Acts 10:44-48

While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.

John 15:9-17

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 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. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

This week I saw a picture of a guy in a swimming pool.  He was up to his neck in water BUT, he was also pouring a bottle of water over his head to cool down.  Literally up to his neck in water, he was trying to refresh himself by pouring a little, tiny, 12 oz. bottle of water over his head!  The water was streaming down his face in little rivulets but it never hit his shoulders…. BECAUSE HIS SHOULDERS WERE UNDER WATER!  

You might laugh at that, and you probably should.  It’s literally swimming in irony.  But here’s the thing:  I think that’s EXACTLY how we all-too-often think about God’s love.  We know God’s love is amazing and powerful and refreshing and wondrous.  SO, we all-too-often assume it must be something in desperately short supply.  The world tells us valuable things are always in short supply, SO this valuable thing MUST be something that we’ll need to work and worry and think and pray about in order to get and feel lucky to have, in even a tiny amount that might fit in a tiny, little-bitty container… like water in a 12 oz. bottle.  We ASSUME God's love is this rare, scarce thing when the REALITY is that you, me and all of creation… we’re literally SWIMMING in it!  Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and mystic says, “We cannot ATTAIN the presence God, because we’re already, totally IN the presence of God.  What’s absent, is AWARENESS.”  Like fish swimming in water, you and I, and all of creation… we SWIM in the presence and love of God.  We breathe in God’s love with each breath, we are immersed in God’s presence with each moment of our being. 

In that lesson from the Book of Acts, you see the way God’s love functions.  God’s love isn’t small and isn't contained!  It doesn’t wait for Peter to be done blathering on with his sermon or anything else for that matter.  God’s Spirit doesn’t wait to be called or invoked or for just the right, human created rite.  God’s Spirit FALLS!  BAM!  On EVERYONE!  Like a deluge bursting through a broken dam, God’s Spirit FALLS!  

To Peter’s credit, THAT did get his attention and he stopped.  Stopped talking, stopped preaching, just stopped.  And he noticed.  He saw.  He was able, in that moment, to abide in the love of God which had FALLEN on that crowd.  And in that moment of abiding, he understood that it is not us who choose God... it is God who has already chosen us!  ALL of us!  Who are we to limit the waters of Baptism... the deluge of God’s love!?  And clearly no containers with labels like “Jew” or “Gentile” (or any other label for that matter) will contain the flood of God’s love either!  God’s love FALLS!  Full force... on you, me and on all of creation! 

That’s what Jesus was trying to get the disciples to see in the Gospel lesson.  He was trying to get them to stop frantically scrambling for just a tiny, small, teeny-weenie 12 oz. bottle of God’s love…. something that they might snatch and fight and keep to themselves for those times when they were running low.  Jesus was trying to get them to stop… to abide… to realize that what they were looking for… what they assumed only came in a limited, particular, tiny, hard-to-come-by container was actually the stuff in which they had always been swimming!  The fact was, that the Love they were looking for… the presence of God they were longing for… it was the exact same stuff they had ALWAYS been immersed in from before they were even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes.  

Jesus is still trying, even today, to get his disciples to do the exact same thing.  To stop.  For just a moment… stop.  Stop searching, stop running, stop frantically working.  Stop figuring, stop calculating, and stop theologizing.  Stop racing, stop strategizing, stop preaching… and just for a moment… not forever, because none of that stuff is intrinsically bad… but just for a moment… Jesus is asking us to stop everything… and notice… to stop everything and abide... abide in God’s love.  To be still and know.  To listen, and hear that still, small voice.  To be conscious of your next breath and know, that the Holy Spirit is in that breath and in every breath that miraculously happens without you noticing.  Jesus is asking us, for just…one…moment to STOP… to stop and notice that the love we seek… the belonging we seek… the peace, joy and the contentment we desperately seek… the stuff that the world would have you believe is so rare, so limited, and so small that it could only fill something little like a 12 oz. bottle... THAT stuff is actually the very stuff in which you and me and all of creation lives and moves and has it's being.   

Jesus knew, among many things, that enormity of God’s love is part of what makes it so hard for those disciples then, and us disciples now, to do that… to notice… to abide.  Awareness of God’s love, Jesus tells his disciples, will likely take some practice and the way we practice being aware of God’s love for us, is by loving the people around us... not with a sentimental love, but with a love that drives us to do what’s in the other’s best interest and by living lives of gratitude, compassion and generosity.  May we, like Peter, stop.  Stop and notice, how the Holy Spirit has fallen on us and all of creation and by loving our neighbor a little more each day, live into the realization that we’ve all been swimming in God’s infinite love all along!  Amen.