Sermon: Love - The Most Excellent Way

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Love - The Most Excellent Way

By Charles Rush

June 7, 2009

[ Audio (mp3, 6.8Mb) ]

If I speak several languages and am careful never to use profanity and never raise my voice and use perfect grammar, but have not love for others, I am an air horn or school bell. If I have degrees and titles and am highly respected in the community, and if I have power and influence to get things done, but have not love, I am a nothing spouse, parent and friend. If I bring home a good check, have bought a comfortable home, send my children to school on new bikes and in fine clothes, work day and night to accomplish all this, but have not love and time for my family, I gain nothing. Love does not yell at the kids and pout with the mate; love is not jealous of time and other's gifts; it is not domineering or rude. Love does not insist on my way and my terms; it is not self-pitying or demanding of overt expressions of “gee you're great;” love does not always find fault with the performance of others; it does not shout “I told you so!” but rejoices in even little successes and in all signs of growth. Love accepts humanity even in the family; believes in grace even for your own kids, your boss, your employees; hopes for progress; encourages new beginnings. Love never ends; as for rules, they will pass away; as for bragging, it should cease; as for knowledge, others have more. For I too am human and my way is not always right but God is working in us all and leading me through those around me. When I was a child, I acted like a child; sometimes I still act like a spoiled brat. My children are a mirror helping me to grow to Christian adulthood. Now I will try to be patient and understanding with others as God is patient and understanding with me. So faith in God and others, hope for myself and others, God's love for me and in me for others, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

is is that season when we have lots of final exams that professors have to grade. I happened upon a music professor from Missouri who shared some real wieners from this year so I thought of Holly.

Refrain means don't do it. A refrain in music is the part you better not try to sing.

A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals (no virtuoso's here)

Johan Sebastian Bach died from 1750 to the present.

Henry Purcell is a well-known composer few people have heard of.

Most authorities agree that the music of antiquity was written a long time ago.

Aaron Copland is one of your most famous contemporary composers. It is unusual to be contemporary. Most composers do not live until they are dead.

Music sung by two people is sometimes called a duel.

Reinhold Niebuhr once said that Jesus taught us that our self-fulfillment comes as a by-product of the fulfillment of others. Our self-fulfillment comes as a by-product of the fulfillment of others. He is right about that.

Reinhold Niebuhr also called the love ethic of Jesus and ‘impossible possibility'. It is possible to be centered on the fulfillment of others. There is a grace from God that opens us in a transcendent way. On the other hand, love is not a simple possibility in this life. We cannot do it consistently or easily, even in the best of circumstances. It remains impossible too.

It is a grace. It is also a discipline. We return to it in different times, in different ways, growing ourselves in the process of learning what it really means to love.

Bernie Glassman was married to his wife for many years. For most of their life, they lived in metropolitan New York where they met. She followed his life early in their marriage, living where his career took them, but his wife long wanted to live in the Sangre de Cristo mountains outside of Santa Fe, and to establish a spiritual community, to find a more holistic way of living than mid-town Manhattan offered.

After many, many years, it finally opened up and they moved. They bought an old house, which need lots of work, but it was, as he says, “a perfect refuge”.

Bernie writes, “We arrived on Monday and moved into our house on Tuesday. The following Sunday, as we were hanging pictures on the wall, Jishu (his wife) complained of chest pains. She was hurried to the hospital, where the doctors verified that she had suffered a major heart attack. For the next four days she seemed to get stronger and better. But on Thursday night Jishu suffered a second heart attack, and she left this form of existence on Friday night, the first day of spring, four days shy of her fifty-seventh birthday.

“People ask me how I'm doing. It takes a while for me to reply, for it's hard to answer them in word. Finally, I tell them I'm bearing witness.

“But how do you feel, they ask me.

“I'm raw, I tell them.”

“Do you feel sad?”

“I shake my head. Raw doesn't feel good or bad. Raw is the smell of the lilacs by the back door, not six feet away from the relics on the mantel. Raw is listening to Mahler's Fourth Symphony or the songs of Sweet Honey in the Rock. Raw is reading the hundreds of letters that come in, watching television alone at night.

“Raw is letting whatever happens happen, what arises, arise. Feelings too: grief, pain, loss, a desire to disappear, even the desire to die. One feeling follows another, one sensation after the next. I just listen deeply, bear witness.

I do some work; it's very little in comparison to the former days. I am careful about how much time I spend with students and associates, for I know how easy and comfortable it is to let that raw state slip and let myself be distracted by work and talk with well-meaning friends. So I, long accustomed to being on the road, have stayed home. There are only a few people around me.

“I live in a house chosen by my wife, reflecting her tastes and wishes. My own choice would be a studio in New York City's Bowery, no a house in a canyon overlooking a river. Those were the things Jishu wanted and Jishu is gone. So I live in her house- I call it Casa Jishu- and do the things she would have loved. I greet the dawn coming over the mountains, watch the hummingbirds, prune the lilac bushes. Each time I think of the smile on her face had she been here to do these things. Instead I do them, bearing witness to her presence and her absence.

“How am I doing?”

“I'm bearing witness. And the state of bearing witness is the state of love.”

It is a funny thing that when we are young, we are so intent on finding out who we are, establishing our own identity. And if we are lucky enough in the middle of our life to have profound love, whether with a spouse or good friends, we open ourselves intimately. After a few years, we find that we have become quite different people than we ever would have imagined that we would have become because we have loved and been loved. It is not the only way to live, but as Paul says, it is the more excellent way. Profound love is about being open to being changed by another; it is about letting yourself become the support that makes other people grow and flourish; it is about bringing out the higher spiritual capacities that we are meant to manifest.

I once heard someone describe why her grandmother was so important in her life and she put it this way. She said, my grandmother had a grove of fruit trees in her back yard- apples, peaches, and pears. She had raspberry bushes and blackberry bushes too. She was forever pruning this garden and her flowers too boot. I have a permanent image of her in that garden with her pruning sheers and a smock over her clothes, and an old hat that she wore with a sassy expression. When I think of her today, I see her that way even though we didn't really spend all that much time in that garden. I think it is because when I was in her presence I felt like I was being watered and tilled. She had the most gracious smile and touch. You just couldn't be a selfish brat when she held your face in her hand. You just wanted to be a better person, certainly better than the person I was when I was fighting with my sister. And the funny thing about her was that I felt safe with her, in a way that I can't really put into words.

I remember when there was a terrible tragedy in our family. It was horrific and senseless. I was 11 years old and I was so terribly afraid. I was just anxious that the world was going to fall apart. But I knew if I could just stand next to my grandmother, it was going to be all right… not that everything would be solved, but somehow, someway it was going to be all right. She could make the rockiest soil bring forth fruit.”

What a wonderful thing to say. Which leads me to ask, what are you doing to tend to those that are all around you? How are you helping them to grow? We can't exactly will ourselves to be nurturing of others in love. At the profoundest level, you have to be transformed by God.

On the other hand, we can open ourselves to being filled with God's love. We can say a prayer in the middle of the day: “God redirect me. Open me to your love. Fill my soul with your presence. Grant that you love might flow through me to others, that they might be healed and matured.

I think that is what Paul is getting at in his wonderful 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians. He is reminding us of the need we have to practice the discipline of love, to turn ourselves again, daily, to God and ask for divine presence to manifest itself in our lives. It does not come to us naturally.

Naturally, we return to the competitive side of things. Even our most intimate relationships perpetually threaten to slip back into the competitive mode. Siblings seemed to be wired this way from birth do they not? They seem to think start off viewing their parents as only capable of giving a finite amount of love and affirmation, so that if someone else gets 2 doses of love that is 2 doses I lost out on.

I had two hunting dogs that were like this when they were puppies. They were sisters. If I laid down, they would want to nuzzle against you like you were their Mama. If one of them gets in a really good snuggle position, the other one will jump into that spot and try to take it away which causes a lot of snipping and growling. I am all the time saying to them, “Ladies, we are Christian dogs. We live in peace with each other.” But they don't listen to me.

I know it's a banal example to use. But how many times have you seen grown Aunts or Uncle's still behaving, more or less, in the same way? How many times during the week, do you find yourself thinking ‘I ought to change gears here'?

My professor so wonderfully alludes to this need to change gears when he amplifies St. Paul somewhat. “Love does not yell at the kids and pout with the mate; love is not jealous of time and other's gifts; it is not domineering or rude. Live does not insist on my way and my terms; it is not self-pitying or demanding of overt expression of ‘gee you're great'; love does not always find fault with the performance of others; it does not shout “I told you so”,” But rejoices in even little successes and in all signs of growth.”

An important part of life is lived in this intersection. We regularly fall back into competitive mode. We look to our most intimate relationships in terms of what they are giving to me. Consciously or unconsciously we are constantly keeping score, with our own needs being the tacit reference point. Much of what is on that tally sheet is pretty pedestrian, pretty ordinary, stuff.

One side of the tally sheet has a line of credit: planned great get away vacation for February break, read to kids 3 nights this week; helped spouse out of jam when they were overbooked. The other side is a line of expenditures: planning for a long weekend with my college friends without spouse, bought gift for self that really annoys spouse (like dogs); asked spouse to take my place at the field trip at the last minute.

And this equation had better factor out evenly at the end of the month, more or less. If it doesn't, we have two predictable responses. One is various forms direct anger. Some of us grouse around the house all the time and make life a nuisance for everybody. Some of us are sarcastic, letting loose these little darts at every witty chance. We are rude, finding fault. Some of us throw tirades or tantrums, especially men seem to love to throw tirades and send the rest of the family cowering for cover. That is being domineering with our size.

Funny thing is that there are a whole lot of people that can effectively engage in these behaviors that can't, for one reason or the other, actually articulate why they are angry. It's just that they feel like they are giving more than they are getting. It's not fair and I'm mad and you're gonna have to deal with it.

Likewise, the other expression of anger is passive. Paul refers to those people who pout. They won't talk. They stay gone, physically or emotionally. “Don't even touch me, not tonight.” Paul says, “Love is not self-pitying”. That is when you think that other people should read your mind and comment appreciatively about something you spent a lot of time doing that they apparently don't seem to notice as much as they should, even though a number of other people wouldn't notice either, but these people should notice because they are so close to you that they should just know, and you have your feelings hurt just because things are going on as usual. The person close to you says, “What's wrong with you?” You respond, “Nothing, nothing… and I'll not tell them in a million years if they can't figure it out on their own. And you spend a huge block of time letting them just stew in the silence, wondering, “what have I done?” Serves them right. “Love does not demand overt expressions of “gee you're great”.

As psychologists are constantly teaching us, it is important for us to have our needs met, to learn to communicate our needs directly and effectively. That is another sermon. This morning, I only want to observe the broad contrast. How different the world is when you are secure in yourself, when you can transcend worrying about your needs, when you can focus on just radiating meeting the needs of other people. That really changes the whole dynamics in the community, doesn't it?

Just try it as an experiment for a couple of days. Take one relationship and spend some time thinking of several things you could do for that person that would bring them fulfillment. You can't do this expecting a pay out of some kind. You just do it, like the bumper sticker says to practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.

For more or less healthy relationships, this usually works wonders. When we radiate out acceptance, love, and caring to others, they become relaxed, positive, expansive. You can watch them grow. It is possible to take the relationship to a whole new level. If it is a more or less healthy relationship, they will instinctively respond by being more caring. It is possible to start a whole chain reaction of goodness. We can actually be the catalysts that beam out love energy to people all around us, if we open ourselves to it, and just watch it heal people all around us. You can watch them grow into better human beings. St. Paul says, love “rejoices even in little successes and all signs of growth. Love accepts humanity, even in my family; believes in grace even for my kids, my boss, my employees; hopes for progress; encourages new beginnings.”

Right now, some of you are thinking, “Reverend, you don't know my kids?” I understand. Some of you are thinking, “You don't know how dysfunctional my boss really is?” I understand. It is true that the Bible never gives us much good advice on what to do with people that take and take and take and take, who seem actually incapable of giving. Jesus never really gives us much advice on how to handle dysfunctional Uncle Bob. I plan to bring this up with the Almighty in heaven.

Our scripture only points us today in a direction. It doesn't deal with the particulars. It doesn't deal with qualifications, nuance, exceptions to the rule. It points in a direction.

There is nothing quite so beautiful as an older couple that has discovered the art of caring for one another over a long period of time. They have a certain shimmer in their eyes, a palpable warmth and grace.

There is nothing quite as profound as two elderly sisters that have encouraged each other up through all the phases of life, suffered together through tragedies they did not want but learned to live through, who have given each other the confidence and trust to branch out and bloom because they are deeply rooted.

There is nothing quite as enduring as a friend who has known you when you made stupid mistakes, who has encouraged you when you were down, someone you could speak your heart with and know your stuff would be treasured- even when it is raw or rash. Someone who believed in you, invested in you. That lasts. My brothers and sisters that is where we want to head. St. Paul says that is what we are aiming for. It is the more excellent way.

“Now I will try to be patient an understanding with others as God is patient and understanding with me. So faith in god and others, hope for myself and others. God's love for me and in me for others, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Amen.