“Let your loyalty and good faith
never fail; bind them about your neck, and inscribe them on the tablet of your
memory.” (Proverbs 3.3 NRSV)
In
May 1987 I travelled to Vancouver to attend my first meeting as a member of the
faculty of Vancouver School of Theology.
It was a momentous meeting for me.
It was at this meeting that the faculty accepted the invitation of the
Native Ministry Consortium to enter into a partnership to deliver the Master of
Divinity to people serving in aboriginal communities in a way that respected
aboriginal cultures and ways of learning.
One
of the commitments that the faculty made has been honoured for almost thirty
years despite many ups and downs. We
committed ourselves to continue the partnership until our aboriginal partners
said that our work was done. No fixed
date. No conditions. Just a commitment until the work was
done. Our aboriginal sisters and
brothers asked us to act with loyalty and good faith.
In
Proverbs 3.3 the word ‘loyalty’ is used to translate one of the more important
concepts in the Hebrew scriptures: chesed. In Micah 6.8 chesed is translated as ‘love
kindness’; elsewhere chesed is translated as ‘steadfast love’. However the word is translated, one thing
remains constant: Chesed is a
fundamental quality of God’s relationship with creation. No fixed date. No conditions. Just a commitment until God’s work is done.
I
like to point out to young couples who are preparing for marriage that the contemporary
Anglican wedding liturgy does not use the phrase ‘I do’ at any point in the
service. At the exchange of consents
that occurs prior to the actual wedding vows, the bride and the groom respond,
‘I will’. In two words they make a
commitment to live a life of chesed in their relationship one with the
other. Love, in the Christian sense, is
an active choice made every day, perhaps many times within each day. In other words, the Christian question is not
‘Do you love?’ but ‘Will you love steadfastly?’
Christians
believe in the ‘long haul’. While there
are times that we’ve had to make rapid changes to adapt to circumstances, we
have done so because we are committed to God’s vision for creation. That vision is for the long term and we’re in
it until that vision is achieved. That’s
what chesed means; that’s what being made in the image of God sets in the very
core of our being.
Richard Geoffrey Leggett
Feast of Matthew the Evangelist (transferred)
Richard Geoffrey Leggett
Feast of Matthew the Evangelist (transferred)
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