Very recently I
presided over a lovely wedding here at St. James. The sermon title was, Love is Love, which I stole from the email of an acquaintance. When
I confessed to him that I had stolen his line for a sermon title, he said, well
here’s another one: “All you need is love. Steal that one too.” The next day I went to meet someone over at
the Wired Rooster in Wellsboro and what should I see on the tent sign
outside of the café? Chalked up in blue and white were the words: All you need
is love, of course followed by, and a good cup of coffee. I took out my smart phone and I stole it.
Earlier this week while wandering around TJ
Max fixated on a gift finding mission, I rounded a corner and found myself face
to face with a large framed picture of some familiar words: All you
need is love. I laughed and thought,
how remarkable. Then I looked all around me and was astounded to see that I was
in an entire section of framed words, all variations of the same line: All you
need is Love. All you need is Love in white cursive letters on blue pastels, All you need is Love in large block
print letters on a black background, All
you need is Love in larger than life gold sans serif letters floating
against a light blue background. And then there were variations on the
theme: the single word, “LOVE.” (note
the period), black letters on a white background, framed boldly; then there was
the single word love, written in
script, repeated many times taking the shape of a heart. Two walls and several
shelves of All you need is Love. I would have laughed again, but I was truly
astounded at the bold audacity of the universe.
I just stood there literally surrounded by Love. I wondered, What is the
Holy Spirit trying to tell me? What is she, not so subtly, putting out there
for me to grasp or perhaps just for me to see?
But there is another
question that begs an answer. If
marketing efforts were so keen on selling love, then there must be a market for
it. Clearly the world is hungry for love.
By the millions we are buying printed images of words about Love, some tattoo
it on their bodies, and others wear t-shirts to proclaim our beliefs about
it. And yet it seems just beyond our
reach. Were it so easy to grasp, so easy to claim, so easy to give, so easy to
receive, so easy to see, so easy to understand then Love art would no longer
have any buyers. We do not need to buy
what we have in abundance. It would seem
that the culture we live in is asking all manner of questions about Love. The question for the Christian community is,
do we have anything to say about Love?
Well it’s Christmas and
that has something to do with Love or at least it’s supposed to. I’m not sure Love is the first thing that
comes to mind when we think of Christmas though, if we’re honest. Every year my first thoughts of Christmas
occurs in October when the stores begin to put out their Christmas decorations;
right next to the Halloween displays. It’s blatantly about the bottom line; end
of the year consumer spending making up a goodly part of many business’
profit/loss statements. This is in
keeping with American culture in general, of course: if you want something then
it’s simply a matter of saving up the money and buying it. But what you and I know, really, is that Love
can’t be bought. We can buy a framed picture of the word Love, but that is not
Love. At some level I think we’re in Love with the idea of Love; of the picture
of Love that has been shaped in our common imaginations by culture itself.
Just think, where did you learn about
Love? I learned a lot of what I know
about Love from books and movies. I must
be honest and tell you that did not learn about Love in the church. Or perhaps
more correctly: for a very long time, I did not realize that what I was
learning about was Love. I thought I was learning stories that portrayed the
state and struggles of humanity throughout the ages. I thought I was learning theological ideals
about God. I thought I was learning about discipleship and how to act in the
world; how to be a better person; how to find purpose in my life. I thought I was learning doctrines and dogma
that was instructive for living a life meant to emulate Christ himself. I thought I was learning how to be kind.
Last month someone I care about moved far away. The last thing you really want to give a person who
is moving is something else to pack so I decided just to give a blessing. But
I’ve never given a blessing to a single person before in that way and I didn’t want
to look completely stupid and suddenly forget the words. So I practiced saying
the words which I have been known to stumble upon in front of an entire congregation;
which is as embarrassing as suddenly forgetting the order of the words at
communion when I put bread into open hands: The body of Christ, the bread of
heaven – how many ways can you screw that up? Ask me, I can tell you. So here
are the words I repeated over and over again:
Be swift to love and
make haste to be kind.
Be swift to love and
make haste to be kind.
Be swift to love and
make haste to be kind.
Be swift to love and
make haste to be kind.
Be swift to love and
make haste to be kind.
Be swift to love and
make haste to be kind.
It occurred to me that
over the eleven years I’ve been saying this blessing, that I’ve never actually heard the words. They’ve been words for someone
else to hear. But this time, they were meant for me. I heard, that is I
internalized, “be swift to love.”
If you think about it,
really ponder it, you might come to the conclusion that have I reached. It’s really
hard to be swift to love. When we are
small children we are hard-wired for love. Undamaged, unbroken, untrained, not
yet tempered by hurts and disappointments and disillusions; not yet
devastated by heart break and loss, we are all about love. It pours out of us. It’s easily read in our eyes and we hold it
our small little hands with such ease. We do not think about it, because one
does not need to consider one’s own nature; it simply is.
For those of us who have
great difficulty understanding Love as it portrayed in the violence of the
cross, then Love as portrayed as an infant child can be our way in. When we
hear the nativity story we can connect with it because it is still so innocent,
so pure, it is the time before – and all of us have a before and after story.
It’s the before part of our stories that can once again connect with this Love.
It is the window through which we might be able to see and understand the very
nature of God. If you have not heard me say it recently, then hear it now: God
is Love. There really isn’t anything
else you need to know about God, or religion, or spiritually, or even Jesus, beyond
this. God is love. And what I realize now, what is so clear to me in this
moment, is that everything I learned in Sunday school, or in the Bible, or in
seminary, or in all the sermons I’ve ever heard, or written or preached, or by
anything I’ve ever read by any theological author is that these expressions are
all different forms of love letters. Letters written to tell me that I am
loved.
I’m an avid fan of
letter writing. I’ve been writing letters to the people in my life for as long
as I can remember. Letter writing puts words on a page that have flow directly
from your heart through your body into your wrists, hands and fingers, finding
expression through a pen or a keyboard. There
are letters that were hard to write but needed to written; letters for
truth-telling that once received will have consequences for both parties; there
are unexpected letters we receive that fill us with complete joy and knowledge
that we have been remembered; letters that tell us news that will forever
change our lives; letters that are filled with happy news and the deepest
desire to be appreciated; there are letters that beg in desperation for us to
be seen and heard, letters that tell stories that make us laugh, or cry, or perhaps
just think more deeply about things; there are final letters, final words;
there are letters that are not meant ever to be sent, and letter we’ve written that
we deeply regret sending; letters to lovers (the Song of Solomon is such a
letter), letters with ill intent written in the blood our deepest wounds; there
are letters we frame and letters we burn.
All these letters we write and receive, each in their own way, are love
letters.
In that same way, the story we have heard this night is a love letter
written by someone who went long before us. It was written for the generations to follow. It was written for you. It is a love letter that tells a story about the
Love of God, who is Love, who was born just like you were. But unlike you and I
this love will not be corrupted over time and through the years of living. This Love will do that for which we can only
strive. It will grow instead of fade. It will intensify with the passing of
years. It will embrace all things, accept all things, forgive all things, know
all things. It will embrace you, accept you, forgive you and know you
completely. This Love we can only see in
small glimpses. The most intense love we have known is but a shadow of this
Love. In life we can see only part, but in death we will know it fully. It is our life force. It grows in us as we
learn to accept things and people and situations for what they are, as we do
the work of forgiveness, and as we seek to know, to deeply know another human
being.
As a priest and as a health
coach I refer to the work of love as healing. Healing is to me, is the final
manifestation of love accomplishing its purpose. Healing is love in
action. Healers then are required, first
and foremost to love those who come to them in pain and suffering. Healers
begin their work from a place of acceptance, forgiveness and a willingness to
identify with their own humanity as it is mirrored back to them through the ones
who stand before them. All Christians are called to the work of healing. You are called to the work of healing. It is
what the world requires: an army of healers.
Our only tool, our only weapon is Love.
Twenty years ago I was
most fortunate to spend several years in the care of an excellent therapist
while I traversed the landscape of life experiences known to many if not all of
us: death, divorce, loss, more death, more loss, remarriage, rebirth, recovery
and a birth. As part of my personal
spiritual journey a few months ago I wrote a letter to my dearest friend with
whom I had not spoken in all these years.
It occurred to me she would not remember me and I was at peace with that
because the work of love she had begun in me can never be undone. But within
days of sending my letter, complete with a lovely stamp, she sent back to me
her reply. There I was standing in my kitchen
holding her letter in my hand. I didn’t even need to open it to feel that measure
of healing. But I did. It’s been 20 years and I am
loved still.
That’s what the
nativity story has to teach us: Love that is truly Love doesn’t die, it cannot.
We are surrounded this night by flowers
that signify the remembrance of those we love, many of whom have passed from
this world into the next. The love we have for them and they for us does not
die. Death cannot destroy love; not any longer. Not since Love was born into
the world; not since God became Love incarnate. Love itself has insured that
love cannot be destroyed or even diminished.
Someone recently told
me about the death of one of their parents: regardless of what came before, what
remained in the end was love. Love is unaffected by death, or by any separation.
Love is both the substance and the residue. It’s all we really have to offer
anyone that is of any value whatsoever. When people see us, what they are
really looking at, what they are really sizing up about us, is our capacity for
love. Love for self, love to give, love
to express through our lives’ work and our acts of kindness, hospitality and generosity;
but also in the lines we draw and the boundaries we enforce, and in what we chose
to give away and in what we chose to keep. That’s what we see in that little
baby who we have come to know as the person of Jesus. We see in that child a vast
and wide, all encompassing capacity for love. It is his greatest gift. Actually
it is his only gift.
Christmas Eve Homily, 2014
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