Where's the love?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there always seems to be a lot of talk about love in church.  Yes, I confess that I tire of it, sometimes, too - when we just talk.  It does seem like it’s one of the two most talked about things in church and it always seems like we’re saying the same thing: God loves you, Jesus loves you, love your neighbour.  Good stuff.  Okay.

That other thing we talk about the most, by the way, is money.  At least, everyone thinks we talk about it a lot.  I’m not so sure we do.  I think it’s just that we talk about it so badly, that everyone thinks we talk about it a lot.  The church needs money to keep its doors open, keep on doing good things and keep on paying their very gifted clergy.  But when are the doors open and for whom?  And what “good things” exactly?  We seem to just assume that everyone knows what the church does and why more is always needed, so we talk very broadly and in generic terms.  And who is this “everyone,” anyway?  Shouldn’t we know people a little better?

Sometimes I think we handle love like that, too.  We speak very genuinely and authoritatively and we talk about how God loves you, Jesus loves you, and you should love your neighbour (often by making a financial contribution to this church-based program or that one).  But there’s more to love than that.

The Bible includes at least three kinds of love and, because the earliest translations of the Bible were in Greek, we often call them by their Greek names.  There’s “filio” which means, literally, brotherly – and sisterly – love.  Philadelphia, for example, is referred to as “the city of brotherly love” because that’s literally what it means.  There’s “eros,” which is physical, sensual love (this is where we get the word “erotic”).  And last, there is the one we don’t hear quite so much about, “agapé.”  This is the kind of love Jesus speaks of, the all encompassing unconditional love of God.

More often than not, it seems like the church – the institution – speaks about love in only two dimensions, with moral pronouncements on filio and eros (especially eros…) on the one hand and encouragement to just go love everybody, on the other, because that’s what Jesus says we should do.

Except it isn’t, exactly.  Jesus is a lot more specific.  What Jesus says is that we should do more than love at a distance, as if it were some warm fuzzy sweater we can put on.  Jesus says we should love one another as he loved us, and while that’s most clearly stated in John’s gospel, it’s as readily enacted in the others.

Jesus engaged people, got to know them, shared with them.  Jesus asked people to come and do as he did, to learn about what it means to love by getting to know people, especially the people we least wanted to know, and find out what love means to them.  Jesus calls us to let go of those things that get in the way of relationship, like hate and anger, and to try to see things as others might and to do that with compassion and understanding.  Filio and eros are spiritually empty without relationship.  And yet, as much as the love of agapé is unconditional in itself, living it out is not: it’s work, it takes time and investment and how much or how little can only be found out in relationship.  What does love mean to you?

It's an encounter with God

We talk about being welcoming a lot.  I mean, a lot.

Oh dear, you may be thinking, he’s going to talk about being welcoming.

Yes, I am.

I’m going to talk about the church specifically in a minute, but creating a welcoming environment is not something that’s specific to church.  Countries - some of them, anyway - cities, towns, organizations, teams and businesses, most of them want people to feel like they are welcome and that they belong there.  A local business owner was telling me just the other day about how important this concept can be to a business. Everything from banks to grocery stores want people to think of themselves as “guests” not customers, “members” instead of clients, a part of the “[insert business name here] family.”  Creating a community around your product creates loyalty and a sense of trust towards the company and future products.  That’s good for business.

It also creates investment.  People want to invest their time, energy and money in something they feel they’re a part of.  And then the whole is made greater by our participation in it.  That’s fundamental to a sense of belonging, isn’t it?  It’s not just that you fit in because you’re just like everyone else or even that you like everyone else or you like the ideas or goals of the group.  It’s also that you feel that you, with your own uniqueness and gifts, contribute something that impacts the greater community and is, hopefully acknowledged and appreciated by the rest of the community.

So I think the strength of the community is in the balance between what its members put in (whatever that may be) and what they get out (whatever that may be).  There’s lots of variables, it’s much more complicated and I don’t really know anything about socio-economics, but still, that seems to make sense, even if it’s somewhat simple and idealistic.  Of course, it can also all be manipulated for gain, rather than balance.  That, some would argue, is just good business, too: profit is what’s important, profit for you paid for by others.

But it isn’t good for building community.  Community is built around everyone profiting, in a way, so let’s get back to churches being welcoming.  Churches, I think, like many communities, sometimes waffle between what they want to offer to people and what they want people to bring.  And when I say that, I mean what they think they need to offer people and what they think people should bring.  That thinking is understandably rooted in the perspective of evangelism (even if we’re not so good at evangelizing), the idea that we, the church, have God and we’d like to share the Good News with you.

But what if we saw each other as an opportunity to encounter God, not just share God?  What if we took these words of Jesus to the disciples as being applicable to everyone, not just disciples: “whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me” (Matt. 10:40).  I believe we come from God and that God is in each of us and in all creation in the love that we share.  How can we not think that every encounter with another person could be an encounter with God?  How, then, could we not be open to the gifts they bring, the thoughts, ideas and skills they bring that may challenge us or bring us peace?  How could we not want to share ourselves with others the same way?

And this isn’t about acting selflessly.  There is a reward.  When we welcome someone simply as a child of God, even with the smallest action of love (Matt. 10:42), there is reward: the first step in relationship.  The steps that follow bring their own rewards.  And dangers.  The urge to have our own way and impose ourselves on others is strong.  But keeping God - that is, love - at the heart of it, rather than ourselves, can bring mutuality rather than dominance, and that’s a key to community.

Matthew puts these words of Jesus about hospitality and welcome at the end of his instructions to the disciples, right before he sends them out to be, well, “Jesus” to others.  He’s told them what they need to do, who to go to, what to expect (it’s not all good), and reminded them that his presence isn’t meant to bring the kind of peace they’d expect.  He knows that there will be conflict from his actions and his teaching, he knows that there’ll be division and he means for it to cross the existing familial structures of society because recognizing that we’re all children of God is something deeper.

It’s something deeper than a handshake, a comfortable seat and a coffee bar in the lobby.   It’s deeper than sitting in the same room together or singing hymns everyone likes.  It’s deeper than just saying what people want to hear.  It’s an encounter with God.

The world needs both of us, Pastor

Well, right off the bat, the title’s not correct, really.  The world needs all of us.  We’re all connected, all needing to honour our related-ness, all needing to recognize we are part of the same family, like it or not sometimes. We’re all God’s children.  There’s no exclusivity in that.  But I’ll come back to that because I want to be specific for a minute.

I was pretty excited last week - I still am - because I recently wrote a column that elicited a response from another minister, a pastor of another denomination, one which takes a very different view than I do.  We all know that not everyone’s going to agree with everything we think, say or do, but we don’t always have the opportunity for dialogue.  So, thank you, pastor, for writing your’s as a column in response to mine.  It inspires me.

I wrote a column in which I challenged the understanding that Jesus is the only way to God.  Jesus is, indeed, my way - and may be yours - but I believe that we all come to the one God, however we understand that God, in different ways and, for some, that way may not be Jesus.  Specifically, I suggested an alternate way to interpret John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father but through me.”  Rather than meaning “me, Jesus,” I suggested that Jesus simply meant “me, as in The Way that I teach you to live, the way that is true and life-giving.”  

That is not “correct,” was the response.  Jesus is the only way to God and this message is exclusively for those “people who recognize that they are sinners in need of a Saviour.  Sinners need a Saviour, not a good example.”

Okay, well, we don’t agree.  I do have a little trouble with the language of “correct” and “exclusive” that I want to say a word about, but I would like to thank you for expressing a contrary opinion.  Because it’s just that.

I was fortunate to have a professor in seminary who reminded people that the Bible speaks to people how it speaks to them - that’s what makes it so meaningful.  I’m paraphrasing her a lot, but she said that we interpret God’s Word as it speaks to us and you can’t tell someone that their interpretation is wrong.  You can challenge it with a different one, you can suggest that it’s a misunderstanding or that it’s misguided based on context, historic or factual knowledge, but you can’t say that it’s wrong if it leads to what is true and life-giving, because that’s what the Bible is all about.  It’s why it still continues to be meaningful, not matter how much work it can be to understand it: what’s important is its truth, not its literalism.

You write, “is this message only for certain people?  Yes.  The Good News is only for people who recognize that they are sinners in need of a Saviour.  Sinners need a Saviour, not a good example.”  But you also say that “we have a sin problem.  Outside of Jesus, the entire human race remains in a state of sinful rebellion against God.”  If we are all sinners, is the Good News only for those who realize it?  I can’t agree with that.  I think the Good News is for all, particularly whether they realize it or not.

The thing is, we could debate at length about all the things we disagree about, but ultimately I think that we’re headed to the same place, just from different directions.  And when I say “headed to the same place,” I mean building communities of people who live God’s love in the world, trying to be better followers of The Way that Jesus teaches us with his life.  Even as I write that, I think but that’s just it: that’s my view of Jesus’ life. Your’s - equally valid - is the view from Jesus’ death.  Jesus died to redeem us from sin.  It’s Jesus death that brings salvation.

Sinners do need a Saviour, but we also need a good example to follow.  Or maybe that could be the other way round: we need a good example to follow, but we also need a Saviour.  The point is, we need both and sometimes we lean to the direction that speaks most clearly to us, most clearly of what is true.

All the more reason, I think, to refute the idea that Jesus is exclusive.  You suggest that “in all the gospels Jesus encounters hostility precisely because he was exclusive in his teachings.”  I think he encountered hostility because his message was distinctly inclusive, available to all and worthy of engagement.  Both Matthew (10:34) and Luke (12:51) record stories of Jesus talking about how he brings conflict and division.  That’s not because he’s exclusive, but because inclusivity brings engagement, difference of opinion, debate, the sharing (often forcefully) of our uniqueness.  I don’t think for a minute that Jesus thought those conflicts would be settled by victory for one and defeat for the other.  Rather, I think he wished the result to be growth and learning, the rebuilding of relationships and the restructuring of society on the basis of love, respect and grace.  In short, the kingdom of heaven here on earth.

We are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).  Yes, maybe as you suggest, that image may be broken.  But I cannot agree with you that it “has been shattered like a mirror” and “is no longer functional.”  We may be broken, but our brokenness is healed by Jesus, by love, by grace, by death and by life.  We’re all God’s children, we come from God and we’ll find our way home to God.

We can do that

I’m a little preoccupied with words and literalism this week, so please bear with me.

If your church follows the Lectionary that prescribes the bible readings that you’ll hear each Sunday, then you just began a lengthy journey through the gospel of Matthew that’ll take you well into the fall.  If you didn’t, well, you might just want to sit with these thoughts for a minute this week anyway.

We began on Trinity Sunday with The Great Commission, the very last few verses of the gospel in which the resurrected Jesus sends the disciples out into the world.  “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

As the concluding words to the story of Jesus’ time with the disciples, I want to read that as a commission to go and do as Jesus has taught, to go and share the good news and baptize people into this understanding of how God is present in the world, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  (There’s the reason for hearing it on Trinity Sunday.)  I want to read this as Matthew’s version of the moment in John’s gospel when Jesus says “love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35).

But I’m feeling the weight of the words in Matthew: authority, make disciples, obey, commanded.  I’m wondering at how we’ve often done missionary work in the past, when our behaviour has been anything but the love that Jesus intended us to share.  We’ve certainly exercised authority, commanded and taught to obey, but so often not in the context of “love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22:39).  More often to make others simply be more like us.  Hold that thought, please.

And then, this week, we jump back in Matthew to the story of Jesus finding there is such a need, that he sends the disciples out - specifically to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” - to “proclaim the good news … cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”  And here again, I wonder if we haven’t got lost in the words.  It’s a nice story about the disciples, it refers to a specific group of people back in those days and calls for them to do some things we just can’t do.  So many ways to distance ourselves from this story!

But Jesus is really only asking them to do what he’s been doing: healing brokenness and restoring life.  We can do that.  And if Jesus is targeting a specific group in need (the neediest, even), well, shouldn’t that make the task easier, not harder?  We can do that.  Isn’t Jesus just asking them to go out and be Jesus?  We can do that.  Yes, we can.

Jesus’ teaching isn’t just words, it’s a way of living.  And it doesn’t involve authority or power over people and it certainly doesn’t mean exercising that power to make people be like us.  Jesus doesn’t ask us to love people into being anything more than more truly themselves.  When we love like that we not only empower others, we further empower ourselves with the diversity of all we learn and we create community together.  Disciples are made by love, not command.

Something to think about this week.  It’s National Aboriginal Day on June 21.  

It's not a mystery, it's a wonder

It’s a mystery.

In the church, that’s the classic answer to “what is the Trinity?”  It won’t get you very far as the answer to a game show question, but it’s the beginning of trying to understand something that has puzzled people for a long time.

June 11 this year is Trinity Sunday on the church calendar, one of the few times that calendar observes an idea, rather than an event.  The idea of the one God as being a “trinity” (meaning three, or a triad) has challenged people since the church “clarified” it at the Council of Nicea in 325.  But maybe that’s the important part - not the clarification, but the challenge of it.

The term “trinity” doesn’t appear in the bible at all, but is a part of the church doctrine (teaching) that has become dogma (teaching that the church considers to have been divinely revealed in the Word and therefore becomes part of faith).  There’s lots of both, but the Trinity is the concept that God is three persons, classically represented as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and this concept is revealed in scripture.  Therefore, it becomes part of our faith.

Seems simple enough.  So is our God one or three?  Yes.

The real answer, I think, isn’t in the definition of the concept, but the language we use to describe it.  This is also why I think it’s a very relevant way to describe God - and a forever contemporary one, too.

When we say that the Trinity is a “mystery,” it doesn’t mean a riddle or a who-done-it.  Rather, it means something to wonder about, something that we come to understand and sense through worship, symbol, and faith, to experience and struggle with, rather than intellectually comprehend.  An ancient proverb describes this kind of mystery as being not a wall to run up against, but an ocean in which to swim.

When we say that God is three “persons,” it means the ancient understanding of personhood that reflects both the individual and the sense of that individual existing in the context of community.  Individual, but not separate; unique, but not alone; separate, but of the same essence.  The three “persons” exist with each other, but are not each other.  Traditionally, the Trinity has been Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but we have developed other descriptions, too, such as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer or Parent, Friend and Comforter or God-in-the-world, God-among-us and God-within-us or Lover, Beloved and Love Between and others.  A new one that I just discovered thanks to a colleague writing in the resource magazine ‘Gathering’ is God the Unknown, God the Known, God the Worker of Miracles.  I’m really liking that one.

I’m really liking it because it reminds me that the Trinity invites us to see God in all the amazing ways in which God can be present in our lives: the wonder which is all creation, the universe and all time; the stories of Jesus, God incarnate, Emmanuel (Matt. 1:23)  which means “God with us”; and the action in which live that experience, the inspiration, strength and refreshment in which we experience our relationship with God.

The Trinity is constantly active relationship.  That’s a powerful way to understand God: in the world, in relationship and in action.  And that’s where the mystery challenges us, to try and live in relationship with God who is the very model of relationship, to live in community with God who is the very model of community, and to live out that love, not alone, but with the world around us.

That’s not a mystery, it’s a wonder.

Getting in touch with our essential oneness

The United Church of Canada’s crest is an interesting thing.  All its features have meaning - its shape, its symbols, its colours - and are worth exploring.  Check out the national church’s website to find out more about that if you’re interested.  Today, I’m particularly interested in the words that frame it.

In addition to the name, it says two other things.  Well, two things that I think are really one thing.  When the crest was adopted it had the Latin phrase “Ut omnes unum sint” and in 2012, a Mohawk phrase was added, “Akwe Nia'Tetewa: neren.”

The Latin phrase means “that all may be one,” a reference to John 17:21.  At least, I read somewhere that it’s a specific reference to verse 21, but that phrase appears several times in John 17, as Jesus prays to God on behalf of himself, the disciples and everyone.

Let me step back a moment.  John 15-17 is often referred to as The Farewell Discourse.  As John tells the story of Jesus’ last night with the disciples, Jesus spends a fair bit of time talking to them about important things.  At the end of that farewell talk, he prays.  A unifying theme in this prayer is this thread of “that all may be one.”

But this isn’t about uniformity, conformity, sameness, homogeneity or any of those other words that mean “all exactly the same.”  I think if Jesus had meant that, he would have said “that all be the same.”  He doesn’t.  In fact, in the larger context of the prayer, he makes it pretty clear that he means that all may be one in the same way that Jesus and God are one: in relationship.  Jesus and God are not the same, they are one together.

I think Jesus framed this near the beginning of the prayer when he asks God to take care of the disciples, to support them and protect them (John 17:11).  I think Jesus recognized that there’s greater strength in relationship than uniformity, greater strength in the intertwining of uniquenesses than in the commonality of sameness.  Love is the thing on which these relationships are built.  Love is the means by which the interaction of diversities becomes unity, as we love and are loved.  That love is in each of us, as it is in Jesus and God.

John’s gospel frames this as “that all may be one.”  The gospel’s author might have appreciated the much later - and more political - statement “unity in diversity.”  It’s a common way of describing the Canadian identity of multiculturalism and in 2000, it became the official motto of the European Union.  But I think John’s words imply more, that there’s an essential element to the building of that unity and that’s something that encompasses respect, grace, openness and willingness: love.

The importance of the relational aspect of this kind of unity is reflected in the Mohawk phrase.  It means “all my relations.”  Our unity is, simply, our connectedness.  Recognizing that we are connected not just to each person we meet but all persons, not just the one place will live but all the earth, not just people but all living things.  Whatever language we may use (because that’s incredibly diverse, too) to describe that connectedness, Jesus makes it simple: it’s love.

Following the Way that's True and finding Life

Did you memorize Bible verses as a kid?  Church school or summer camp, memorizing verses as a child was often a key way of connecting children to the Bible.  Even as adults, we sometimes find a key verse or phrase that represents a story or has some fuller meaning than just those words and it becomes important enough for us to remember literally.  And that can be a great thing when it inspires us to remember the fuller meaning to which it’s connected.

The problem, of course, is that a single verse out of context can take on a life of its own.  Biblical soundbites can positively affirm or connect us to a deeper meaning, but they can also become something different all together.  I could give you a list, but it’s long and there’s a particular verse on my mind this week.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father but through me.”  That’s a popular verse from John’s gospel (John 14:6) that we can hear as an affirmation that following the way of Jesus will bring us closer to God.  That’s great.  We can also hear it as decisively commanding that Jesus, and only Jesus, is the one and only way to God.

I suppose I want to be okay with that.  After all, I like the affirmation that the figure I believe in, that I follow, is the right one.  But the hole’s getting deeper already, isn’t it?  Am I believing the way, or the figure who represents it?

This puts me on thin ice with some folks, I know.  It seems like I’m doing that thing of questioning something that as “a believer,” I’m somehow not supposed to question.  So let’s be clear: I am.

In this verse, in this story, in John’s telling of it, I can’t bring myself to believe that Jesus meant to exclude any and everyone who does not come to God “in his name.”  That’s not the Jesus I believe I know.

I think the “me” Jesus refers to, when he says “no one comes to the Father but through me,” is the “me” he just described: “the way, and the truth, and the life.”  To live as Jesus lived, to “love one another as I have loved you” (John  13:34-35) is to live true to who and what we are in our deepest heart and soul and that is the way to God.  If we live into our potential as being created in the image of God, then we are living the way Jesus lives.  Then we are truly People of the Way.  And that’s life-giving.

We may also want to consider the context of John’s gospel.  It was written later than the others, at a time when the fledgling Christian community - who, incidentally, called themselves “people of the way,” not “christians” - was threatened by persecution from Romans and Jews.  It makes sense that, in that context, John’s Jesus would say “I am the way, follow me,” not “there’s lots of ways, pick one.”  And he’s not going to point at Fred and say, “Fred’s the way, follow him.”  He’s going to say let me show you, follow my example, live as I have shown you.  Don’t just talk about it, do it.

Am I splitting hairs here?  I don’t think so.  A key feature of what Jesus taught was action.  You must live out what is being preached.  Sadly, we have lots of examples of when and how that hasn’t happened.  One of the greatest criticisms of the church, of any religious institution, by those who don’t “follow the label” is that we don’t, literally, practice what we preach always.

I also don’t think Jesus means for us to blindly follow without thought or consideration.  If that were the case, we wouldn’t need freewill or choice, would we?  The moment we make our “label” exclusive, I think we deny a key feature of living the way Jesus lived: Jesus welcomed all, regardless of their place in society, their gender, their cultural or political views.

I believe that Jesus knew that, before God, we are one family, but we are also all unique and individual.  I think that’s why, just before the “I am the way” verse, he says “in my Father’s house are many dwelling places” (John 14:2).  There is room with God for everyone.

We are constantly referring to “the family of Jesus Christ.”  That’s who we are, and we are all part of the family, a worldwide family.  If we believe that, we are going to need to accept the challenge of being a family, that sometimes we aren’t always alike, we don’t think alike or act alike, yet we are still family and we must still love one another.  If we believe that we are the family of Jesus Christ, then we accept each other for who we really are, not who we can pretend to be because someone tells us to behave a certain way.  And when we stumble, or we have questions and differences, our family should be there to support and help us.  

I believe that’s “the way” that Jesus had in mind, the way we can travel together.