Jesus and the Disinherited, Part 5: Love

 

Service of Worship

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

May 30, 2021

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Let us pray:

Holy Spirit of God, invisible like the wind,

we do not see you moving among us,

but the effect we see—

come to our hearts:

that we may be renewed and reborn.

Open our minds:

that we may perceive your kingdom.

Lift up our eyes to where the cross of Christ stands for our healing:

so may we believe,

and in believing not die

but have eternal life;

through him who

in your love for us

you sent into the world,

Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Isaiah 6: 1-8

Isaiah’s Commission

1In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;

the whole earth is full of his glory.”

4At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

5“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

6Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

8Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

 

A Message

“Jesus and the Disinherited, Part 5: Love”

 

Here we are friends, we’ve made it to the very end of this sermon series based on Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman. Week by week, we’ve built up a deeper understanding of who Jesus is so that we can truly know what it means to follow him. In the first week, we learned that Jesus is our source of growth. In the second week, we learned that Jesus shields us from the things that scare us, and pushes us to fight back against what causes fear in our neighbors. The third week, we learned that Jesus is our truth, and his candor and sincerity are the strongest weapons against this world’s dishonesty. Last week, we learned that Jesus rejects hate, and transforms it into accountability. The title of this final chapter is the word you must have been waiting for after a month of delving into the character of Jesus: love.

 

The one word above all others that we associate with Jesus. The one word that IS Jesus. Some form of the word “love” shows up in the NIV translation of the Bible 551 times. When you go into the original Greek and Hebrew Bible texts, we see several different forms of love lifted up between God’s people:

Philia, a “brotherly” love

Eros, a passionate love

Storge, an unconditional family love

And two words for love so all-encompassing, so never-ending, and so justice seeking, that they can only describe the kind of love we find in the Divine—the Greek agape and the Hebrew hesed. We hope really hard to offer each other the first three in this life—philia for our good friends and neighbors, storge for your parents and children, eros for your partner. And even by those definitions of love we frequently fall short. We strive on toward perfection, though, and if we’re committed to truly following Jesus, the one thing we need to do better, deeper, more faithfully, unendingly, through the barriers of this world, is love. And though we think of agape and hesed as the kinds of love that only our Creator is capable of, if we could learn this kind of love, too, a love that denies the interests of the self in favor of what is good and righteous, we would bring fulfill what Jesus died for. We would not only have, but be, the Kingdom of God. The world is a giant desert and love is the rain for which we desperately search.

 

In this concluding chapter of his book, Thurman teaches us about this all-important salve for the world’s wounds. He teaches us how important love is, but also how we manage to avoid loving one another even though Jesus commanded it.

 

Thurman believed there was one kind of love that most of us do rather well, that most of us are comfortable hearing about in church, and that gives us instant gratification—love for people in your immediate environment who you already like. In a post-pandemic world we’ll happily “pass the peace” to one another in worship. We’ll hug our family and close friends. We’ll wave at our neighbors. We’ll support one another at community events, we’ll donate money to causes that are close t us, we’ll do favors and extend mercies to one another knowing how much our friends need help, and knowing we’ll see right away what good we did. That’s generally a pretty easy kind of love. It’s a love that doesn’t go past the sidewalk. It’s safe.

 

Jesus certainly wants us to love one another this way. He taught us to love our neighbors. But it’s when we read deeper in the sermon on the mount, and we venture further in our discipleship with Jesus, that the real challenges arise—love our enemies.

 

That’s a deeply uncomfortable word. Enemies. Who wants to admit they have enemies? That’s no easier than last week when I told you we all have an inclination to hate. Gosh, why is Pastor Natalie being so rough on you? Can’t I just preach some easy listening material about the lilies of the valley? I could. But hearing things we don’t want to hear helps us all grow.

 

Love is growth. The love that Jesus challenges to, the love that builds the Kingdom and changes the world is the love that never allows you to hang out in your comfort zone. And here in Nisky we’ve got a pretty cushy comfort zone. The comfort zone that troubled Thurman the most, the comfort zone he spent the most time warning a young Martin Luther King about, was the comfort zone of race. Christian churches should be the leaders in breaking racial boundaries and stereotypes, standing up to racism, and bringing all of God’s people together. But sadly, churches tend to handle race as badly as, or even worse, than any other social institution. The membership of the churches in the Upper New York Conference of the United Methodist Church reflects this. The state of New York is, as of the last census, 66% white, 16% African American, 8% Asian, 3% multiracial, and 7% who don’t identify with any of the choices offered on the survey. The membership of UNY is 97% white. Dr. King summed it up best when he said “11:00 on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week.”

 

It’s so hard for us to admit that there are lines in the sand we’re reluctant to cross. It’s one thing when it’s about learning to love a neighbor that we’ve been socialized to feel uncomfortable around—neighbors of a different race, or socioeconomic class, or nationality, or ability. The most difficult kind of love there is is the love Jesus calls us to: the love of our most fearsome enemies. The love of those with whom we’d never choose to be anywhere near. The love of those who feel like faceless antagonists.

 

Isaiah knew of this kind of animosity. God commissions him to understand it, and then prophesy to it, in this morning’s scripture reading. God warns Isaiah about his people in the Southern Kingdom of Israel who shut out God in favor of their own hatred and selfishness, and who would spend decades in exile at the hands of the enemy, the Babylonian Empire. Isaiah and his neighbors knew what it meant to see a group of people with so much animosity that they barely resembled human beings in their eyes. God warns Isaiah of the pain he would see and feel. Isaiah asks how long he had to go out and prophesy to his people, and God answers:

 

Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant,

Until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged,

Until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken.

And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste.

But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.

 

Despite the ruins we see, despite the destruction our wrath has done, despite the body counts and warfare, despite the weaponry, the hate crimes, and the profound lack of peace in the world, even when it seems like the world has been deforested of God’s love, there is a stump.

 

As war has raged on for over a century between Israel and Palestine and conflicts escalate, there is a stump.

 

As news breaks, like it did last Wednesday in San Jose, of another mass workplace shooting, of another man with another gun, there is a stump.

 

As anti-choice legislation sweeps through Alabama and robs women of control over their own bodies, there is a stump.

 

And as we prepare to close a long list of churches at annual conference this year because they have shrunk to the point that they are no longer living into their mission, there is a stump.

 

God’s love may be hiding at ground level, but it’s always there, and it can be grown again. The seraph has touched our lips with the coal, and we have been cleansed of all the horrible things we’ve done. It’s time to act. It’s time to love.

 

We need to acknowledge that even people we deeply fear, even people who have caused our families centuries of harm, even people on the other side of the world who live completely differently from us, are children of God. We need to restore the humanity of even our enemy.

 

We need to be willing to own our contempt for one another, to take a good hard look in the mirror, so we can deal with those feelings and let them pass.

 

We need to move past friend and foe distinctions and open our hearts to a better, peaceful future.

 

We need accountability for wrongdoing, reparations for harm, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

 

Most of all, we need Jesus: Our source of growth, our shield from fear, our voice of truth, our transformer of hate, and the one who makes love possible even in the most impossible circumstances.

 

If we can wrap our heads and hearts around this, then we’re only at the very beginning. We have still done little to nothing to actually solve the world’s problems. We haven’t made life better for a single person. But if we know who Jesus is, if we know how to act like him, and if we know how to love like him, then we have everything we need to build the Kingdom. We have a guide to stick in our back pocket while doing the work, just as this very book was during the Civil Rights movement for Dr. King.

 

Put what you have learned in your pocket and go love your enemies. Here we are, Lord. Send us.

 

Amen.

 

I invite you to receive the benediction:

Just as God’s Word was sent into the world
to heal and redeem,
so God sends you into the world this day
to be light and love, healing and hope.
Go now to be light for the world!
And may the grace and peace of God the Creator,
the Redeemer, and the Sustainer
come upon you this day
and remain with you always. Amen.