Ephiphany 4C - Love, love, love

“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 21^st 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.