Love Your Neighbor - Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16

My guess is that most people looked at the topic for this sermon and had some thoughts as to what it’s going to include – in other words what the basic tenants of loving your neighbor include. This serves as my disclaimer to those who have expectations of what is to come – this is not probably going to be what you expect to hear. Further, the thought that kept crossing my mind as I thought about this week’s sermon is that I’m not qualified to give it. There were several times this week that I caught myself not acting in a loving way to my neighbor – my college, my friends, my family, those I interacted with the community. I thought and said some things that weren’t very kind let alone loving. But maybe that’s just why there is a need for this sermon. It is time to rethink what it means to love our neighbor.

I spent a month last summer in the hot, sticky Southern weather of Denison, Texas as a community organizer. Specifically I was sent to Denison through a faith-based organization called Communities of Shalom that originally started in 1992 as a response of the United Methodist Church to the LA Riots. In 2007 Drew Theological School inherited and revamped the vision of Communities of Shalom and now sends seminary students around the world to help people realize the gifts they already have in each other and their community. I went through countless hours of training, both with Shalom and the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). I probably cannot recollect the majority of the basic principles of community organizing but I can remember the big one – Do not do for others what they can do for themselves. And oh how this principle got me into trouble with the church folk in Denison. See the church’s I was working with they’re really got the charity bit, but they didn’t know how to empower anyone. For them the having the heart of a servant meant giving things out and helping the “misfortunate” however they saw fit. The middle class came in and told the lower class what they needed. Listening was absent – no one wanted to hear what people outside of their charity workers thought they needed. And they weren’t open to receiving anything – because what could a bunch of poor folks have to teach those who were “better off”. Up against these mentalities the motto turned mantra of the community organizer butted heads – “Do not do for others what they can do for themselves.” At the heart of this principle are values church values if we just dig around a bit – love, respect, empowerment, all done with a sense of mutuality. With and not for.

I wonder what the author of the book of Hebrews would have to say about this rule. In the first verse of today’s scripture passage it is written, “Let mutual love continue.” What is mutual love? I don’t know if we even have the capability to explain it, let alone live it out in our current culture of me and mine. I’m going to do whatever I need to do to get ahead – no matter what the cost. Everything is about puffing up my self-esteem, even my sense of altruism. I help those around me in such a way to re-enforce the idea that I have power over them. I have something they need – be it food, money, transportation, employment, housing, the list goes on and on – but the only way they are going to get it is if I give it to them.

So to what do we point to diminish the concept of the corporate world – this me-centered mentality? My first thought is look to the family structure – but this week alone I have heard countless stories from close friends about the wreckage of their home life that is dominated by disrespect. Love has been replaced by selfish wants and disregard for who is hurt by the decisions they make, so if not out entire families, maybe just our partnerships and marriages. Maybe we understand mutual love a bit better on a one-to-one basis. But again, I’ve seen the invisible and visible marks of domestic violence – the terror that calls for submission. I’ve heard people talk badly about their spouses and even brag about cheating on one another. A friend who was visiting me this weekend referred to her place of employment as “the marriage and affair mill”. So if not family, perhaps the church? But if I as a church leader don’t understand mutual love, don’t live out mutual love, how can I hold anyone else to this standard?

But the author of Hebrews didn’t just leave us with the idea of mutual love – as simple, yet confusing and complex as that seems to be for us today. The author continues telling us to show hospitality to strangers, to visit those in prison, to be with those who are being tortured. Doing all that we do with the vision that we are the person in that situation. Right here the author is chaffing with the ideals of the modern church – which is excellent at helping others, but not thinking about how they would like to be treated in those situations. Would we want to be someone’s charity case of the day? Would we want someone to view us as another notch in their spiritual belt – another good deed done? My mentor for the past year in Biblical feasting detests soup kitchens. When entering into a conversation with her about it one day she plainly said, “If I wouldn’t eat that crap, why should I feel good about giving it to anyone else?” She went on to share her vision for a healthy soup kitchen where the food was fresh and not from cans. Where people are served with dignity instead of hoisting a scoop of some unidentifiable food into a dish and doing the same to the next person and the next. In her vision, maybe we can find one of the truest characteristics of mutual love for our neighbors – treating each other with dignity. Someone is not the subject of my good deed or ministry. They are the Beloved of God. And I shouldn’t treat them in any way that diminishes or insults this truth. “Do not do for others what they can do for themselves” because people need to be empowered. I would want to be empowered and I would want it to be acknowledged what I can give back. I am the Beloved of God and I have worth!

There is nothing wrong with doing for people what they cannot do for themselves – but the church has swung way past this principle to doing charity. Giving without receiving. When I was in Denison, my advisor came down to visit me for a few days. Across from where I was staying there stood a sign that read “Free food for all” – bearing the name of the church community I was working with. My advisor turned towards me and started to shake his head – “That sign has to go” he said. In the idea of not doing for others what they can do for themselves, my advisor was able to see the vision of a true community garden, having those who want to eat help tend as they are able. From my advisor I learned another truth about mutual love – it isn’t conventional charity, it’s working together, side by side.

We are further admonished to let go of our desire for money. To honor the relationships we are in. And be content with whatever God has given us. To hold what we cherish gently, and treat it with care. What would it look like if we learned to hold each of our relationships in the palm of our hand – as the old chorus states that God does with each of us – instead of grasping tightly onto our relationships as if we own them? What if we transcended being sorry for our neighbors and crying for them to crying with them? The differences here don’t lie in mere semantics – they are different at the core of how we seem people. How we treat one another. And how we view loving our neighbor.

So where did I find an example of mutual love? In one of the places that most wouldn’t expect it to be found – behind the walls of the Edna Mahnn Women’s Correctional Facility in New Jersey, where I was a student in PREP – Partnership in Religious Education in Prison. When I entered behind those walls each Monday, I wasn’t an “real student” taking a class with a “prisoner”. I was an outside students learning from and with inside students. My status was that of an equal, which threw some of us for a bit of a loop at first, as we have been trained to believe that prisons exist to keep the bad people away from the good people. But in my class I saw the reality of mutual love as described by the author of Hebrews. The women in that room had to work together in order to be able to survive and thrive. They empowered each other to keep going on the days that seemed hopeless. Those who had better academic skills spent time teaching others how to read and write, so they could better themselves both inside of the prison and when they were released. They treated each other with dignity, simply because they believed it was the right way to live, and because they were rarely treated with dignity by the guards and those who came in from the outside, who treated them like they were tainted. And they looked out for each other, even when it broke every rule that the prison system tried to place on them. Heart wrenching tales of women thrown into the highest degree of lock up for sharing their hair dryer with another inmate, since that was considered bribery and not a sign of meeting the needs of another. Women sanctioned for trying to get a little extra food to another inmate who needed nourishment, before the food is thrown in the trash to go to the dump. And women who consoled each other late at night, when tears were shed for love ones lost – as they would be sent to the psych ward if they cried, even about death, in front of the guards. No one person was the head, and no one was the subject of care. It was truly mutual. For if one suffered, all did, in the hearts of these women who loved each other so much. And in their mutual love, they praised God through their sacrifices. They loved their neighbor from a deep and sincere place, albeit unconventional in the eyes of most of those looking in trying to punish them for loving each other.

So I ask you, brothers and sisters, do we love from this place? What does our love look like? Does it empower others? Does it acknowledge their worth as the Beloved of God? Is it nurtured by our need to be in control and to have power over someone, or it is born out of a desire to treat each person we have contact with, with dignity? Are we willing to walk side by side with someone, admitting our own needs and heartaches, even to a stranger? Are we willing to risk being unconventional, even to the extent of being punished, for this radical love that is mutual? Do for or walk with. Cry for or cry with. It’s our choice. What is the ministry of this church going to be? For or with? Amen.

Healing from What Cripples Us - Luke 13: 10-17

“Does God really want me to stay in this hospital bed forever, rotting away? Does He really want me not to be able to eat? Why won’t God answer my prayer?” I looked into the patient, who had become a good friend over the past two months, and I wanted to cry. I had watched her suffer without any known cause or reason. The conversation that emerged was gut wrenching for both of us. I told her that I didn’t have an answer to her question, but I know how badly it hurts when God doesn’t seem to be listening to us or meeting us in our deepest needs. We talked about how to express our anger over our suffering to God. And in the end we were left a little free-er from the thoughts that we had been struggling with internally, but without any relief for our physical suffering. However, we were holding hands, finding strength from one another.

See I knew this patient’s struggles all too well because they echoed my own. My questioning God about why I hurt so much. Those pains in my lives and the lives of those I love that make me become anxious to my very core at time. I stood aside helplessly when a child I dearly loved was pulled off of life-support after only eight short days of life. I became angry to the point of stagnation with a family who decided to stop treatment for their baby who could be cured, instead turning to hospice so they didn’t have to deal with him anymore. I walked with friends through the valley of seemingly endless depression and have tended wounds and cuts caused through self-harm. I cried with friends dealing with the emotional wreckage of abusive parents and ugly divorces. Sat and cried over infertility and miscarriages. And all the while feeling like the crippled woman in today’s passage – like the weight of the world was on my shoulders, pressing my eyes towards the ground.

I’d imagine several of us sitting here today know the weight of what this woman was bearing. She may have suffered for so long that she resigned herself to her present situation. When year after year of domestic violence, sexual harassment, self-loathing, desegregating marriages, living alone, unbreakable addictions, or physical and emotional pain build up there comes a point where the door to hope becomes shut and we learn to live, bearing the weight we carry.

This woman probably heard the dangerous message time and again that we have heard in our churches as well – “God’s timing is perfect” or “God’s idea of healing is better than ours.” Or “Have faith and God will provide.” These statements could be right and good for some people, but for those who deeply suffer, they are like the final knife severing hope. Why pray if God’s timing doesn’t seem to ever come? Why look for the light at the end of the tunnel if we feel that God’s idea of healing doesn’t match our own? What healing could even be asked for, let alone expected, with such messages being repeated time and time again?

Enter Jesus. Jesus knew this woman’s desires so intimately that he didn’t need to ask her if she desired to be healed. He knew that his voice could set free the power this woman held inside to heal herself. And so Jesus called out, “Woman, you are set free from your aliment.” The words caught her attention. She looked towards this man who had called to her, promising her the healing that she had sought after for eighteen years. Could it be true? Could she hope again? Jesus walked over to her, laid his hands on her, and what his voice had spoken his hands confirmed. She immediately stood up straight and began singing praises to God. She knew that only God could bring about such a miracle. Jehovah straightened her spine, but it was so much more than that. He gave her eyes that could see what was in front of her. He removed the weight of the burden she was carrying for so long. Her dignity – the thing that she had missed the most was restored. And the woman’s story ends. The next few verses speak of the controversy Jesus caused by healing her on the Sabbath, but that is for another day and another sermon.

For four years I drove past a little house located around the bend from the train tracks on my way back and forth from school. I was rarely ever alone, as I either took the bus or carpooled back from band or play practice with friends. Often as we passed that little house there was a woman outside, cleaning her sidewalk or going to her mailbox. She was bent over to the point of forming a 90-degree angle with her body. She moved slowly in all she did and she could not lift up her head in order to see what was in front of her. Instead she relied on her feet to shuffle her in the right direction and her other senses to point out danger. Almost every time we drove past her house, someone made a malice-laced comment either about her or to her; sometimes people even threw things out of the bus window at her. I hadn’t thought about this woman or her plight for many years until a few months ago when my younger cousin found a beautiful piece of wood that we wanted to shape into a cane. When asked who it was for, as no one in our family needed one at the time, he stated that he was going to leave it out by the mailbox for the woman around the corner from the train tacks – the woman who could not stand up straight. He did what no one else had thought to do over the years; he reached out to her in love. What’s ironic about this story is that my cousin considers himself to be agnostic, and those speaking badly about the woman identified themselves as Christians. He understood how to reach out and love those who are carrying burdens.

I cannot help but wonder if the woman in today’s story had similar issues with people shaming her, ignoring her, or worse shouting obscenities at her as the woman my cousin reached out to did. Did people label her a sinner – claiming that demons brought about her aliment or stating that God was punishing her? Did people walk to the other side of the street when they say her coming because they were afraid to catch whatever she had?

But Jesus did what others hadn’t done – he stopped. He spoke to her. He touched her. And he healed her. Eighteen years of pain and suffering were no match to Jesus’ healing powers. When others said that it was impossible to cure, Jesus reached out. When others avoided and ignored. Jesus, Jesus touched her.

How many of us today are looking for Jesus to reach out and touch us? And how many of us are wondering in our heads the questions that we are too afraid to let pass our lips, ‘does God really care about me?’ ‘Has God betrayed me?’ ‘Was I wrong about how powerful God really is?’ ‘Is God unfair?’ ‘Is God hidden?’ And ‘why is God staying silent as I cry out?’ We don’t ask our questions because we are afraid of how others around us will respond, how they will see us. We’ve heard the mantra, “Just have faith” too many times, so we see our questions as faithlessness. But I would wager a guess that over eighteen years, the woman from today’s passage had some questions of her own. But any questions that she would ask, we would ask, is not a sign of faithlessness. The questions themselves are in fact signs of faith, signs that we cannot give up on communicating with the God who we cannot see through the haze of our suffering. We are searching for a confirmation of our faith that we want to hang on to because at the most basic level it makes us who we are. We do not want to give up hope that the weight we carry will be lightened.

Phillip Yancey in his book Disappoint with God speaks of our faith confusion that has resulted from the statement, “Just have faith.” Somewhere along the way in our Christian journeys the idea has emerged that the best kind of faith to have is childlike, where a person faces the impossible and walked on, expecting a miracle. But for many people the miracle they want, what they have a hope in and are walking towards is a construction of their mind. Childlike faith is limited by childlike expectation that cannot grasp that God is bigger then what we expect, bigger than what we want. But there is another type of faith, the faith that leaves room for faltering without condemning, a faith that Yancey labels fidelity, which is best exhibited in the face of suffering. A faith that acknowledges that God is mysterious and we put our trust in this God who will not abandon us, even if that is how it appears to our eyes. It is the faith that believes, “Endurance is not just the ability to bear hard things, but to turn them into glory.” We need both kinds of faith, but too often we are condemned if we do not have childlike exuberance.

When the weight of what I’m carrying has pressed me down, I don’t want someone to tell me to suffer with dignity. Or that I need to just trust in God and know that I will get what I want. Or worse to tell me just to hand it over to God, as if it really that simple. I want to cry to Jesus. Let my tears fall and know that they are holy in the eyes of God. I want my questions to be blessed not because I kept them inside and told everyone else that I was trusting God with a fake smile on my face. No, I want them to be blessed because I had the courage to ask. I want someone to reach out and touch me in my pain to remind me that I am still connected to the body of Christ when I feel so far away. I want someone to sit Shiva with me – the Jewish custom of mourning that involves other coming to me, not to comfort me, but to just be with me in the pain of the moment. I don’t need someone to tell me what comes after I through the light at the end of the tunnel of suffering – I want someone to walk with me towards that light, as painful as that might be. And I want someone to be honest enough to take off their armor and show me the scars, telling me about how God brought them through too. For scars are a sign that healing has taken place, but what once was can never be forgotten. Scars, especially the ones that others cannot see, are a reminder that suffering is part of all of our stories. The question is if we will let those parts of our stories become part of our ministries.

The story of the crippled woman gives us so much to think about, so many different roles to assume in our lives. So what role are you in today? Are you the woman before Jesus called out to her – suffering for a period of time so long that you can’t remember quite how your pain started. Maybe you’re wondering if God even cares about you anymore. May you be blessed in those questions, and blessed in your desire to have the weight of suffering be lifted from you. Or maybe you identify with the woman after she is healed – praising God and wanting to live out of your healing. May you be blessed because you suffered. You now have a story to share and the compassion to walk with those who suffer through the hard times. Or maybe you are like Jesus, acting out of love and just reaching out and touching the person others seem to avoid or label. May your hands be blessed because there is healing in touch and being present with those suffering. Or maybe you are the unwritten characters – the neighbors around the woman who treated her unkindly. Or the religious leaders who criticized Jesus for not following the rules of healing. You quiver in the fear of secret shame and your own questions that have not been able to find voice, ‘how am I like those who suffer?’ ‘Why can’t we heal her?’ ‘What did we do to contribute to her suffering?’ May you be blessed with confidence to let your questions be freed so you can get past the ideals of healing to the gut-wrenching reality of it all.

So may we hold our suffering gently. May we be willing to ask hard questions and considered our tears as we cry out to Jesus to be blessed. May we be willing to share the stories behind our scars with others. May we reach out in love and touch the pain of another, just being present and sharing the weight of their suffering instead of admonishing them to “Just have faith”. And maybe most importantly may we give voice to our burdens, past and present, in order to be a bit free-er from what we are struggling with internally. For in the words of C. S. Lewis, “I have learned not that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.” Amen.

Saying Goodbye

“Through the back window of a ’59 wagon, I watch my best friend Janie slipping further away. I kept on waving ‘til I couldn’t see her, and trough my tears I asked again why we couldn’t stay.

Momma whispered softly, ‘Time will ease your pain. Life’s about changing, nothing ever stays the same.’ And she said, ‘How can I help you to say goodbye. It’s okay to hurt and its okay to cry. Come let me hold you, and I will try. How can I help you to say goodbye.’”

It’s been a long time since I’ve sat down and listened to this song. A long time. I was first introduced to it when we were talking about grief in 11^th grade summer health class. But this past week, the lyrics have been coming to my mind with the chorus seemingly being on an endless repeat cycle.

A friend asked me earlier this week how I’m handling the fact that my best friend was getting married on Saturday. That question helped me realize that I was processing it all by ignoring. Not healthy.

“Momma whispered softly, ‘Time will ease your pain. Life’s about changing, nothing ever stays the same.’ And she said, ‘How can I help you to say goodbye. It’s okay to hurt and its okay to cry. Come let me hold you, and I will try. How can I help you to say goodbye.’”

We’re entering a time of celebration but it also marks a time of change, not only for him and his new wife, but in our friendship. This is my best friend of six years. We’ve been though a lot together – emotionally and spiritually. We used to plan our schedules in such a way that we would have as many classes as possible together. We’d sneak up to the chapel balcony two times a week to just talk about what we were struggling with theologically and talk about insights we had from individual devotions that week. We were library buddies, making sure to have carrels next to each other so someone was always available when we had a freak out.

We’ve also traveled the world together. He’s been to my house too many times to count because he lived so far away from Houghton. We led worship together at my church several times. He had his own “bedroom” in my house. I’ve been out to visit him in KS. He was my other set of eyes and ears when I looked at grad schools, visiting three of the six divinity schools I looked at with me. We’ve been to Russia and Australia together. We’ve ate more meals together then either of us would probably like to count. He weathered my poor cooking when I was learning how to cook. We’ve watched more movies then we can remember. We’ve read books together, writing skewed notes in the margins so we could remember what to tell the other person.

We’re tight. We can complete each others sentences. Speak the truth to each other and be the only person who understands when the rest of our lives seem to be falling apart.

Best friends. And even as I write all of that it can’t begin to capture the memories we have with each other. The special moments we’ve shared. Moments that are marred if we try to take our memories and put them into the constraints of words.

“Momma whispered softly, ‘Time will ease your pain. Life’s about changing, nothing ever stays the same.’ And she said, ‘How can I help you to say goodbye. It’s okay to hurt and its okay to cry. Come let me hold you, and I will try. How can I help you to say goodbye.’”

And as happy as I am for him and his fantastic wife, I came to the realization while I was flying to their celebration that I felt robbed. I haven’t been able to say goodbye. Our culture does a really good job of helping same-sex friendships transition through marriage – that’s the true point of a bachelor or baccalaureate party. To acknowledge that a change is going to come, and to grieve that in the midst of celebration.

But the funny thing is that same-sex friendships aren’t going to change nearly as much as opposite-sex friendships. And where is the place for the ritaulization of our grief? Where are we allowed to mourn what we had that can’t be anymore and figure out what our friendship is going to look like with this addition?

I didn’t get to rtiaulize so it seems that all I really have is confusion and hurt, which seems so wrong in the midst of being so happy for him.

Where is the ritualization to name my grief so we can move on to the wonderful celebration? It seems like we’ve blasphemed against the God who created us to be able to feel all of our emotions by just wanting to be in the midst of the celebration. By suppressing anything that isn’t joyful. We are told that tears are shameful or out place, so we rush through grief instead of sitting Shiva. No wonder we have two personalities inside of each of us (at least) – we’ve been told to avoid who we really are and what we really feel.

Does that mean I’m not elated fir him? Of course not. It just means that I know I’ve missed a huge step in this transition because I’ve given in to what people tell me that it is proper to feel instead of sitting in the reality of what I do feel. I failed to reflect. Failed to remember. Failed to name what hurts and scares me. In one week leading up to one day of one celebration, I unraveled everything that it took me 10 weeks to build in CPE.

“Momma whispered softly, ‘Time will ease your pain. Life’s about changing, nothing ever stays the same.’ And she said, ‘How can I help you to say goodbye. It’s okay to hurt and its okay to cry. Come let me hold you, and I will try. How can I help you to say goodbye.’”

So how can we help each other to say goodbye?

Heart of Worship

Hillsong United - The Heart of Worship

when the music fades

all is stripped away

and i simply come

longing just to bring

something that's of worth

that will bless your heart

i'll bring you more than a song

for a song in itself

is not what you have required

you search much deeper within

through the way things appear

you're looking into my heart

chorus

I'm coming back to the heart of worship

and it's all about you

It's all about you, Jesus

I'm sorry Lord for the things i've made it

when it's all about you

it's all about you, Jesus

King of endless worth

no one could express

how much you deserve

though i'm weak and poor

all i have is yours

every single breath

chorus

I'm coming back to the heart of worship

and it's all about you

It's all about you, Jesus

I'm sorry Lord for the things i've made it

when it's all about you

it's all about you, Jesus

'Heart of Worship' is one of the first songs I learned to sing when I started to go to Sunday School at a different church [from my home church] in high school. It quickly became a favorite. However, I don't think the full impact and possibility for the song sank in until this past Sunday.

We started the service about 20 minutes late because our keyboardist became ill and the liturgist drove him home. The organist was away with her family for vacation/ work. So we decided as the service started to do everything acapella, which works well for praise and worship, but not hymns as much. So I put out a plea after praise and worship for someone to play the piano. No one stepped up. So I went back and forth between the piano to attempt the hymns (and for those of you know me, know how much I dread playing in front of other people) and the pulpit to lead the rest of worship. I never want to have that experience again. Haha.

But more to the point, despite worship not "flowing" as well, I felt like we as a congregation transcended music to the heart of worship - where music doesn't matter and we were able to concentrate on words and intentions. And that was beautiful and can't be captured and contained in words. I can't wait to see where we go from here after connecting to God in those moments in that way.

The Task of Obedience (Isaiah 1, 10-20)

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the Methodist camp that I usual work at with elementary schoolers one week out of the summer. I was there visiting some of my fellow counselors and the Dean who is a good friend. I arrived just in time for dinner. I was amazed by how well most of the campers followed the rules. There aren’t many rules at camp, but the ones that are in place are extremely necessary in order to ensure everyone’s safety. Basics include, become silent when a leader puts their hand in the error, everyone helps clean up, and tell your counselor before you venture anywhere on your own. If you want a good social experiment, raise your hand with a group of individuals who know its meaning and see how long it takes them to be quiet – at camp, by the end of the week, its mere seconds.

But as amazed as I was there were also some very disturbing things happening in the dining hall. This particular week at Wesley Forrest is packed, as two camps occupy the space, elementary schoolers in the upper part and junior high students in the lower part, The two groups come together three times a day for meals. While I was eating, the next thing I knew there was a plastic cup being throw across a few tables, followed by several other items, It was all being relayed on the junior high side of camp. An adult’s hand up was up in the air, yet the ruckus continued. I looked at the two co-deans in charge of these particular students who were sitting next to me eating. They sighed and gave each other a questioning look as if to ask, ‘how are we going to deal with their disobedience this time?’ before pulling out their dad looks. You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones that appear on parents’ faces when they are stretched to their capacity and their children broke a rule they knew of once again.

As I was reading this week's scripture passage, I could not help but wonder if God was pulling out the stern parent face. The people had broken the rules yet again. And they tried to cover up their wrong doings with religious mementos. My campers always knew just what words they thought they had to say to squirm out of the consequences of what they did wrong. “I didn’t mean to…”, “They told me too…”, “I didn’t know better…”, and the ever popular “I’m sorry….” With fingers crossed behind their backs. The Israelites knew just what words to say to God and what things to do to forget about all of the consequences for their disobedience as well. Or so they thought.

Can you imagine the shock on the Israelites faces when they receive their message from God – ‘I can see right past your words and actions to the heart of your worship and your false intentions. And I’m not impressed.’ Often kids are shocked and dismayed when an authority figure or mentor can tell them the reasoning behind what they just did. They think we’ve read their mind. But really their intentions weren’t all that hard to figure out in the first place. So you lay all of your cards on the table and see what move they make next. Will they own up to their mistakes or continue into a thicket of lies in an attempt to deceive you?

Adults are sometimes a bit harder to read. Sometimes we can guess another’s intentions, but all too often as we grow older we build upon the lessons around false repentance and deflection that we learned as children. But even if we cannot see each other’s hearts or the root of our intentions, God can. A fact that the Israelites in today’s passage seemed to have pushed aside.

We cannot full God by giving the Holy what we think is necessary or good. In a culture built around love of neighbor and love of God, they seemed to have skipped right past both of those pillars of their community and faith to worship. But what is worship if it isn’t built upon love of God and neighbor? The Israelites were offering sacrifices, as they thought was proper for worship. They used all of the right words to celebrate the different festivals in the temple. They took the right posture while praying. They ritually washed themselves in order to come before God. But they didn’t know why they were doing any of it. They had forgotten the heart of worship. They said one thing to God, while treating the neighbors, those who bore the imago Dei or image of God, unjustly. They were ignoring those around them in need.

The Israelites often get a bad reputation amongst some Christians when studying the prophetic books in the Hebrew Bible. But really, aren’t we just as guilty as the Israelites at times? We’ve grown into our culture that tells us to put ourselves first and forget about the wake of people that we may leave in our path. We buy things that were produced at another human beings offense. We ignore our neighbors next door, down the street, at the office, and around the world. And sometimes when we feel compelled enough we tell God and maybe our neighbor that we are sorry, but we fail to be able to name our wrongs. To own up to our mistakes.

See there is this funny thing about sin – there is no such thing as a sin with private consequences. Each thing we do, whether we realize it or not, effects another person. Even when we think we just broke one of God’s rules, so it must be a sin against God, it is really a sin against humanity. God gave us rules for a reason, to learn how to treat our neighbor. One of my favorite translation of Leviticus 19:18 states, “You should love your neighbor who is like you.” Oh how often we forget that every person is just like us, because we are all part of the family of God. We don’t get to choose our brothers and sisters, and if we are obedient we don’t really have a choice about how we should treat them, for to treat them poorly, even unintentionally, is to dishonor their Creator.

Here’s the thing – loving our neighbor is not easy. Which means loving God is not easy either. The two commandments cannot be separated because they are so linked to one another. Love is a discipline. Just as obedience is a discipline and a choice.

John Wesley believed that the basic tenants of loving God and neighbor could be broken down into three parts. Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God. Sounds simple right? But how often have we backslid, unintentionally, on one of these three this week? How easy was it to push those moments of disobedience out of your mind? We tend to remember the times that we do good and forget, or at least push out of mind, those times that we slipped up.

Christian singer Todd Agnew may have expressed the questions and anxieties around disobedience when he wrote the following lyrics to his song “Funny” “And You speak to me all the time and I can’t obey you to save my life. Well I can but I don’t. And I want to but I won’t. And I don’t do what I want to, I do what I don’t mean to and I’m confused.”

God knows that there are times when we just get so confused because the world tells us to act one way and God tells us to act another. The two just can’t be reconciled, so we have to make a choice about who to follow. And sometimes we choose wrong. Sometimes we pass by someone without smiling. Sometimes we let our selfish desires lead to arguments. Sometimes we buy products that required someone else to work for less than a dollar a day, so we could buy an 80$ pair of shoes. Sometimes we take credit for work that isn’t ours. And sometimes we silently wish that someone would shut up so we don’t have to listen to them any more. But there is hope for God has spoken to us, as it was spoken to the Israelites so long ago:

“Though your sins are like Scarlet, they shall now be like snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword.”

So what do we choose today? God knows that there will be times that we screw up, but asks that we be willing and obedient and admit our mistakes when we falter with our neighbor, disrespecting the God whose Hand knit them together in their mother’s womb. Let us examine ourselves and ask God to point out those areas when our heart and intentions did not lead us to Do no harm. Do good. And stay in Love with God. For our worship is just empty if we do not live out the reality of God’s message of love when we leave these walls. Amen.

The Love of the Holy - Hosea 11:1-11

My mouth shut at the intensity and depth of her question. “Didn’t you hear me?”, the patient asked. “What is the nature of God?” The only thought racing through my mind was “Huston, we are not in seminary anymore.” In an attempt to buy myself some time I asked her what she thought the nature of God was. That attempt failed as she spun the question right back at me saying, “I asked you first.” So I said what was on my mine. “I think God is lover of all and the only true embodiment of a love that we can never understand. And that love binds us to one another in community.” “Hummm….” The patient pondered. “I agree with the first part, I think God is love in its truest form, but the second part about community, that my dear is the Holy Spirit.”

As I was reading today’s scripture passage in preparation for this weeks service, the story I just told you about kept running through my mind because the scripture is all about how God loves us. And really that’s the entire message of the book of Hosea – we may never be able to deserve God’s love but it is lavished upon us, even when we turn our backs on the One who loves us the most.

Hosea tells us of the anguish we cause God when we run from Love. Anywhere in today’s scripture passage where Israel is mentioned, let us insert ourselves into the story. When we were children, God loved us and we loved God We may not have had the vocabulary to define God, but we had eyes that recognized God’s love for what it is, pure. But as we became older, our eyes got a bit cloudy. We plugged our ears and closed our eyes in attempts not to see God. Maybe at first, this wasn’t intentional. Maybe at first we just became so distracted by a new person or thing in our life that we spent a little less time being captaviated by the awe-inspiring nature of God’s love. Or maybe we intentionally ran from God because society was telling us that it was childish to run after love, especially a Love that didn’t include instant gratification.

Whether it was a slow process of distancing ourselves from God through distractions or an immediate and conscience choice to flee from God in order to give into the things that brought us pleasure, we all were apart from God at one point or another in our lives. The further we wondered the louder God called for us to come back, but we were content in our own created universes so we didn’t want to listen. We didn’t listen for so long that we actually forgot how to hear. We stumbled through our own haze and we forgot how to see Love for what it is, the nature of God alone. At some point we each realized that something was missing in our lives, especially as we felt this uncomfortable and growing hole in our heart and soul. It’s that missing puzzle piece that Dr. Jones talked to the children about last week, the place where only God can fit. We tried to fill the hole with things that used to bring us pleasure – money, sex, being busy, shopping, alcohol, we each had our own personal addiction, even if we would not have named it as such. But the adrelene from the thrill of running from God soon became empty as well, and the tangiable signs of the pleasures that we once had, began to disappear. We set up our own little alters are reminders, but they only became dull and lackluster.

We became blind to love as we started taking credit for what only God could be doing. We forgot that God gave us every good gift that we’ve ever had. We casually forgot that it was God who taught us to be stewards of our resources and showed us how to do each simple thing that lead to who we are today. We may be able to dance now, but its only because God taught us to walk and gave us the music to move to. But we dismissed the vastness and depth of the wonderous things that God has done in our lives, making us selfish and callous.

We became slaves to our own selfish desires as we kept pushing for our own definitions of love. Even then God tried to relieve us from our burdens and give us tender hearts through grace, but we put our yolks back on because we would rather be heavy-laddened and maintain our pride then repent. It didn’t take long once our pride got in the way for us to become upset with other people. We went to war to prove ourselves, instead of laying down our weapons for peace. All the while, God is still calling us, and we are still turning away, too caught up in our pettiness with others to realize that God’s overarching love is still present, if we would only take the time to recognize it.

This past week I heard a new children’s story for the first time. It was entitled, “You are Mine” by Max Lucado. Over the past few years I’ve renewed my love for children’s books as I look at the pictures for new insights and listen intently for different lessons. The basic premise of the story is that there was a community of wooden figures called Wimmlets who were all created by Eli, the master carver. The Wimmlets liked to play, and worked hard in order to enjoy the simple things in life. Almost all Wimmlets had two toys that they liked to have – a colorful box and a ball. Life was good until one day, when two of the Wimmlets started to think about having more boxes and balls. They inevertently started a new standard by which to measure other Wimmlets – who had the most. Many of the Wimmlets started to do silly things in order to collect balls and boxes. They sold their furniture and their homes to get money for boxes and balls. They gave up time with the friends who they used to play with their box and ball toys with in order to have more time to work for more boxes and balls. And the cycle continued. And it seemed that with each passing days new rules were being created to see who was better then the best Wimmlet.

Unbeknowance to the Wimmlets, Eli was looking down on all of their activity from his house on top of the hill. Eli was becoming very distressed because he hadn’t created the Wimmlets to fight with one another or to collect things to the point where they didn’t have any joy. The Wimmlets had put their passions in front of their purpose to the point where even what they used to love had become a mark of disdain. Worse, the Wimmlets carried all of their boxes and balls everywehere, which they were not designed to do. They were un-necessarily burdening themselves and Eli just couldn’t understand why, sicne he had something so much better for them. He loved them and called them his own. Does the story sound familiar? What boxes and balls are we collecting in our lives that are blocking out view of God? How have you turned your back on God?

If the story ended there it could be pretty depressing. If we had just turned our backs again and again on God, there wouldn’t be much of a story, let alone a story of Love. But it doesn’t end there. God continues to chase after us. God will not give up on us because Love never fails in its purest form. God may be angery for a period of time, but Love does not act out on anger. Instead love patiently waits for the day when we will realize our errors and return. And when we come back there will be a celebration that welcomes us back home.

One of my biggest struggles while working at Hershey Medical Center is trying to figure out why I am so uncomfortable around patients who have done stupid things. The results of what happened to them aren’t really accidents because they knew what they were doing wasn’t the best idea, but they also aren’t intentional acts, especially since no one would expect something bad to happen to them. Sometimes I just want to shake the patients who think that it is a good idea to ride a motorcycle, without a helmet, at around 100mph, while intoxicated. But while working on this weeks sermon I realized that we are all like that in one way or another. We sometimes do foolish things that get us into a lot of trouble, but God’s grace covers all of that. We may still get hurt, but it is not God’s punishment for us, but a chance for redemption. Even when we intentionally screw up, God’s love does not fail and meets us right where we are. Like a family re-united by a freak trauma, its sometimes the love that comes out of the ugliest situations that captures us, finally. God does not cause our pain, but can still use it to communicate a message of divine love beyond comprehension and forgiveness for our foolishness.

One of my favorite books when I was little was “I’ll Love You Forever”. It tells the story of a mother who loved her son, even when he didn’t want her love or did silly things that he knew that he shouldn’t do. And still, even in those moments when the mom was probably stressed beyond what she thought the capacity of her love was, she would sing to “I’ll love you forever, I’ll Like you for always. As long as your living, your mommy I’ll be.” What a beautiful statement that God continues to sing over us today. Even when we are unlikeable, even when we turn our backs and run away, God still sings to us, “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, with no exceptions, your Lover I’ll be.”

So may we open up our ears to hear God’s love song over us. May we release the repentances from our mouth that are needed. May we thank God for a love that we may never understand. And will we turn our direction around, to make sure that we are oriented towards a Love that can Catch us even when we stumble.