Fierce Love

A sermon Based on Matthew 22:34-46 and I Corinthians 13:1-8

When my son was first born, something strange happened to me that can only be described as possession.  I needed to hold him or have him near him all the time.  When friends would come over to meet him, and would ask to hold him, I’d politely say, “No, thanks.”  And when the doctor called us to say that we should bring him to the hospital because his little liver wasn’t working properly, I lost it.  The doctor told me later that he was a little surprised when he called us that night, that I was in the background yelling, “You can’t take my baby!”

The need to hold and protect him was powerful, fierce, and primal.  At one point early in his little life, I had this moment of realizing that what I was experiencing was not demon possession, but was actually a feeling of intense love.

But this feeling of intense, fierce love is not the love that it sounds like we read about in I Corinthians.  “Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on it’s own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

That doesn’t sound like the love I felt when I first met my children.  In fact, compared to that primal experience of love, this love Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians sounds downright polite and respectable.

There is nothing polite or respectable about the love a parent has for their child.  Respectable people don’t scream themselves hoarse at little league playoff games, stand up and yell at a graduation when their child’s name is called (even if the principal said not to).  Respectable people don’t break eight different traffic laws to get to their kid to the emergency room for minor stitches.  Our fierce love for our family leads us to do some pretty outlandish things.  Sometimes, kids, we parents act a little possessed because the love we feel is so deep and strong.

Our text from Matthew today is among the most read words of Jesus in scripture.  Jesus is asked,  “Rabbi which commandment is the greatest?”  And Jesus responds, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. and the second commandment is like it, you should love your neighbor as yourself.  All the commandments in the law are based on these two basic principles.”

This encounter is the third of three traps that the religious authorities have set for Jesus.  The first one was the one we read last week in worship, “It is lawful to pay taxes?”  In very Jesus-y fashion, he does not give a direct answer to the question, but he gives the answer that gets to the root of the issue–where does our allegiance lie?

The second trick question was a real doozie–”Rabbi if a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother.’ (That is what the lay decreed.) Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married and died childless, leaving the widow to his brother.  The second did the same and also the third, down to the seventh.  Last of all, the woman herself died.  In the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be?  For all of them had married her.”

I’m sure you have also been wondering the answer to this question.

Jesus responds to this trick question by saying, “Folks we worship the God of the living.”

The final trick question was posed by a lawyer sent to Jesus by the religious authorities–”What is the greatest commandment?”  And of course, Jesus sidesteps the initial intent of this question, and goes deeper, just like he did with the first two trick questions.  In answer to “What is the greatest commandment?” he gets to the root of –Love.

The root of the law is not tolerance, it’s not politeness or respectability.  It’s love.  And while yes, love is often patient and kind and all that, it’s sometimes nothing like that at all.  Love is that thing that takes hold of your heart, your mind, and your soul, and leads you to say and do some things that are fierce and primal and passionate.

In the three traps that the religious leaders try to set for Jesus, I don’t think he was nice (nice people answer question as they are asked)–he refused to do this.  He redirected, pointed to something deeper, but refused to fall into the trap of going down a bunny trail of theological nonsense.  He pointed to what was deeper, and harder to get at–love.

He answered the questions by digging deeper, because our journey doesn’t end just because we follow the law.  Our journey of discipleship is about digging deeper, and getting closer and closer to love.

Sometimes love is patient and kind.  And that in and of itself is an act of justice, when patience and kindness are in short supply.  But patience and kindness are not love when they tolerate hate speech, or perpetuate blindness towards the needs of others.

Sometimes love is the opposite of envious, boastful, arrogant or rude.  God knows there’s plenty of that in the world that we could do without.  But sometimes love sounds boastful when congregations declare openly welcome for folks who identify as queer, or for those who experience homelessness.

And sometimes love even looks like anger, when folks have the same passion for those they have never met as they do for their own family.  Love looks like anger because folks don’t always know what to do when our heart breaks for a stranger, when our rage about injustice looks wild and primal, and lacks politeness and respectability.  But that is love.

Laws are pretty easy to follow, but getting to the heart of the law takes time.  It takes practice.  It takes listening to each other and being gracious with each other as we journey together.  And this is why I Corinthians was written–Paul is telling the church in Corinth (the church that longed for the more public gifts of prophecy and speaking in tongues) to see love over all the other spiritual gifts.  Love is the greatest spiritual gift of them all.  And love is the heart of community.

Love is more than following the rules, being polite, and appearing respectable.  But the rules are often where we start.  And as we together dig deeper and our love grows, so does our passion–our passion for God, for our neighbor and for our very lives.  That loves fills our hearts and souls and minds, and causes us to act unruly, undignified, and fierce.

May we all be filled with that passionate, unruly, fierce love as we journey together in the way of faith.  AMEN.

Little Intifadas

  A sermon based on 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 and Matthew 22:15-22*

  *Please note that in referring to Intifada, I am referring to the original  non-violent intent of the Palestinian Intifada.  I do NOT advocate  violence–as a Christian and a Mennonite a do not advocate violence of  any kind.  

  In 1987, the first intifada began in Israel and Palestine.  I’m not an      expert on this (and I”m sure I’ll be corrected if I get it wrong), but this    is how I understand it, in very basic terms….

The intifada began in December of 1987 in a refugee camp in Gaza.    Events were escelating between Israelis and Palestinians and finally came to a head when an Israeli military vehicle hit a Palestinian car, killing four Palestinians.

The result was four years of civil disobedience and economic boycotts.  Palestinians refused to work on settlements, refused to pay taxes, and refused to drive cars that had Israeli license plates.  Some Palestinians sadly resorted to throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers.  The result of the non-violent resistant was a tentative peace through the Madrid conference in 1991, and the Oslo Accords in 1993, in which the Palestinian Authority was born, among other things.

The popular meaning of intifada is “uprising”, but a literal translation of the Arabic word means “shaking off.”  The Palestinians shook off the authority of the Israeli government in their lives–they essentially said in their nonviolent actions–I refuse to acknowledge your power over me.  I shake off any authority you may have in my life.

We see all sorts of versions of intifadas in our American history–Rosa parks and the bus boycott was also a shaking off–Rosa Parks and other African Americans refused to follow the law that required that they sit in the back of the bus.  They shook off that law, by refusing its power over them.  They’d sooner walk than adhere to that racist, unjust law.

Ferguson arrests were their own form of intifada or “shaking off”.  After the murder of Michael Brown, people in Ferguson and all over the nation attempted to shake off our racist laws and treatment of people of color.  This week, several pastors from all over the country gathered together to call the civil authorities of Ferguson to repentance.

Two hundred clergy–including Cornel West and Jim Wallis–gathered in a church in Ferguson to confess their part in perpetuating a broken system, then they marched to the police headquarters.  They were blocked from entering, but the clergy, one by one, went forward to the police officers who were blocking their path and began to speak quietly and personally to them face to face, asking them to become part of repentance.

This is what Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine wrote about his experience:  “In all my previous arrests for peace or justice, I had never asked a police officer to join in repentance. My officer was a 36-year veteran of the police force. We got to talking. He admitted he was a Christian too and said these last two months have been the hardest time he’s ever had in his almost four decades of service. “I didn’t want it to end like this,” he told me. He so hoped this could all “end” and end “peacefully.” I said that would take a lot of big changes. He nodded his head.”

The clergy then asked to see the Ferguson Chief of Police and began to move forward to do so. That’s when they were arrested, and spent five hours in holding.”

All of these acts–in Palestine, in Ferguson, in the south during civil rights–are intifadas of one kind of another.  They were a shaking off–they are a way of saying, “The laws you uphold are unjust, and we will not honor their power.

All of these things are inherently political acts in that they impact the way government is run, and they say something about the rules in place.  But it is more than political–it is the way of saying, the rules of state do not apply because they are unjust.

Believe it or not this is what Paul is beginning to talk about in I Thessalonians.  The book of I Thessalonians, as described by Will O’Brien, is an intifada against the empire.  It’s a shaking off of the empire–it’s making a case for the church in Thesselonica to turn away from the Roman empire, away from the system in which they were so deeply entrenched.  Paul called this church to continue to turn away from idols, from the empire of idolatry and from the empirical religious system.

In this epistle, Paul uses the language of empire–even in these few brief verses of greeting.  The church of Thesselonica, would have understood what Paul was saying when he was referring to idols–he was talking about the Roman gods that they were asked to pay homage to.  And when Paul describes the church as “waiting for God’s son from heaven,” they would have understood the contrast of the Roman Son of God, the child of Julius Ceasar, versus Jesus, the son of God.  They would have understood that the coming wrath referred to the ramifications for turning from Rome, and towards the God of Israel.

Paul is calling the church to turn away from Rome and it’s unjust laws.  They are to act as if they have no power over them.

This is risky business.  This is life and death.  This is why Jesus was killed.  This is why the early church suffered.  The church in Thesselonica adheres to a higher law.

We often spiritualize the word of Paul, but here he makes a dig at the empire, and calls the church to continue to turn away from Rome and towards God, to follow the way of Jesus, not the ways of Caesar.

This is what Jesus is talking about in our gospel text today.  Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but give to God what belongs to God.

And what belongs to God?  All of this!  The fullness of the earth, and everything in it.  Our hearts, our minds, our bodies, our loved ones, our lives.  Our resource, our time, our energy, our passion.  The coin may contain the image of the empire, but all of this belongs to God.

The system–though we are bound up in it–will never save us.  The system in which we live is in favor of the privileged and opposed to the oppressed.  The system in which we are enmeshed is something we must confess, speak out against, resist, and turn away from, shake off.

So, give to the empire what rightfully belongs to the empire–whatever you think that may be–but give to God what belongs to God.  This is no easy task.  I do not say this lightly.  I say this filled with fear for what this means for me, for my security and for own comfort.

This is where discipleship gets real.

Now, before you think I’ve gone completely off the deep end, I want to suggest a couple little intifadas to you that could be possible right here, right now.

Our own intifadas against the empire are things like:

–Teaching our children the way of peace, when they are living in a world of violence.
–Choosing to see people as God’s beloved, when we are told that they are issues.
–Looking out for others in a world that tells us that we only need to be concerned about our own needs.
–It’s knowing our neighbors and loving them, even when we are tempted to close our doors and shutter our windows.
–And yeah, sometimes it’s getting arrested so that we can name the injustice our our system, and call our system to repentance.

Some of these acts feel more political than others, but all of them are a turn from the idols of this age, and toward the God of love.

God, give us the courage to speak out against the injustice of our world, in big and small ways, as we face the consequences of our actions together with your Spirit to guide us, and hold us up.  AMEN.