The 6th Sunday of Easter - God's Attachment to Us and Ours to God

In Time magazine this week, one of the long articles discussed a currently popular theory of parenting called “attachment parenting.” A physician and his wife, Dr. Bill and Martha Sears have raised eight children, including one with Down syndrome and one adopted child.  They have written a book about “attachment parenting” that promotes raising children in a way to maximize a parent's (usually a mother's) time and physical contact with a child and to meet an infant's needs in such a way as to minimize his or her crying.

Attachment theory has a much longer history than this book, of course.  In the latter half of the 20^th century psychologists conducted carefully designed studies and found what they described as different patterns of attachments in toddlers. These patterns included “secure” attachment  and various forms of “anxious” attachment between the primary caregiver and the child.  According to specialists in human development, parents should care about the quality of their attachment to their children, because it may strongly affect the child's sense of self and how the child carries out relationships with others.

Having become Jacob's grandmother about 10 months ago, I have been both participant and observer in activities designed to promote attachment.  As all of you know who have been caretakers of children, even for brief periods, attachment behavior comes not only from the caregiver to the child, but also from the child toward the caregiver.  Ethologists claim that animals, including humans, are biologically programmed to seek proximity with caregivers.  This past week I heard a wonderful story about a daughter of the rector of St. James, Millcreek, in the early part of the 20^th century.  On the way to church, she rescued a baby hawk that had fallen from the nest and placed it under her hat.  She thought no one had seen her, so she simply kept her hat on all day.  Finally, later in the day, her mother demanded she take off the hat and let the bird out.  The hawk, despite being released, appeared to have become “attached” to her. The hawk behaved as a “pet” by continuing to interact with her out-of-doors.

When we hear readings from scripture talking about “abiding in love” and “loving one another” within the community of Jesus' and his disciples, we can learn something about the ideal of divine-human attachment and the human to human attachment that flows from it.  Attachment means nothing unless is becomes operational.  Attachment gains its power from the interactions that occur in the relationship between the person who seeks attachment and the person who is sought.

Our scripture tells us God's love for us becomes operational in God's choosing us, in God's taking on our flesh in Jesus, and God's offering God's self in Jesus to defeat the power of evil and death. God's love does not arise from a feeling, but from the will to act in a way that puts our well-being first.  Our love for each other should contain the same character of selflessness as God's love for us does.

Jesus told his disciples, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. . . .You did not choose me, I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. . .”  The Greek verb for “last” as in “fruit that will last” is the same as the Greek verb for “abide.” The attachment that Jesus describes—abiding in him—can only be made real if it is through love—with love as its fruit.

Julian of Norwich [a town in England] was a nun who lived in the latter half of the 14^th century in a cell attached to the church there. When she was thirty, she became gravely ill, nearly dying.  During a period of several days, she had a number of visions of Jesus—both visual and aural.  She spent the rest of her life pondering the meaning of the visions and wrote a book about what she had come to understand. It has been entitled, “Revelations of Divine Love.” 

Julian believed God wants to be attached to us just as good parents and loving family members may be attached to us.  In Chapter 58 she wrote: “In our making, God, Almighty, is our Nature’s Father; and God, All-Wisdom, is our Nature’s Mother; with the Love and the Goodness of the Holy Ghost: which is all one God, one Lord. And in the knitting and the oneing He is our Very, True Spouse, and we His loved Wife, His Fair Maiden: with which Wife He is never displeased. For He saith: I love thee and thou lovest me, and our love shall never be disparted in two.”

She concludes her book with these reflections: “From that time that it was shewed I desired oftentimes to learn what was our Lord’s meaning. And fifteen years after, and more, I was answered in ghostly [spiritual] understanding, saying thus: Wouldst thou learn thy Lord’s meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee?Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord’s meaning.”

On this Mother's Day Sunday we would do well to look to Julian's broad understanding of God as being both Mother and Father—and loving Spouse!  What should our response to this idealization of human attachments as a way of understanding God? None of us—not even Dr. Bill and Martha Sears—can approach the deep and authentic attachment in divine love that God offers us.  We are bid to abide in God's love and—this is the really difficult part—to show that same sort of love in our relationships with others: to care deeply about their well-being, to act toward everyone we encounter in our lives as people worthy of our respect.

Does this remind us of the final questions of our Baptismal Covenant: “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?   Will you strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being?”  Together, quietly, but strongly, let us accept God's invitation to abide in the divine love and show this sort of love in all our relationships. Our answer to these questions is, of course, “ I will, with God's help.”