"Uncondition-ing Cliffside Romance, or, On Two Kinds of Love"
Preached at St. John's Lutheran Church, Victor, New York
South Wedge Mission, Rochester, New York
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
3 February 2013
Day Texts: Jeremiah 1.4-10
Psalm 71.1-6
1 Corinthians 13.1-13
Luke 4.14-30
"You shall love, whether you like it or not. Emotions, they come and go like clouds. Love is not only a feeling. You shall love. To love is to run the risk of failure, the risk of betrayal. You feel your love has died. It is perhaps waiting to be transformed into something higher. Awaken the divine presence which sleeps in each man, each women. Know each other in that love which never changes.” - Kierkegaard
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Note: I've been experimenting with trying to move towards a more extemporaneous-manuscript hybrid style as of late. The text below is a partial transcript, partial manuscript from Sunday. As such, slightly longer than usual.
Audio for the proclamation at South Wedge Mission can be found here.
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-Grace, mercy and peace is yours
from the Triune God. Amen.
-Re-reading the beautiful passage
on love in 1 Corinthians 13 is a cool experience for me today. Because we actually had that read at
our wedding. Which was one of the
very first times I ever preached in public – because of course, you know, I had to preach at my own wedding. And I remember being so excited
to preach about this passage – to tell many of my gathered family and friends,
many of whom had been hurt by the church, about God’s unconditional love for
us. It’s a great text to read at
weddings.
-Except that it wasn’t actually
written to be read at a wedding.
It was actually written to a community of people who hated each other’s
guts. (Which might be true at some
weddings you’ve been to.) It was
written to enemies. Who were not
loving each other unconditionally.
Who were ready, perhaps, to throw each other off of a cliff.
-Not unlike the scene we stumble
upon at the end of our Gospel lesson today. I can’t forget that last scene. Its downright painful.
Jesus is dragged out of his home synagogue, and led to the top of a high
cliff. To be chucked over the
edge. By a mob most likely
comprised of people he knew well. People he grew up with. Who knew him as a kid. A little league coach. A next store neighbor. His father’s customer. A best friend’s mom. A Sunday School teacher. Maybe some of his relatives. His family and friends.
-Because something Jesus said to
them filled them with rage. A rage
fiery enough to consume them with enough violence to take that little boy from
Nazareth, now a grown man, and bring him to the precipice. Moments ago, he was their hero. A real-life prophet, homegrown in their village. He’d made them all so proud. They had all spoken well of him. This was Joseph’s son.
They’re ready to put his face on the billboards welcoming people to
town. “Nazareth: Home of Jesus
Christ – State Champion!”
-What he said must have been
something that made them feel very betrayed. Like saying, “I’m that Messiah. I’m here to proclaim release to the captives, sight to the
blind, and Good News to the poor. But I’m not here just for you. And God is not just for the people of
Israel. God has sent me with the
Gospel of God’s love to the whole of creation. And that means, for those foreigners too. Those Gentiles. Alien widows. And enemy generals.”
You know, like those Roman centurions who regularly rape and pillage our
town.
-And part of me can feel their
pain too. The deep pangs of
betrayal. After all, aren’t the
people of Nazareth poor too? Don’t
they have their share of widows, and aren’t they the slaves of enemy
generals? And God’s promised
Messiah, the liberator – he’s being sent to them, too? And won’t even do a miracle for us, the
ones who made him?
-I feel like we all throw around
language of a loving God so often that we’ve lost a real sense of how terrible
and scandalous this news actually is.
Because I wonder if, like the people of Nazareth, we haven’t also been
conditioned by a world of conditional love to have certain expectations of
God. If, somehow, we believe that
more of God’s love for the rest of the world might mean less of God’s love for
us. I wonder if we too feel
betrayed, and angry, when our expectations are not met.
-See, when we are going by
strictly human love, we’re generally going to see the world, not as it is, but
as we are. Human love, in a broad
sense, doesn’t love things in themselves.
It looks for objects to meet its conditions. And only then, when it’s found its expectations met, does it
give its love. So, for example,
when Jesus fails to meet the expectations his listeners have for a Messiah, for
their little hometown superstar, for “Joseph’s son,” well, they feel
betrayed. And they withdraw their
love. And they’re ready to chuck
him.
-This week, I was reminded how
conditioned I’ve been by conditional love in my life. Not one but three different friends confronted me, telling
me they’d noticed that I’d been rather negative, cynical and bitter. After the third go around, I was able
to admit a certain amount of resentment I’d been harboring towards a dear
friend. Someone who I felt had
shown me conditional love, and who had wounded me deeply. My colleague Chris helped me to see
that I was wounded because this friend had not lived up to my expectations and
conditions for her. And so, I was
returning the favor by placing conditions on her. And, pushing other people away too. Thank God for friends who care more
about telling us the truth than about our conditional acceptance.
-Because even at its best, human
love still creates conditions and expectations. We have them of God, and then, we start to imagine God has
them of us. And then, we start to
imagine our conditions for ourselves are also God’s conditions for others
and…well, you see the point, right?
It’s a tangled web of unfulfilled desire, endless disappointment,
frequent betrayal, and unbridled resentment. Human love says, “do this first, climb this ladder, meet
these stands…and then you’ll be loved
in return.” So much for human
love.
-And yet, there is another kind of
love. There is, after all, God’s
love. And we know what God’s love
looks like, not by projecting our own human love onto God. But by looking into the face of God
Incarnate in Jesus Christ. Who
says to his family, uncontrolled by a need for their acceptance, that “look,
what y’all are about, that’s not God’s love. That’s that human love again. It’s limited by your fear and pain. And I get that. But let me show you a more excellent
way.”
-When we look into the eyes of
Jesus, we see a love that is led to the edge of a cliff by family and
friends. That values truth and
love more than acceptance and accolades.
That doesn’t lift a finger in violence or anger or reactivity or
resentment. The same love that,
many years later, will be led to the top of another cliff. Bearing a cross. And when the whole weight of the
conditions of merely human love was piled upon him, when it was utterly rejected
by human expectations, still refused to fight back. But said, I’d rather die than that you miss knowing the
truth of how much I love you. The
unconditional love of God, you see, is found on the cliffside and on the
cross. And it is for you, and it
is for me.
-But God’s love does not stop
there, merely with acceptance.
While human love only accepts that which it finds beautiful, God’s love
first finds the ugly, the utterly unlovely. It reaches out to the distorted faces of enemies. And then forgives them. And seeks reconciliation. And then, it starts to transform
them. And make them people who are
not only loveable, but also, capable of love.
-See, God’s unconditional love, it
un-conditions us. And then
restores us to our truest selves.
It doesn’t just leave us to continue in blindness. Because when we see the love of God in
Christ Jesus, the more we gaze upon it and accept its acceptance, the more we
are able to discern. To tell the
difference between merely human love, and God’s unconditional love.
-God loves us so much that God
will not allow us to stay the same.
God’s love teaches us to let human love be human love. To acknowledge that, in some sense,
there are some things human love will never be capable of. And so to have realistic expectations
towards others, and towards ourselves.
And to not be surprised when it causes us suffering. A suffering God shares with us.
-God’s love is not like any human
love you’ve ever received. Not
like the love that comes when you achieve success and hear the thunder of
applause. Not like the love that
comes when you meet all of the expectations and conditions of your parents,
your children, or your friends.
Not like the love that is withdrawn because you made a mistake, or
because you spoke the truth in love, and hit a nerve. God’s love is not like facebook love, contingent on the
number of likes you receive or the number of friends you can boast. God’s love is never unspoken, never
unfelt, never kept inside because of embarrassment or weakness. God’s love never fails to make itself
known, never fails to do what it desires, is never stopped by weakness, or
fear, or resentment, or failure.
-God’s love, you see, is the love St. Paul writes of
in that famous poem from 1 Corinthians today. It’s not human love, but the love of God, the love that
created us, redeems us, sustains us, and fashions us into its image. God’s love is patient. God’s love is kind. God’s love is not envious or boastful
or arrogant. God’s love is not
irritable or resentful. God’s love
does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in truth. God’s love believes all things, hopes
all things, endures all things.
Even death on a cross. Even
our conditions and expectations. Even
our hatred and our resentment and our rage. Even our failures.
And God’s love, God’s love in Christ Jesus - it never, ever ends.
-And this love, promised by St. Paul and given in
Christ Jesus, it is like a mirror.
We look into this mirror, into the eyes of Jesus, and we see God’s love
for us. And we also glimpse who
God is making us. We are given, as
Paul writes, permission to believe all things and hope all things. To be patient and kind. Not to react to the hard truth or the
heartbreaking failure. But to bear
with it, to ask questions, to consider all angles, to be free from
reactivity. Not to have to throw
it over a cliff. It will still
hurt us. True love always does. But it will be the hurt of human love
being transformed more and more into the love of God.
-Returning to that cliff side, I wonder if that’s how
Jesus got away. I wonder if the
people holding Jesus down looked into his eyes. Looked into the very heart of the universe, into the love
vortex of the Incarnate Trinity.
And saw mirrored back to them, not their own hatred and resentment. But forgiveness, and grace, and a power
more beautiful than they could have possibly imagined. And for a split-second, felt themselves
beloved by this power.
-And so they let go. And Jesus gazed around at them. At his family turned enemies. With that gaze of heart-breaking, heart-broken love. And walked silently through their
midst. And back to his work of
ministry. Back to proclaiming the
Gospel of God’s love. No matter
what the cost.
-I’m not sure I’d be as cool under pressure as
Jesus. I don’t have the
Buddha-like ability not to react.
But somehow, Jesus’ love, revealed in vulnerability on the edge of a
cliff, changes those around him.
It releases the tension.
Frees from anger. Heals the
heart. And transforms the world.
-As a good friend of mine is fond of preaching,
nothing and no one else get to tell us who we are. And no human love gets to define God’s love. Some day, St. Paul promises us, we will
understand this fully. We will
look into the face of Love, and see ourselves as we truly are. And we will see others as loved
too. And it’s gonna be great. But for now, we look through a glass
dimly. Thank God, the loving gaze
of Jesus, and not the image of our own expectations, our own conditions, our
own failures, or our own self-hatred, is looking back. Unconditionally. And always.
-Amen
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