Love the Lord your God with all that you have and all that you are, and love your neighbor as yourself – easier said than done sometimes, isn’t it? Still, that is the summary of the law offered by Jesus, and it is also, in a sense, his invitation into the Kingdom of God. At least, when the scribe agreed with Jesus, he then said to the scribe, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”
Today I want to talk about God’s invitation to us to love and to be loved as we try to tell people how close they are to the Kingdom of God. I think the first thing we have to do is hear that for ourselves. Do you know how close you are to the Kingdom of God? It is as close as your next interaction, maybe even with yourself when you look in the mirror.
In the end, that’s who you have to be true to, right? Isn’t that what Polonius told his son, Laertes, in the play, Hamlet? “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” Of course, Polonius was a horrible hypocrite, but aren’t we all from time to time?
The sentiment is still true, for, as they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day. On this day and at this time, this broken clock wants you to know that you are very close to the Kingdom of God, and I also want to challenge the notion that “no good deed goes unpunished.”
Here’s where I’m coming from, I talk a lot about loving and living sacrificially. Last week I talked about the challenge of loving others when it seems like no one else is doing it, and how we can build others up – even while we’re being built up – in partnership with the hands of God. That idea came from Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry’s book, Love is the Way, and today we’re going to wrestle with another question from his book. “Does a call to sacrificial love require me to be a doormat?”
I don’t want to give too much away in case you want to read his book, but the answer is “No.” First off, in loving your neighbor as yourself, you have to love yourself. You have to realize that you have value. You have limits. You have to have some sense of self in order to give “of yourself.” The question is not whether or not you are being taken advantage of – though strong boundaries are important – the question is whether or not you understand your value as a creature created in the image of God.
Knowing yourself as God’s beloved creation is the first part of the invitation of love, and the second part is the freedom that it gives you to be loving in the way you have been loved. Now, I wish that I could say that it was as simple as one of those commercials where one act of kindness leads to another act of kindness which leads to another and another and then eventually to the cure for cancer, and maybe on a certain level it does, but today I want to talk about the way love refines and reforms and transforms us so that we can love.
One of Bishop Curry’s many examples is that of John Coltrane. At the height of his career, Coltrane was at the beck and call of any jazz group he wanted, and like so many other shining stars in the entertainment industry, he lost it all to his battle with substance abuse and addiction. He decided to quit using drugs without medical supervision, which may have been common in 1957, but today we know it as a very dangerous way to manage addiction to mind-altering substances. He went through days of delusion, and by his own words, he experienced, “by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening, which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life.” He wrote those words on the sleeve of his album, A Love Supreme, which he released in 1965.
This album moves from chaotic shrills to rhythmic combinations of confession and adoration, and it stands as a testimony to the way God moves in and through our brokenness. Some of us have here today struggled with addiction. We who are older have divorces and deaths and all kinds of skeletons that we don’t even want to see on Halloween! We who are younger have our silent fears and doubts, even as we hold the spark of hope in our eyes for all to see.
It is the light of hope and the search for truth that causes us to look to love as the way forward. Love is the light that even blesses the darkness. It is the invitation into a life where light and dark become reconciled. It does not deny the brokenness of our past. If anything, the brokenness of our past is what makes love’s invitation so compelling!
I’m reminded here of Maya Angelou’s poem, On the pulse of the morning.
“So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher . . .
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.”
On this day and at this time, we stand at the door waiting to decide if we will accept love’s invitation and enter in, knowing that we will be transformed again and again and not return the way we came. It makes me wonder – if Isaiah had known what was in the temple, do you think he still would've gone in?
Of course, his vision was not something that we can really look at in those terms. God is described as being larger than the temple – the hem of God’s robe filled it! Plus, if Isaiah had a coal touch his mouth, how did he volunteer to speak? While I’ve always wondered about these things, nothing could be further from the point.
It’s not a story of one plucky faithful man saying, “Pick me! I’m special.” It is an ecstatic vision, and it’s a story about transformation. Isaiah was not able to say “Here I am” until he was transformed by God’s action. Before that, all he could say was, “I am an unclean person with unclean lips from a people with unclean lips!” Then God took what should be so searing that Isaiah would not be able to speak afterward and used it to purify the one thing that Isaiah said was impure – his lips. So, the takeaway is that God uses our brokenness to transform us, and once God has transformed us we cannot help but respond.
That’s not to say that there is no choice at all. God still asked the heavenly hosts who they might send even though there was only one guy in the room. It’s not that God couldn’t do it without Isaiah. God just didn’t want to do it without him, but God also wanted Isaiah to accept the invitation to love. The same is true for you and for me, and love is the way.
Purification may come for you and for me in strange ways. It will probably come in some unwanted ways, even seemingly unintended ways, but it will come all the same – because God loves you enough to do it for you, over and over again.
As God’s love transforms us it gives us purpose. It puts people in our path that we may not want to love – but must love – because we have been so transformed that we can’t help but say, “Yes. Here I am. I’ll do it.”
You may be called to love, as some will be today, as a spiritual leader in the church; or you may be called to support the work of the church on a task force or leadership team, or you may be called to love through random acts of kindness that expand from person to person like the air we breathe.
However, God is calling you, just remember that you cannot love others as much as you love yourself without loving yourself. That doesn’t mean that you need to deny loving others either, it just means that seeing the value of each soul as a reflection of the character of God starts with seeing yourself that way. Knowing that we are beloved by God – even with all of our brokenness – is what transforms us into agents of change and reconciliation!
Love’s invitation frees us to be our true selves as created in the image of God. Love’s action transforms us so that our greatest place of brokenness becomes the source of our proclamation. Love is what allows us to walk with brokenness and expect transformation with joy! Love is the way, and to God be the glory – Now and always. Amen!
Today I want to talk about God’s invitation to us to love and to be loved as we try to tell people how close they are to the Kingdom of God. I think the first thing we have to do is hear that for ourselves. Do you know how close you are to the Kingdom of God? It is as close as your next interaction, maybe even with yourself when you look in the mirror.
In the end, that’s who you have to be true to, right? Isn’t that what Polonius told his son, Laertes, in the play, Hamlet? “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” Of course, Polonius was a horrible hypocrite, but aren’t we all from time to time?
The sentiment is still true, for, as they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day. On this day and at this time, this broken clock wants you to know that you are very close to the Kingdom of God, and I also want to challenge the notion that “no good deed goes unpunished.”
Here’s where I’m coming from, I talk a lot about loving and living sacrificially. Last week I talked about the challenge of loving others when it seems like no one else is doing it, and how we can build others up – even while we’re being built up – in partnership with the hands of God. That idea came from Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry’s book, Love is the Way, and today we’re going to wrestle with another question from his book. “Does a call to sacrificial love require me to be a doormat?”
I don’t want to give too much away in case you want to read his book, but the answer is “No.” First off, in loving your neighbor as yourself, you have to love yourself. You have to realize that you have value. You have limits. You have to have some sense of self in order to give “of yourself.” The question is not whether or not you are being taken advantage of – though strong boundaries are important – the question is whether or not you understand your value as a creature created in the image of God.
Knowing yourself as God’s beloved creation is the first part of the invitation of love, and the second part is the freedom that it gives you to be loving in the way you have been loved. Now, I wish that I could say that it was as simple as one of those commercials where one act of kindness leads to another act of kindness which leads to another and another and then eventually to the cure for cancer, and maybe on a certain level it does, but today I want to talk about the way love refines and reforms and transforms us so that we can love.
One of Bishop Curry’s many examples is that of John Coltrane. At the height of his career, Coltrane was at the beck and call of any jazz group he wanted, and like so many other shining stars in the entertainment industry, he lost it all to his battle with substance abuse and addiction. He decided to quit using drugs without medical supervision, which may have been common in 1957, but today we know it as a very dangerous way to manage addiction to mind-altering substances. He went through days of delusion, and by his own words, he experienced, “by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening, which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life.” He wrote those words on the sleeve of his album, A Love Supreme, which he released in 1965.
This album moves from chaotic shrills to rhythmic combinations of confession and adoration, and it stands as a testimony to the way God moves in and through our brokenness. Some of us have here today struggled with addiction. We who are older have divorces and deaths and all kinds of skeletons that we don’t even want to see on Halloween! We who are younger have our silent fears and doubts, even as we hold the spark of hope in our eyes for all to see.
It is the light of hope and the search for truth that causes us to look to love as the way forward. Love is the light that even blesses the darkness. It is the invitation into a life where light and dark become reconciled. It does not deny the brokenness of our past. If anything, the brokenness of our past is what makes love’s invitation so compelling!
I’m reminded here of Maya Angelou’s poem, On the pulse of the morning.
“So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher . . .
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.”
On this day and at this time, we stand at the door waiting to decide if we will accept love’s invitation and enter in, knowing that we will be transformed again and again and not return the way we came. It makes me wonder – if Isaiah had known what was in the temple, do you think he still would've gone in?
Of course, his vision was not something that we can really look at in those terms. God is described as being larger than the temple – the hem of God’s robe filled it! Plus, if Isaiah had a coal touch his mouth, how did he volunteer to speak? While I’ve always wondered about these things, nothing could be further from the point.
It’s not a story of one plucky faithful man saying, “Pick me! I’m special.” It is an ecstatic vision, and it’s a story about transformation. Isaiah was not able to say “Here I am” until he was transformed by God’s action. Before that, all he could say was, “I am an unclean person with unclean lips from a people with unclean lips!” Then God took what should be so searing that Isaiah would not be able to speak afterward and used it to purify the one thing that Isaiah said was impure – his lips. So, the takeaway is that God uses our brokenness to transform us, and once God has transformed us we cannot help but respond.
That’s not to say that there is no choice at all. God still asked the heavenly hosts who they might send even though there was only one guy in the room. It’s not that God couldn’t do it without Isaiah. God just didn’t want to do it without him, but God also wanted Isaiah to accept the invitation to love. The same is true for you and for me, and love is the way.
Purification may come for you and for me in strange ways. It will probably come in some unwanted ways, even seemingly unintended ways, but it will come all the same – because God loves you enough to do it for you, over and over again.
As God’s love transforms us it gives us purpose. It puts people in our path that we may not want to love – but must love – because we have been so transformed that we can’t help but say, “Yes. Here I am. I’ll do it.”
You may be called to love, as some will be today, as a spiritual leader in the church; or you may be called to support the work of the church on a task force or leadership team, or you may be called to love through random acts of kindness that expand from person to person like the air we breathe.
However, God is calling you, just remember that you cannot love others as much as you love yourself without loving yourself. That doesn’t mean that you need to deny loving others either, it just means that seeing the value of each soul as a reflection of the character of God starts with seeing yourself that way. Knowing that we are beloved by God – even with all of our brokenness – is what transforms us into agents of change and reconciliation!
Love’s invitation frees us to be our true selves as created in the image of God. Love’s action transforms us so that our greatest place of brokenness becomes the source of our proclamation. Love is what allows us to walk with brokenness and expect transformation with joy! Love is the way, and to God be the glory – Now and always. Amen!
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