Where to go when we can't love enough

The message just before this one was for the good people at Atria Southpoint Walk in Durham, NC, but it was via Zoom. This message was the first one in person after COVID pandemic closures and everyone was just so happy to be together! The people at Atria, an independent living facility, had been through a particularly tough time with isolation and sorrow and disappointment. Coming out of that pain made this day all the more wonderful. 

The three texts for the day are:

Acts 10:44-48

1 John 5:1-6

John 15:9-17

Holy Spirit, come to us through the distance. Bridge the gaps. Fill us with your love and connection. Amen.

Good morning! I bring you greetings from Pastor Amy and Pastor Ben, Pastor Betty and Pastor Tom, and from Pastor Rachel who has not been here before but will be leading worship next week. 

Every single one of us was SO EXCITED when Eileen called and invited us back to worship. For a moment we thought we would be there in person so it was a little disappointing to learn that we can’t do that yet. But here we are, connected once again via  Zoom. And all six of us are so, so happy to have this way of being with you.

And do you know why? It isn’t because we are being paid the big bucks to be here. This is a volunteer gig and we do it for only one reason. Our texts today are soaked in this reason. 14 times it occurs! 

Anybody care to guess what word is in the text 14 times? 

The word is LOVE.

We love you. We have missed you, and there is great rejoicing that we are able to be back and will soon (we hope) be able to be with you in person.

LOVE.

A preacher could spend a lifetime on that topic and never begin to scratch the surface because love, like God, is infinite. Love does not fail. And since God IS love – we know that God is infinite and will not fail. We like to say it this way:

God loves you.

God loves me.

Always, not matter what or where, no matter how we behave or misbehave.

God loves each of us and the way that God loves is Jesus-style.

Jesus, who came to earth to show us what it looks like to love each other. To show us how God created us to love and be loved.

In fact, in our Gospel today Jesus explicitly says… “Do you want to know how to love? Here’s how. Live like I lived!”

Jesus was telling his friends that he would LITERALLY love them to death. That his insistence on and capacity to love would ultimately lead to his death. And in the process Jesus was telling his friends (and us) that if we are going to be Jesus-followers then we will be called to love.

We don’t have to be perfect (which is good, because as you well know we are not perfect.)

We cannot save ourselves.

We can’t save anyone else.

The best – the literal, absolute best we can do – is to love each other.

Not because of who WE are but because of who GOD is. The God that is revealed to us in Jesus.

It’s in our second reading, too: Believing in Jesus is being a child of God.

We believe things all the time: it will be hot in July, it will get dark tonight. And for me, and maybe for you, that’s how we believe in God. It is such an assumed part of us that if someone asks “do you love God?” we say yes as quickly as we do if someone asks “will it get dark tonight?” And it will seem like just as silly of a question.

But sometimes it’s harder that that. Because, well, believing stuff puts demands on us. If I know it will be hot in July I have to act on that. Like I need to know that shipping chocolate in July is a dangerous thing. That putting crayons in the attic during July is a risk. 

And as easy and natural as it can be to say we believe in God, are we always ready and willing to do what that belief demands of us?

If I say that I am following Jesus, and if I believe that Jesus is God, and that God is love, and that I am called to love… wow. It gets real – real fast!

Like when the crack addict shows up on the church step. Can I love them? God does.

Or when a self-proclaimed atheist says things that get under my skin… can I love them? God does.

Or when a homeless smelly person peers at me from the median at the traffic light… can I love them? God does.

Ok, yeah. But what about the woman who irritates me by breathing and when she walks into the room I want to run and hide? Do I have to love her? Well,  yes, but only if I say I want to follow Jesus.

OR the man who for whatever reason can’t listen to anybody else but always has to have the loudest voice and last word, I have to love HIM TOO? Yep. If I say I am following Jesus. 

Because God loves each of us:  completely, utterly, unconditionally. 

And sometimes I don’t like following in that path, y’know?

Loving is not for wimps.

But here is the completely mind-blowing part: There is nothing legalistic about loving. It is not actually a law. It is, in fact, kind of an anti-law. 

We love, and when we get it wrong (because you know how it goes – OF COURSE we are going to get it wrong!) God loves each of us enough to fill the gaps that we leave in our wake. God does not punish us, God says... OH YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH LOVE? WELL HERE IS MORE! I HAVE PLENTY! 

When we realize that God loves us, we are free to love as much as we can, knowing that Jesus came and took care of what we cannot do. Jesus fulfilled the law. Jesus took on the death that would be ours (if we could be perfect enough) and that death did not stick. 

In the Resurrection we see that love – the loving way that Jesus lived – really is the way to complete life. And not just in eternity after we die!

Love is the way to a more complete life right now.

Loving the people we cannot stand on our own. In fact, even thinking “ah, I must love you” can change everything.

Loving the people who are least lovable: the confused and unclean, the judgey lady and the mansplaining man. We can love them. In fact, that is our primary duty in life.

To love each other.

And when we can’t do it on our own, THAT is when we turn to Jesus and know that we have the freedom to start over, to try again. Because in living the perfect life of love, dying a normal human death, but then not being held by death – that is the best and only proof I need that a life of love is the only way to go. When we turn to God to receive more from the infinite supply of love that is God.

So here we are, deep into the Easter season. We know this:

CHRIST IS RISEN!

We have the ultimate freedom because of it. Not freedom to do as we want, oh no. Our ultimate freedom allows us to do something even better:

Put away our fear and love each other through thick and thin.

Amen.

Loving in the field

I've been preaching every few weeks but life has come roaring alongside me and I haven't posted the messages as regularly as I would like. So... today is the day to post all those back messages! Because tomorrow is the day I go to Ethiopia to visit an orphanage, visit families that I support through Hawassa Hope, and open myself up to being changed. Not sure how I will be changed ... but we will see. And these might be my last "before" messages. 

The texts for this message, offered to the beloveds at Atria Southpoint Walk in Durham, NC, are Psalm 23 and 1 John 3:16-24

Come Holy Spirit. Tune our ears, open our hearts, grow us to be more like Jesus. Amen

The Lord is my shepherd.

I really love the idea of having a shepherd. I had a colleague once – when I knew him he had become a prominent chemist working on some of the biggest problems of our time. But when he was a boy he was a shepherd, watching his family’s sheep.

Gabriel, my colleague, made shepherding sound kind of dull:
* Sitting around
* Letting the sheep do whatever
* Swooping in when there was trouble (which, apparently, was not that often)

It is a one-sided image where the sheep don’t have any responsibilities, and the shepherd doesn’t do much until there is big trouble.

And when we look at Psalm 23, it also seems pretty one-sided, too, except the shepherd in Psalm 23 is not aloof. The shepherd in Psalm 23 is intimately involved with the life of the sheep.

Not just chasing off enemies but having a feast. Celebrating the sheep. Celebrating me!

But you know what is still missing? Any kind of response from the sheep. It’s all about the shepherd, not about the sheep. Not about me.

And I will confess, it sounds like a pretty awesome thing to me! I do not have to do anything for God to love me, protect me, celebrate me. It’s all about God.

In fact, the Old Testament is full of God loving human beings in ways that certainly don’t make sense:  rescuing stubborn people, responding to their wants and needs, and from the beginning creation, there is a pattern in which the people wander away, and God responds with a tremendous blessing.

Over and over we see it:
* Creation
* Fall
* Noah and the Flood
* The promise of the rainbow
* The Babylonian captivity
* Some of the greatest, grandest, most beautiful promises yet

Over and over. The people wander away, and God calls them back.

In fact, with Abraham God made the covenant from which the people of Israel grew… and asked nothing in return from Abraham. The covenant was all on God’s side. That’s how it goes through the whole Old Testament.

But then – along comes Jesus!

Jesus, who could live the way people were intended to live all along.

And for the first time we get to see exactly what the optimal human life looks like. Instead of us merely wandering around until God delivers another blessing, Jesus shows us what being human is intended to be.

The optimal human life looks… like the life Jesus lived. A life that was without blemish. A life full of doing things.

I think that our second text, the words from 1 John, are talking about just that, about how Jesus was doing all that.

No longer are we only wanderers with a doting, loving God watching out for us. 

Now we see how we can respond!

Not just by saying stuff, but by doing stuff.

TO BE CLEAR – I am not saying that we will do things in order to deserve God’s shepherding. There are millennia of evidence that we do not have to do anything to deserve God’s love. God shows up over and over and we do not have to do anything to deserve and receive it.

But when we receive all those marvelous blessings we want to respond. It’s very normal. I cannot say how many clients of the Parktown Food Hub as “can I come help? How do I donate?” Not that they often do help, or donate, but they want to – that is the impulse and I always take it seriously. Sometimes I say “pay it forward – share what you have been given” and I think sometimes they do. And I hope they remember the times they could give as well as the times they could receive. 

And when it comes to us and God and Jesus, we want to respond because we have a shepherd who will care for us. We no longer have to worry if we do it wrong. We don’t have to worry WHEN we do it wrong. We can always start anew, loving in the way of Jesus.

The way of Jesus, where Jesus hangs out with people who are scorned by society.

The way of Jesus, where Jesus challenges the religious order so much that that religious order eventually killed him.

An opportunity to give to other people, not just the one who was generous to us.

We see Jesus loving and caring, not choosing himself over others
     but also not neglecting his own needs.
      Showing the perfect balance between working and resting.

We see Jesus directing anger at those who could have loved and helped others who were in need but instead chose to prioritize themselves over those in need.

We see that same Jesus direction compassion and care to those with no power and who were therefore forced to rely on the care and compassion of others – care and compassion that were often in short supply…

Except when Jesus was around.

And so, says John in this letter, we do not have to condemn ourselves or others.

Jesus loved so well that when the establishment DID kill him, the death did not stick. He was human, he did die… but as the only human who managed to live the life of pure and unfailing love, the death did not hold.

Jesus proved once and LITERALLY for all that a life of love is the life that will never fail.

We simply cannot live love like Jesus did… but we can turn our face towards Jesus.

Because you see, if we believe that the way of Jesus is the way of life that cannot be tainted by death, then we do not have to fear.

We can be bold before God. We can be bold in loving others in crazy radical ways, because we know that love never fails.


Now… there is one more thing:

Loving is often easier SAID than DONE…
But we are not called to TALK love, we are called to DO love.

And sometimes… we just don’t know what to do.

Oh of course, sometimes it’s easy! Even if we do not always like it, and we do not always want to do it, it is in fact easy to know that if I have resources and others do not, I can share generously. Not just a crumb off the edge of the table, but a feast. That sharing is loving, and God promises that loving – real loving – too much is just not a thing. We cannot love too much.

When the Parktown Food Hub was shiny and new we got a lot of questions like 

How do you know when somebody is REALLY in need?

And our answer, the answer we arrived at after prayer and thought and studying Jesus, is

They will tell us.

But what if they lie?

We have not seen that. Over 100,000 people have received food from the Parktown Food Hub in the last 18 months and people just do not lie – at least not that much.

But what if they do?

Then it is just not our problem. We just move on to helping the next person.

That’s the easy part.

But sometimes it is not so clear cut:

For example, some of our people receive food by appointment and when they don’t show up they will sometimes call and ask if they can come at a different time. That’s hard for us – we have a small staff, not many hours, and we simply cannot offer individual, customized times for every person who needs food.

BUT… we do have some capacity to help.

Last week a woman called and said she could not make her appointment because she had had a wreck on highway 40 as she was driving to pick up her food.  What to do?

It was pretty clear that her need for grace – for a customized appointment – was more important than our rules regarding no shows. And so we offered her an alternate appointment a couple of days later when she had settled things with her car a bit. She came by and showed us the damage and told us the story and it was clear we had loved well.

But another time a man did not show up. He did not call to let us know. He just didn’t want to come out at his appointed time. And in that case, our need to care for our staff and volunteers was greater so we put him on a waiting list for a future time. And when he missed future pickups, we moved him to another food program that does not require appointments. After several months it was clear we had chosen well – we had loved well as the man came when he could and we were not troubled by his missed appointments.

The thing is, ignoring our own needs is not following Jesus. 

It is not demonstrating the belief that the way Jesus lived is the best way – the way of love – the way of God. 

It is hard to find the balance that Jesus did but we can keep seeking to follow the example of Jesus.

An example of ACTION and TRUTH

Following in the steps of Jesus – doing our best to live like Jesus lived 

Believing in Jesus and the way Jesus loved.

Responding to the shepherd who has always cared for us and always will

Living a life of love because, thanks to Jesus, there is no reason not to.

Amen