Church Business

1 John 4:7

It is powerful work we have to do. We are to love others as we have been loved. 

That sounds simple enough until we actually try to put it into practice. Other people just aren’t all that lovable--not the jerk who stole the parking spot you waited two minutes for, not the phone agent refusing to conduct your business because your mind froze and you could not remember your grandmother’s maiden name, not the dilapidated man begging money outside the tavern--so many folks are hard to love. Then there is that issue of how loved we actually feel. We are not sure we are loved deeply and truly. Loving others as we have been loved? We need a bit more evidence before proceeding. 

Love is a simple thing to affirm, but a remarkably difficult thing to realize and actualize. 

Yet, this is the work Christ sets before us. We are to be a people defined by love--love as Christ defined it, no less--other centered and self-emptying. 

That can seem an overwhelming leap from a place where we feel neither very loving, nor very loved. How to proceed?

Stop. Focus. Breathe.

First, simply reflect on the person and presence of Christ. Christ was born to save. In Christ, God revealed God’s love for all of us, a love exemplified in the familiar parable of the woman caught in adultery. Remember how that story ended? The crowd has all drifted away, dropping their rocks, their anger dissipated by Christ’s quiet presence of peaceful rebuke--no one may judge another, for all are broken. Christ then asks, “Has no one condemned you?” No one. “Then neither do I condemn you, now go and be different.”

ASIDE: some may quibble with this exegesis--but Christ’s admonition to go and sin no more is best understood as Christ telling the woman that if she is to actualize and realize the grace experienced, she will need to change her way of being, to transform and transcend who and what she is--so, here, “Go and be different.”

That is profound love. It is the love of acceptance. God takes as us we are. God does not tell us to go and get our acts together, then, and only then, coming to God. God accepts us. Whether we be lovable and loving, or their inverse, God accepts us, choosing to work with whatever is presented. 

Second, realize the deep implications of Christ’s presence. The initial thing to note is that you ARE loved. You are loved by God who entered our existence fully and completely in the person of Jesus. God shared all that we are--good, bad, or indifferent. God experienced the gamut of human experience, from joy to deep sorrow, from weariness to exultation, from loneliness to the wondrous embrace of friends and family, from anger to complete happiness, from fear to total hopefulness. Christ even entered the deepest and most profound state of suffering imaginable--the abyss of forsakenness, the abject hell of the cross. Christ is in the darkest valleys of our despair. There is no place to be apart from God (cf. Ps. 139). You are loved.

Now we are ready to turn to the great mass of humanity around us all of the time. It is hard to find complete isolation in our world. At home, there are neighbors thirty feet away, there are the people in the house itself. At work, there is the hive of activity. On the road, there are all those other travelers. Once, on a hike in the mountains, I thought we had trekked far from civilization only to be surprised by a pile of empty water bottles and energy bar wrappers in the middle of an Appalachian wilderness. We are to love all of these other people. We are to love them deeply, even when they seem so very unlovable--I still feel a flare of anger at those hikers who trashed the trail--I mean, REALLY? 

So, how do we love them?

First, we acknowledge the reality of their presence. They are not cheap scenery strewn on the set of our lives. They are also living, breathing children of God. Consider the people around you as you encounter them. See them. Take them in. Smile at them. As I run in the mornings, I encounter a good many neighbors walking the dog, waiting for the school bus, taking their exercise, or doing yard work. It is always amazing how far a smile goes. So simply, so easily we recognize one another as fellow travelers. I tried it in stores and banks and at the gas station, finding remarkably similar results--a smile softens our edges. I know it sounds completely banal. I know it sounds too easy, too simplistic--but try it. See for yourself. 

Practicing with the easy crowds begins to give us necessary experience to try more difficult situations and circumstances. Try smiling at the jerk who took the parking spot. She may well think she pulled a fast one. So what? You were able to meet the moment in love. As we deal with our more intimate relationships, we find the dictum that if there are more than two people in a room, there will be conflict proved rather readily--even the best of marriages flows through turmoil. When such a moment comes, meet it with Christ’s love. A truth is that we often meet those whom we love the most with the most unfiltered responses--a sad consequence of knowing they love us. When really angry with your best friend or partner, stop. Breathe. Take in that beautiful face in front of you. Remember your shared story. Then speak. Yes, there may be good reason to be angry, but there are ways to handle it without throwing stones at each other. Drop the rocks. You may well have had your turn being offensive. You both got over it. You will get over this, too. Talk. Sit together. Listen. Acknowledge their presence and your own. That does not mean accepting hurt as okay--Christ did not affirm the woman’s adultery, he simply affirmed her acceptance by God so she could transcend and transform from that moment. That gift is ours through the practice of love. 

Finally, a word for us communally. When we gather together in our faith community, we have a special opportunity to experience love in its fullest, deepest expression. Here is the community of Christ. Here is the place where we are safe, welcome, and supported. Here is the place to try this work of love in security. We do so as we practice the art of welcome with whomever happens to enter the doors. See? We can love others as we have been loved. We can welcome others into our presence without fear. We can do so as we allow ourselves to be loved. A friend remarked recently that is rather easy to love others; the truly hard work is allowing others to care for us. That means becoming vulnerable--admitting our need for others. We are schooled by our world that such a state is unacceptable weakness. No, unacceptable weakness is NOT seeing our interconnectedness and interbeing. Christ said so--I will be where TWO OR THREE are gathered in my name--not where one lonely soul valiantly strives to do this all alone. God made us to be together. Here, we enter that fold of grace. Here, we find the power of connection. As we sit beneath the cross, God enfolds us in love, and, in turn, we enfold one another in love, no matter who that other might be. 

Then it starts again.

As the community nurtures and nourishes us, we once again begin again. We smile to the people we meet in the world. We work with fear and trembling the love that twines souls together in families. We deal with the difficult, we rejoice in the more easy. And we return to our welcoming community. 

This is the work before us.

It is the business of the Church.