“So that they might hurl him off a cliff”. Poor Jesus. They
tried to hurl him off a cliff. Not chastise him, or yell, but throw him off a
cliff? That’s pretty harsh. What did he do to deserve such treatment?
He showed love, and perhaps more challenging, he reminded
the people of God about something they’d forgotten, that God, the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had always shown love, and shown love to
everyone. Elijah was sent, not to the widows in Israel, but to the widow at
Zarephath in Sidon. This was a community in modern-day Lebanon, so Jesus is
saying that not only did God not respond to the Jews, he saved their
sworn enemy. Jesus continues adding that Elisha wasn’t sent to the people of
Israel, God’s chosen, but to the lepers – the unclean people from Syria. God
had sent Elijah and Elisha to the outsiders - the lowest class, to the enemy of
the state, rather than to God’s chosen people.
Put yourself in that situation. Or rather, let’s put
Jesus in ours. We get a new supply preacher named Jesus. He comes in and is
talking about the kingdom of God, about love. We’re all aglow. Then Jesus says
that God has passed over our place and instead comes to and performs miracles
for the Islam extremist. He has allowed our suffering to continue and heals the
mentally ill meth addict. The message we hear is that God passes over us and
people like us, and instead goes to the outsider. Tough to hear, and hard to
understand. This was equally hard to hear for them. To hear that God doesn’t
reward chosen-ness, or special-ness, or us-ness, but rather sometimes heals the
sworn enemy, or the ultimate outsider. Tough stuff. And true.
This was a problem for Jesus, and it’s a problem
now. Just this week, a picture made its
way through social media of Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly gay man
consecrated as bishop of New Hampshire and author of the book, “In the Eye of
the Storm”. He said,” It’s funny isn’t
it? That you can preach a judgmental and
vengeful and angry God and nobody will mind, but you start preaching a God that
is too accepting, too loving, too forgiving, too merciful, too kind… and you
are in trouble.”
So where’s the good news in that?
Bear with me, because we’ll get there. It really is
good news. It’s precisely that God looks to the outcast, or the person seen as
a sinner. This is what that tells us - that God’s love really is radical,
all-encompassing, and non-judgmental. And while that may be harder to embrace
when you’re thinking about the other, haven’t you ever felt like the outcast?
Or felt like the sinner? Sure, we all
come here in our Sunday best, and put on our Sunday morning persona, but
inside, all of us have moments of doubt and sin and badness. God’s love is
bigger than all of the labels and negative self-talk we can possibly come up
with. God loves the outcast and the sinner. Even when that sinner is me.
God’s love is also eternal. As God tells Jeremiah,
“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I
consecrated you.” Or in other words, God made Jeremiah holy and sacred before
he was born. God makes us holy and sacred before we are born – sight unseen.
That’s some crazy love.
God loves us in an incomprehensible way. We 21st
century westerners have a hard time understanding God’s love, in part because
God is bigger than we can understand, and partly because we don’t have the
language. We have one word for love, where other cultures and languages have
many. Greek, for example has at least four definitions. This isn’t designed to
be a Greek lesson, but suffice it to say our little word for love is flat-out
inadequate. Even if we could begin to understand God and God’s love, our
language fails us.
The people of Corinth had a hard time with this concept, and
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians tries to explain by offering numerous examples
of what love is, and what it isn’t.
This reading, “Love is patient, love is kind”, is most frequently associated with weddings, as it’s frequently read at weddings. At a wedding, when we hear it, we immediately think of the love between the bride and groom, or perhaps between ourselves and our partner. And like our little word for love, this is an incomplete picture.
Paul is talking to a divided Corinth. A church with
different factions, a community with insiders and definite outsiders, and he’s
trying to tell the people what God’s love is. Hurl off a cliff those notions
you have about this being a romantic love between people, and listen to this. Think
about a divided community, a world with outsiders and select, about the Episcopal
Church, Eugene, US Politics.. The arenas are endless. Pick one where you relate
to the division, and now let’s talk about God’s love in that setting.
Love is patient. Love is kind.
God loves us patiently and kindly. Regardless of our
foibles, or defiance, or hate. God loves us regardless of our uncharitable
thoughts, our calloused deeds.
God’s loves all things, bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Wow. Bears and endures all
things. No exception. No caveats. No limited warranty. All things. All ways.
Period.
And God’s love never ends.
There are times when I have acted or not acted, said or
not said, thought or not thought something that cause me to question God’s love
for me. More often though, I see the actions of someone else, of the other, and
am certain that was unforgivable. God didn’t really mean all things, didn’t
mean never ends. But yes, I’m here to tell you that the good news is that God’s
love never ends. In the other,
and in me.
Paul continues in his explanation of what love is by
describing what love is not. This list is a list I’m familiar with. Of love
that is boastful, envious, rude, irritable or rude. I have seen that love. I
have received that love. I have offered that love. Or how about a love that
rejoices in someone else’s wrongdoing. I’ve done that one too.
We all have seen, received or offered that love. As
humans, sometimes it’s the best we can do.
And while that unfortunate list of traits is inescapable with human
love, it is not God’s love.
The good news is that despite my human shortcomings,
God’s love does not meet my irritability or rudeness, my boastfulness with the
same. Rather, God’s love is eternal, kind, patient.
This is great news! God loves you regardless.
Unconditionally. Patiently. Kindly.
So back to Jesus and the unfortunate cliff. If God’s love
is so great, why did they want to throw him off the cliff? I think part of it is that their understanding
of God and God’s reign was so constrained by their human vision and human
language and human love that they truly believed that as God’s chosen people, they
had the key to God’s action and providence. Surely God would love them,
heal them, prefer them. As humans, their love of God was human. Boastful.
Envious. Irritable. Rejoiced in someone else’s wrongdoing. Jesus gets crosswise
because he reminds them that God’s love has always been expansive and not
judgmental. And for this, they want to throw him off a cliff.
There are two parts of God’s love that are really hard
for us. So hard that it made them want to throw Jesus off a cliff. This big,
judgment-free patient love extends to all. To the extremists, the addicts, the
homeless, those who disagree with me, those who thwart you. All. As Archbishop
Desmond Tutu has been quoted as saying, “God loves you, and God’s love is so
great, God loves your enemies too”. That’s hard for us when we think we’re
doing the right thing, and if we’re doing right, they must be doing wrong. God
loves the wrong doers too. Even when it’s someone we dislike, or when it’s
ourselves.
And here’s the really hard part. God asks us to do the
same. God asks us to love our neighbor. Love, not a romantic feeling, but a way
of being. Love your neighbor in a kind and patient way. Bearing all things,
enduring all things, hoping all things. Love your neighbor without boasting,
envy, rudeness, or irritability. We cannot always succeed at this. But we
cannot stop trying.
This weekend, I was privileged to attend a clergy
pre-Lenten retreat. Our speaker, Mr. Jack Kennedy invited us into silence and
prayer in the Ignatian tradition. One thing he said struck me as helpful, when
thinking about God’s love, and Paul’s attempt at describing it. He talked about
the difference between a goal and an intention. A goal, he said is something
that you strive to do in the future, something you hope or aim to achieve. An
intention, on the other hand, is something you do now. It’s how you live each
moment.
For me, that's how I hear the invitation to love my neighbor in a patient, kind, nunjudgmental way. It's not a goal to achieve in the future. It's an intention I need to adopt. Today, with every interaction and with every person. It's our interactions at our upcoming Annual Meeting, while driving at work. It's how you frame every action, every decision, every thought.
So the Good News is in fact that God’s love bears all
things, endures all things, is eternal and blankets the insiders as well as the
outsiders. With a love like that, we need to step into the world, with our
humble, human, and imperfect intention to love.
