Particular Love

Imagine that you have recently moved to a big city for a new job. I am thinking about a place like the heart of New York City. Imagine that every day you had to use the elevator in your tall, tall, sky-scraper of an apartment building in order exit the building and make your way to work. In order to make it to work slightly before your 8:30 a.m. start time, you have to hit the street at 7:40 a.m. and then walk a few blocks to the metro station to make your connection. That means your goal is to be in the elevator between 7:30 and 7:35 a.m.
Your routine has become precise like clockwork. You’ve figured out how to get yourself into that elevator between 7:30 and 7:35. Now I ask, what do you notice? I think you notice the speed of the elevator, every bump and button and stop you have to make on the way down. The smell. And well of course, the people: your fellow elevator travelers. The lady with her three-year oldish son. You imagine they’re on their way to child care. Zak the 30 something dressed in business attire who mostly keeps to himself. He wears fine smelling cologne. Maria—you learn she teaches 3^rd grade at the school two blocks down the street. Vivian, a lady of grandmotherly age who strikes up a conversation. You learn she swims every morning at the downtown Y.  That explains her beach bag and towel. Then there’s Charles. He’s close to Vivian’s age and a bit gruff. He reminds you of your grandfather.You see that he has a uniform on. You learn that after retirement from a local company he keeps busy as a delivery man. And there’s Ahmed. After several weeks of riding in the elevator together you discover he is a muslim and a heart surgeon—he’s finishing up his last clinical rotation at New York Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell—New York Presby for short.
Every day you look forward to riding the elevator with you new-found acquaintances. You know the floor each of them lives on—since you’re the one highest up you catch them on the way down. When one of them doesn’t show up, you’re secretly disappointed and a bit worried. You wonder if they’re sick or just late. When they turn up again, you hope for an explanation but don’t bother to pry. It’s not that kind of a relationship. Yet, you delight in their presence and each tiny morsel of information you gather about your companions. It’s a way of getting to know them. They keep you company in the loneliness of being new in a large and strange city. They have no idea how much they mean to you. However, you’re not at all sure if they feel the same way.
In John 15, Jesus says to us as he said to the disciples: "I've told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I'm no longer calling you servants because servants don't understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I've named you friends because I've let you in on everything I've heard from the Father (The Message Version).
Jesus is not an elevator friend. On the contrary, he told his disciples and he tells us, “You are more than a servant.” I’ve called you friends. That means he’s letting us in on his life just as we let him in on our life. What a special word, the word, friend. When someone deems me a friend, that places me on a different level than other people. There are intimacies we share.
Are you intimate with Jesus? He’s a friend as well as the Lord your God and brother. Or do you merely see him through servant eyes? Now that is something to consider: your view of God. Each one of us has to come to terms with our view of God because that determines our very life.
But this morning I have another question. Are you more than “elevator friends” with those in this wonderful church? Or is your relationship with those surrounding you one of limited familiarity? The kind of limited familiarity you’d have with elevator friends? Perhaps you can recite some facts about each other, and even know where some work or some vacation or some volunteer. You note when someone is absent from church. But I ask about your life together outside of Sunday morning? Do you have fellowship outside of Sunday morning?  Or is this a Sunday morning elevator experience? What about shared intimacies, the kind families have? Do you have that with one another?
John 15 says there has to be a growing love, a laying down of our lives for one another. And earlier, in John 13:35 Jesus tells us that the world will know we are his disciples by the love we show one another, the sacrificial laying down of our lives sort of love. The world will not know we are his disciples merely by our Sunday morning gathering alone. Sunday mornings are to be an extension of our love for God and our love for one another.
We are to be permeated by love not idealize it.
Such love and intimacy that Jesus speaks of, the love and intimacy among like-family friends takes time to cultivate.  I am not saying anything new. Most of us know this, but as Eugene Peterson says, “…it is possible, and not only possible but common, to think rightly and live badly, live impersonally….Knowledge does not turn into acts of love automatically.” [1] He says we can behave impeccably yet live selfishly and badly.[2]
We might think rightly about love and loving our community or even those closest to us, but live love badly.
Love is particular.
We are called to love one another in this community in particular ways, not in the abstract. Are you and I loving or should I say thinking that we’re loving in the abstract? Love is never abstract. Jesus didn’t love his disciples in the abstract nor does he love us in the abstract. He is quite particular with the love he demonstrates to us, his children. He knows each of our love languages. The kind of particular love we are talking about requires effort, patience, sacrifice, and time.
Time.
I know, I know, none of us live and work in the same place. Our lives take us in different directions.  We are running here and there. We have things to do. We need to take care of ourselves, take care of our families and children and run them here and there. Or if we are single or widowed, we spend our time taking care of those closest to us.
Of course there are seasons in life and we may not be able to love and serve in the same way through each season. Nevertheless, in each season we can demonstrate our love for one another—love for those in this particular community and the others God brings along our paths. Not one of us can love only when it’s convenient or only when we feel like it. There’s be very little love flowing from us then.  And besides, there’s too much of that going on already. We see where it has gotten us in this world. Loving can be painful because it calls us to die to ourselves and our own agenda. Death to self, the kind of death that God calls us to daily is a painful experience. We try to protect our without-God life, our own agendas, because they’re comfortable or so we think. But one way Jesus calls us to die is by loving one another. It’s a kind of death that leads to life even if it encroaches on our time. But really isn’t our time to be one of our gifts to God?
.

---

[1] Peterson, Eugene, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places,313.

[2] Ibid. 314. +

Love and Disgust for the Church

I am sure that many of us deeply love the body of Christ and at the same time, loathe it. The way the church behaves makes us want to cringe and vomit (but we'd have to admit of and consequently gag over our own sin and misbehavior too).

I cringe nearly everyday. Dry heave. Throw up bile.

The advent of social media allows me to hear of and see of things I would've been ignorant about ten years ago. I am sick over things associated with Christ's church. I want to run and hide. I want to apologize. And I want to disassociate myself.

The more I think of it, the more I think deeply about it, I am driven insane. It's an insanity of wonder over God's love for us. How can he love and serve us when minute by minute we heap abuses upon his name, when we like the Roman soldiers, pluck the hairs out of his beard and spit in his face? How in the universe could he say to us and about us, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do?" How can he be madly in love with us when we sequester and quench his divine Spirit-life?
I don't know.

We deserve to be destroyed. But there is an incomprehensible grace. He redeems us. It is beyond understanding and deserving.

And everyday I am filled full. Everyday, I walk around in wide-eyed wonder because of God's deeply good and beautiful and loving character and because of the beauty of his church.

In no other place have I spotted the most beautiful, brightest, morning stars in all of creation. I've happened upon them in the church. The love and goodness and beauty I see keeps me within the church's embrace and gazing at the face of Christ. I know all this goodness, it's real. And all the distortion and sin and evil is not God or of him. It will fade away. It's temporarily, sometimes seemingly eternally real.

The church. It's all a deep mystery of goodness and of evil and of beauty and of the ugliest ugliness. In the end, we know that the good and the true and beautiful--the holy, will manifest itself and that every form of evil will be gone.

But it hasn't left yet and I can't ignore the evil or the things I loathe in the present. Therefore I am driven to prayer and action and a search for the wisdom of God.

Carlo Carretto shares some of these same sentiments. He writes:

"How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you! How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you! I should like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence. You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand sanctity. I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful. How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms. No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, although not completely.

And where should I go?"

~An excerpt from The  God Who Comes by Carlo Carretto found in A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants (Upper Room Books)

Envy: Seven Deadly Sins

I continue sharing my notes on the seven deadly sins.

                                                       Envy

Sorrow for another's good. Wishing to see other's brought low because you cannot rejoice in their good fortune. Usually we're envious of those doing something similar to us, those with the same passions, gifts, hobbies, line of work, or a similar calling. According to Lance Webb, envy is self-love unable to permit anyone to rise or excel above one's own superiority, with resulting hate, jealousy, intolerance, prejudice, slander, gossip, and use of sarcasm or more violent means of leveling others to one's own height.


The opposite virtue of envy is love.

I quote from http://www.whitestonejournal.com/ again:

Love is patient, love is kind. Love actively seeks the good of others for their sake. Envy resents the good others receive or even might receive. Envy is almost indistinguishable from pride at times.

Back to my own thoughts.

Does envy and pride keep many in the church from working together? I think so. If a church or denomination does not minister our way, or even think our way, sometimes we let those things keep us from working together for the common good, those differences keep us from furthering the kingdom of God and create internal, familial squabbles and even wars. This too is sin. We can all find common ground to further the cause of Christ, even if we do not worship together, can't we?


artwork from: http://fineartamerica.com/images-medium/moodpainting-5-green-with-envy-angela-mustin.jpg

Crushed By Another's Burden

"Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." Galatians 6:2

The Lord asks us to bear one another's burdens. We are to be yokefellows with others, to assist them however we healthily can with their troubles in this life. Sometimes it is just listening. Other times it is taking action, providing money or food, or childcare. It could be visiting someone in the hospital or jail. It is being  hospitable and a friend. It is helping to do what needs done. It is conducting ourselves like loving brothers and sisters in Christ. It could be offering guidance. All this involves discernment and wisdom. And certainly prayer.

Sometimes we are unsure of what to do. We wonder if helping would be hindering or enabling. That is where prayer and the counsel of wise brothers and sisters comes into play. But let us suppose that we are predisposed to helping one another however we can. That's not the problem. The problem is that the burden of the other starts to crush us. On our beds at night, we turn the problem over and over in our minds. We toss and turn. We lose sleep. That is when the weight of another's burden crushes us.

We've taken on too much. We've stepped into God's position. He tells us to carry one another's burden. But he also tells us not to worry (Matthew 6:25-33). We have to choose not to worry. After we have done all we can to assist (not more than we can that is God's work) we have to choose to trust God and leave that person and their burdens with him. We bear the burden by praying and helping.

It is God who disentangles and purifies a person. And yes, he uses others to help that process along. We do not disentangle and purify a person; we provide guidance and help. But the person ultimately must make the decision to do what is right, or to take steps toward wisdom, to take steps towards life. God is more than sufficient to help them to do so. He gives his grace (divine aid).

So if we are worrying, losing sleep, and in so doing condsidering that part of bearing the burdens of another, let us stop the worry. No one benefits by our loss of health. God says to ask for the manna we need today and not worry about tomorrow. Let us do what we can today and lay down without worry on our minds.

If we find ourselves worrying about a person or situation and losing sleep, let us turn to God and thank him and praise him for all his wonderful attributes. Let us pray or read. Anything but worry. Worry is sin and not good for us, although some of us are more prone to it than others.

Bearing With And Loving One Another

"Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves." Romans 12: 9,10

Anyone can point out the negatives in the lives of others. Often those of us who are quick to point out the flaws of others, those of us most critical of those around us, are blind to the sins in ourselves. Some of us think that Christ has called us to criticism of anything and everything. We're quick to speak and slow to listen--we're unleashing weapons of mass destruction from our mouths. That's foolish or as Proverbs would say, unwise. Sinful and destructive. That's what it is. I once read or heard that sarcasm is really veiled anger.

But what about all the crazy things in the world going on around us and in our families? Are we not to speak out against them? Yes we are. We are to speak in a loving way but not condemn people. More importantly we are to overcome evil with good. People around us need to know that our love for God and our actions go farther than our lipservice. Like the Apostle Paul said, if we have all wisdom and can fathom all mysteries yet have not love...we are clanging, annoying, cymbals.

We are practiced in criticism. What we really need to be is practiced in loving. Let us practice in clinging to the good of those around us. Yes we hate what is evil. But we are to love our enemies. Let us practice considering one another above ourselves. Let us sincerely love--people can tell when it is inauthentic.

Let us ask God for these graces, the graces of putting others above ourselves, of being draped with humility, of loving. Let us start with those closest to us. Then people will say and know that we are like Jesus. His love and power will exude from us.

May we be sons and daughters of encouragement like Barnabas was.

A Little Bit More on Loving Our Neighbors

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

I Cor. 13:4-7

Are there forms of unlove in our souls? Sadly, I think I've discovered a form of unlove in mine. If we do not think the best of others, if we pigeon-hole them, not allowing them to climb out of those holes we've dug and placed them in, that is not love. I must confess that I do not always give the benefit of the doubt to, or think the highest of, some of those in the body or some groups of Christians who are rabidly unloving in their language and legalistic. But (until Jesus seperates the sheeps from the goats) for all intense and purposes, as far as I am concerned, these are my brothers and sisters however much I am tempted to disown them. This is my family. They're just like me, a mixed bag of virtue and vice (sin). I must love them, especially when I perceive them to be acting like the enemy, working against the kingdom they profess to be a part of. Jesus showed great love for the church of his time, praying "Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing" even as they nailed him to the cross. It was the religious people that killed Jesus on a Roman cross mind you. 

And I must remind myself that these brothers and sisters who turn me off by certain words and behaviors, may be turned off by my way of being. Surely, my sins are evident to mostly all but myself. I have logs galore protruding from my eyes. How is it that I can even see the speck of dust in the eye of another? Remembering these things will guard against spiritual pride. It will guard us against thinking more highly of ourselves then we ought to. I also must remember that sometimes the most loving thing to do is lovingly confront a brother or sister...like Paul confronted Peter. There is a whole lot of unloving confrontation going on though. Or impersonal confrontation.

At the same time, let me say there are sins in the church that are clearly wrong. Racism, spoiling our environment, superficiality, idolatry, immorality, arrogance, and pride. We can speak out lovingly against these things. There is more, Christians have even murdered other Christians (most recently in Rwanda). So perhaps we can take a stand when the body is acting as the anti-Christ.

Maybe what I am saying applies between individuals. Perhaps a reader has clarification or some more insight. Feel free to share. All I know is that scripture tells us to love each other, our brothers and sisters, from our hearts. If we do not even love our brothers and sisters, how can we love God whom we have not seen? We have to think seriously about what it means to love one another. Then the world will know we are Christians.

The Gift of Shalom.

 "It is a gift of God . . . " Ephesians 2:8

Salvation is an ongoing gift of God. It's something we receive, not something we pry out of His hands with our good works. God graciously offers the gift of salvation in and through his son Jesus and wrapped up in that salvation gift is shalom. God desires to knead his shalom into our lives. He is kneading shalom into all of creation for he is in the process of reconciling all things to himself as he makes all things new. What is shalom?

According to Strong's Concordance 7965, the Hebrew word shalom denotes completeness, wholeness, health, peace, welfare, safety soundness, tranquility, prosperity, perfectness, fullness, rest, harmony, the absence of agitation or discord.

Can we taste it? Can we even imagine it? It is a salvation gift that God wants to pour into our lives. As we humble ourselves, and turn (repent) away from the world and our own flesh and towards God, as we renounce all in us that is not of him (as we become aware of it), shalom breaks forth in our lives and spills into the lives and institutions around  us. Imagine instead of a catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, shalom spilling over and invading all things. It is happening. However, we might not be able to perceive it.

Even as I write, I realize that it is only through God's grace that we can repent and renounce all  in us that is not of him. So we must ask him for that grace, a sustaining grace that allows us to follow him and that unleashes shalom. As shalom fills us, it'll spill over into our relationships. Ask God for this ongoing gift and be ready to continually receive it.

Here is a true story of shalom breaking forth in the midst of suffering--Maggie's House of Shalom or Maison Shalom as it is called in Burundi. Click for the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxz9yE0O-Sk

We Are Workers Not Master Builders - Bishop Oscar Romero

"It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,

it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction

of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying

that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well. It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

Amen."

Nouwen on Leaving Home

Yet over and over again I have left home. I have fled the hands of blessing and  run off to faraway places searching for love! This is the great tragedy of my life and of the lives of so many I meet on my journey. Somehow I have become deaf to the voice that calls me Beloved, have left the only place where I can hear that voice, and have gone off desperately hoping that I would find somewhere else what I could no longer find at home. At first this sounds unbelievable. Why should I leave the place where all I need to hear can be heard? The more I think about this question, the more I realize the true voice of love is a very soft and gentle voice speaking to me in the most hidden places of my being. It is not a boisterous voice, forcing itself on me and demanding attention. It is the voice of a nearly blind father who has cried much and died many deaths. Sensing the touch of God's blessing hands and hearing his voice are one and the same . . . . But there are many other voices voices that are loud, full of promises and very seductive. These voices say, "Go out and prove that you are worth something." Soon after Jesus had heard the voice calling him the Beloved, he was led to the seser to hear those other voices. They told him to prove that he was worth love in being successful, popular, and powerful. Those same voices are not unfamiliar to me . . . . They want me to prove to myself and others that I am worth being loved, and they keep pushing me to do everything possible to gain acceptance. They deny loudly that love is a totally free gift. I leave home every time I lose faith in the voice that calls me Beloved and follow the voices that offer a greaty variety of ways to win the love I much desire.

From The Return of the Prodigal pp. 39-40.

The Expansive and Consuming Love of God - Even in Death

"and to know this love surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:19

Have you tasted and savored the love that surpasses knowledge? Imagine that you are standing on the shore, gazing at the beautiful blue-green ocean. The water is clean and crystal clear. You're compelled to enter. So you step forward, delicately dipping your foot into the water in an effort to test the temperature. Suddenly, you find yourself waist-deep. You continue forward until the water is up to your shoulders. Will you go any further? You tremble at the thought. If you proceed, you could easily drown. Who will rescue when you're alone?

While you may not risk going deeper into the ocean for fear of drowning, drowning in the waters of God's love leads to life. Merely standing on shore, gazing at the beautiful water, is like the beginning of the Christian life. Yet every time you exchange some of your ways for his ways, you step deeper into the ocean of his love. The deeper you go in, the more you see and experience him, the more alive you become. This is truth, you become more alive in him as you continually die to yourself (John 11:24-26, Galatians 2:20). When in faith you surrender everything to him so that you no longer claim anything as your own, the waters of his love will sweep you away. You will never touch bottom again.

When you allow yourself to drown in him then you will be rooted and established and filled with the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:17b-19). You will not care where the currents of his love take you because you will know, in an experiential way, that his love surpasses knowledge. You'll remember his words to Joshua now meant for you, "Be strong and courageous.  Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go" (Joshua 1:9). You will trust, even if wherever means you're whisked into a hurricane. For everywhere his currents send you in the ocean of his love leads your soul to partake in his fullness. You'll realize how deeply in love you are when you can say like Job, "though he slay me I will trust him" (Job 13:15).

You will eventually learn to trust him even as you see the ocean currents ushering you through physical death into thre rest of life, eternal life. The culmination of your faith will be when you confidently say at death, "Death has been swallowed up in victory. 'Where, O death, is your victory?' Where, O death, is your sting?'" (I Corinthians 15:54-55) and then step onto the shores of the Promised Land.

I wrote this six or seven years ago, but could not share it on the radio or post it because of the 2004 tsunami. The metaphor was just too much. But, I share it today.

On Loving Others

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." I John 3:16

It easy to "love" those far away, those we have little interaction with. We can be patient and kind with those hard-to-love people we run into infrequently. The real test of our love for others is manifested in our day-to-day lives. How do we love those we experience everyday? Do we lay our lives down for our spouses, children, parents, neighbors, members of our church community?

Obviously loving is not merely having positive feelings for a person, not merely wishing good upon someone. Notice in the above verse, John indicates that our love is measured by how well we lay our lives down for our brothers, not our enemies, even though Jesus tells us to love our enemies.

So how are we doing? When we're impatient and annoyed--that's when the real test of love comes. When we're tired and would rather be refreshed than refresh others--do we consider others above ourselves? Choosing to love is a cure for selfishness. Love is a choice because more often then not, we don't want to expend the energy it takes to love others. It is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that we can love consistently. And of course, Jesus is our prime example: he laid down his life for us. And out of love and appreciation for him, we lay our lives down for others.

In the Lord's prayer, when we request our daily bread, we need to ask for the strength and energy to love those we encounter. Otherwise, we'll fail miserably.

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.
-- Mother Theresa