Our readings from Scripture this morning consist of two passages which
at first glance might seem to have nothing to do with each other.
The first one we heard Mary Crawford read for us contains the beautiful
and familiar words of First Corinthians about love. And the next,
from the gospel of Luke, has Jesus nearly being thrown off a cliff.
In the words of the old Tina Turner song, we might ask: “What’s
love got to do with it?” I hope to answer her question this
morning as we venture into Jesus’ message and ministry. What’s
love got to do with it? Everything. Maybe much more than we think.
Surely much more than we are often comfortable with. Love. God’s
love. A love with a very long trajectory and an astonishingly wide
reach.
Now
the reading from First Corinthians is a passage we love to love. Often
when couples are planning their wedding, they request these words.
“You know,” they say to me, “that one about love.”
And we hear it and get a little misty-eyed in the context of two persons
declaring their love for one another, and those of us who have been
at it for awhile pray that they will grow into the fullness of its
depth and its joy. “Love is patient, love is kind, love is not
envious or boastful or rude. It does not insist on its own way, it
is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing,
but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things….”
It’s
hard enough to live out in marriage, isn’t it, or in our families,
or with our friends, or in the church? It’s hard enough to live
it out with people we’ve pledged to love. As we baptize a new
baby this morning at the second service, we are acknowledging a new
partner in this community of love, a baby boy given life by God’s
love, to be nurtured in God’s love by God’s people, the
church.
As
we commission persons from our congregation to take the sacrament
of Holy Communion out to those who cannot be physically present to
receive it in worship on a Sunday morning, we are saying that the
very symbols of Christ’s love for us should be shared beyond
the walls so that the love binding us to one another should be remembered
and renewed, enfleshed in those who take it out and in those who receive.
As
the Rev. Samuel Lloyd, Dean of the National Cathedral in Washington,
D.C., recently said: “The church is the one place where we can
know we are loved completely, and that this love will not stop seeking
to break down the walls that divide us, even until the end of time.
There is nothing, nothing, that the world, or you and I, need more
than that love.”
What’s
love got to do with it? Everything.
But
now, what in the world is happening to Jesus in this story from Luke?
He has barely begun his ministry. He had started to teach and was
being praised by everyone, Luke says. And then that day, he stood
in the synagogue and read from the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me…” to
do what? “To bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release
to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind to let the oppressed
go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And
the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon him. So far so good.
But
he just can’t seem to leave well enough alone. If he’d
gone back to his seat at that point, he probably would have been OK.
But he continues on, wanting to make explicit what this anointing
with God’s love is going to mean, how it’s going to push
them way beyond where they might have ever wanted to go, beyond the
edge of their established community--and as we see, it nearly gets
him hurled off the cliff.
We
might miss his point and surely its power if we’re not as up
on our Bible as we might wish. So those stories about Elijah and Elisha
and the widow and the leper might just fly right past us like words
of Scripture can sometimes do. We know it must be important because
it’s in the Bible but we really don’t have any idea what
it’s about. Well, we need to know, because it’s all about
love, God’s love, and it’s really pretty wonderful.
So
here’s a little refresher course, because Jesus first audience
knew their Bible and got his point immediately. And we need to get
it, too.
Jesus
is telling us here something about himself and about prophets and
about God’s love. Elijah and Elisha were both prophets and they
also had been anointed, just like Jesus, to speak for God. And we
know enough to know that prophets often get in trouble because God
has them say things that no one wants to hear. Sure enough. Elijah
was rejected by the people, so God sent him to a Gentile woman, a
widow, someone clearly outside the in group, as a way of signaling
that God’s love extended outside the in-group, too. Same with
Elisha. God sent him to help a leprous Syrian soldier rather than
healing those in Israel afflicted with leprosy. Same message. God’s
love is bigger than you think. God’s love extends to all “those
people,” however you define “those people,” the
ones outside the circle, the ones we write off, the ones we deem expendable.
The ones everyone loves to hate.
Jesus
didn’t have to go on and say: “And I’m a prophet,
too. And I’m bringing the same message.” They got his
point. And it infuriated them. And they chased him out of town, ready
to hurl him off a cliff. God’s love is still so often bigger
than what we’re willing to accept or embrace. And though we
might not fess up to wanting to throw Jesus off a cliff, I suspect
that we find other less visible ways of rejecting or ignoring his
prophetic teachings about love.
The
British historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee, who worked for the Intelligence
department of the British Foreign Office during World War I and served
as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 once said: "Love
is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and
good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first
hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have
the last word."
But,
it’s so very hard and we fail so often. Oh how this love is
needed in this world of ours, a world increasingly divided by what
is called “localism” or “tribalism.” We’re
going backwards on this one at a rapid pace. We’re drawing lines
and building fences and keeping people out. All over the globe we’re
hunkering down in smaller and smaller units of ethnic and tribal allegiance,
at odds with all others.
In
the Basque region of northern Spain, the recent truce has failed,
and people are again fearing violence. Here in North Carolina, at
the Quaker Guilford College, students and faculty were shocked last
week at a fight which broke out in which members of the football team
allegedly beat up three Palestinian students. The violence unleashed
in Iraq pits Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds in seemingly endless conflict.
And in Rwanda, even the Methodist Church is now going through a horrendously
painful process of truthtelling as it comes to terms with the fact
that Methodist Hutus took part in the genocide of Tutsis.
God
holds us to a higher standard in this world and love has everything
to do with it. In every age, God anoints prophets to remind us of
the message that rings clear over and over again through the Scriptures
that God intends for the people of God to become a universal, inclusive
community representing God’s love and acceptance for all. The
psalmist said it: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that
is in it, the world, and all who live in it.” The First Epistle
of John assures us, saying: “.. perfect love casts out fear…we
love because God first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God’
and hate their brother or sisters are liars; for those who do not
love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom
they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those
who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”
This
is a hard word, far from the misty-eyed sentimentality often associated
with Paul’s words to the Corinthians. And those who speak of
this sort of love in any age run the risk of being run out of town
and right up to the edge of the cliff.
But
I am persuaded that it is God’s true word for us. It is at the
heart of Jesus’ message and his whole reason for being among
us. And if now we see in mirror but dimly, in the fullness of God’s
time and in the fullness of God’s love, we shall see face to
face. If now we know only in part, then we shall know fully. For faith,
hope and love abide, and the greatest of these is love.
May
God help us, and hold us and anoint us to witness to his love.
©Patricia
Farris, 2007. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
First
United Methodist Church
1008 Eleventh Street
Santa Monica, CA 90403
www.santamonicaumc.org
(310) 393-8258
When
God's Love is Bigger