found today in the church and if it is found there, it it is found after considerable controversy and difficulty. Anyone who thinks about it for a minute realizes the danger of having a feast called the feast of the sacred heart, where you, detach an organ, a physical biological organ, and hold it up to worship.
That is fraught with danger, obviously. It's easy to concentrate on the little tiny item and forget entirely the background. Some of you may remember there, we used to have pictures of the sacred heart. You don't see them anymore, thank goodness. Because this is a very real danger.
But at last, those who were championing the idea of having a feast of the sacred heart won out. So that we today we have this feast of the sacred heart. Well, is not a feast dedicated to a biological organ. That's one thing it ain't. It's a feast dedicated to the love of God expressed through his divine son for me.
Now notice I said for me, not for society, not for the public, not for the community, but for the individual man and woman, any child of god, older, young, name it. That is what the mind of the church was. You see, we forget this very simple statement of Saint John, that love consists in this, not that we have first loved God, but that he has first loved us. This is a such a simple thing to say, such a terribly simple thing to say. But how how how tremendous that statement is if we take it to heart into our own personal lives and understand that God loves me.
That this unspeakable, omnipotent, omniscient, you you you use all the words you want. Notice, the only way we can talk about God is in superlatives or in negatives. And what are superlatives? They have meaning only in so far as we know something positive in this world. So even those terms, they don't express actually actually the nature of God.
There's no way we can express it. As I say, the very little word IS is is not univocal as regards God. We do the best we can. But the point is that this omnipotent being loves me, me, here and now. Not the innocent little baby that was brought to the altar and dedicated to him, nor the person I was yesterday, nor the person I will be tomorrow, but the person I am today.
God loves me. Now when I said that, something flashed in my memory. It does have something there once in a while, and that's Francis Thompson. You know, he's he had a terribly tragic life, And he left Ireland after he had vainly tried to be a poet and had become a terrible victim, a a hopeless victim of alcohol and drugs, and was dying in the gutter, literally dying in the gutter, literally. When a street walker picked him up, took him home, nursed him back to health.
And out of that experience, plus all that went ahead, Thompson wrote his Hound of Heaven. Hound of Heaven. He likens God to a hound dog. And if any of you have seen a hound pursuing its prey, whether it be a fox or a rabbit or whatever, then you will know how terribly strong that metaphor is. To think of God in terms of the of the dog pursuing me.
Of course, as you know in the poem, God that is never referred to. It's only in the title. But the thing is this, Thompson came out of this. And let me tell you some of the at least speaking for myself, some of the most touching lines that I've ever read are in his sister songs. They are the poems he dedicated to the children of Alice and her husband, Maynell.
And in there, he has a he has a about a dozen lines dedicated to this woman who picked him out of the gutter, took him home, nursed him back to health, and then disappeared from his life. They're they're absolutely touching to me. But the thing is, he Thompson realized that God loved him. Now, of of course, the trouble is easy to think that God loves me on a morning like this when we come into church, when things may be going fairly well, and life is seems to be pretty good. It's easy to love God under those conditions.
And it's easy to say, oh, yes, God, you do indeed love me. When it's terribly difficult to love God is when it's very difficult to even have a sense of his presence. Very difficult. How do I know? Jesus Christ knew it in the garden of Gethsemane.
When he felt that god had abandoned him. And then on the cross, he says it. The son of god on the cross says, my god, my god, why have you abandoned me? Christ said that. So let us remember that when we feel like saying it, go ahead and say it because that's the way it does appear.
Some people get terribly clobbered. Some people more than other people. This is a fact of history. A lot of the old testament is written about it. But what do we do when we feel that way?
Then what that that that that when the father's thing from my mind is to think of god. And if I think of him, I think of him as my enemy. Why have you abandoned me? Christ his son said that on the cross. You see the this is where the crunch is.
And yet, it's in those moments that we are called upon to be most truly lovers of God. And I think a great help there is to realize that God does love me. It's it's not that I can understand. It's not that I can explain the situation. It's not that I can make sense out of the situation.
Because as far as I'm concerned, the situation is irrational. It's crazy. Look at Job. It makes no sense. But am I God?
How do I know what makes sense and what makes no sense or nonsense from God's point of view? And so I'm not in the least minimizing these problems. They're extremely real. And Christ was very real. And notice in this text today how the emphasis is upon God's love for me, but at the same time bearing his yoke.
Yoke, y o k e. A lot of people have never even seen a yoke. But when you see one, you'll know what a yoke is. Try to carry it on your shoulders, and that becomes the test. Christ says, if you take up my yoke and if you carry my yoke, then you will find it sweet and my burden light.
But keep your eye on those pronouns. My yolk, my birth, sweet and light. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.