Saturday in the Second week of Easter: Imperfect love

Lessons: Psalm 20-21; Daniel 3:19-30; First John 3:11-18; Luke 4:1-13

I was awakened this morning by a dream. In it I am feeding children in someone else's home. One is a small boy. I ask him to clean some minor thing, his dish. He stubbornly will not. Two adults watch. I am silently angry at all the non-response and then I am cleaning some scribbles off of countertops put there by the children. No one cares but me.

When I awake I know the dream's meaning. It has to do with being lost just now in figuring out how best to share difficult news involving a child. It has to do with how to clean up an impossible situation and years of such effort on my part.

How best to love is not an easy task. Often the desire to love well can drive one near crazy. Add to that the reality that we live in relationships we do not control and in which others have a say and we begin to realize that this simple task, how to love, is complex. But it is not impossible, just complex.

Perhaps it seems so very clear to the author of First John when he writes:

We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us -- and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 3:14-18

Perhaps John is focused on the simple issue of feeding the hungry nearby, clothing the poor by your door, providing day labor for those with no work. Perhaps he is focused on the challenge to be a listening ear, to sit with one another with a depth of attention. Perhaps some find forgiveness too deep a burden.  Perhaps there have been too many sermons on loving and caring and growing into Christ's compassion, too many conversation groups on how this might be implemented and then too little follow through. Perhaps volunteerism is not yet invented or has dwindled in this community. So he finally says, "Act truthfully with one another. Do the work of care. Be Jesus like, lay down something of value for one another, and do so now."

In the past I served in an urban congregation of mixed economies. We sought in our environment to do the work of care. Sometimes we were successful, sometimes our efforts failed or seemed marginal. We had real limits in a sea of need. It felt not complete to me to merely assist the congregation in designing ways of helping those in greater survival need than we. Though I could not help all, I realized I needed to be intentional with a few folk on my own. I would grant them a title inside myself, "the Lazarus at my gate." I was for many the rich man. Jesus knew that and I knew that. So Otis and William became my personal Lazarus's. I would deal with them from my place of care even when I did not want to. I was not always fully charitable, though I tried. Each encounter became a conversation with my values, Christ's values. There were moments I was at my best. There were moments when I yelled out inside, "Physician heal thyself!" Then I knew I was in a complex place. Yet this small intention kept me real in a sea of human need. It seemed a response to, "Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action." These encounters kept me real, even in my imperfect actions. They caused me to see the life I did not live as well as the one I did.

Jesus calls us to action, not perfect action. We can grow by some actions to wiser actions, but we need to know that waiting for the perfect action can simply become inaction. Love is costly when we open to it, but it causes us to grow up into Christ.

When Jesus is tempted in the wilderness after his baptism and before his public ministry, it is a temptation to get clear about what he will most love. Will it be self or will it be the world of need that God sees? Will he center on 'success' however that may be defined by 'the world and the devil' or will it be defined by God whom he knows and houses in word and deed?

We live inside those same questions, God or the world as our defining place. The choices are often subtle though sometimes in high relief. Our answer shows up not in perfection but actions of imperfect human love. And somehow the Divine love works through us.

 

"Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action."