Love, revisited

Sermon planned for Sunday, September 4th, 2011

Texts: Romans 13:8-14; Mat 18:15-20

Please join me in prayer:
Transforming God, you come to us in expected and unexpected ways, desiring to be known yet remaining a mystery. Make your presence known among us. Confront us. Wrestle with us. Change us, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

We’ve taken our time, this summer, looking at the Fruit of the Spirit. Last week, we learned that Love is the central piece, and that self-control was like the steering wheel, moving us away from vices and towards love. This past week I was studying scripture passages that seemed to make these matters a bit more complex, and together with some of the conversations that I’ve been having with some other pastors and friends, I realized that we had to spend some more time thinking about love and what it means to be a loving community that worships a loving God.

It is no secret that the Mennonite Church, as well as churches across the denominational spectrum, are facing the issue of human sexuality as never before. In the many and various discussions on this topic, the constant question is: what does it mean to love and to be a community of love. Some would like to set-up these discussions in terms of a polarization between Truth and Love, suggesting that you either have to stand on the side of truth, or stand on the side of love. This suggests that a community must either stand with truth and uphold traditional doctrine, or take a stand for love and put people before doctrine.

These kinds of divisions always bother me. Is there such a thing as authentic love if it doesn’t speak the truth? And is there any point in having the truth if it is without love – because without love we are and have nothing. How does this thing play out at your home? Can parents afford to love their children without speaking to them with straightforwardness and truthfulness? What happens to children who are shown love, but without being told the truth about life? Isn’t it precisely at home that we learn it first – that truth and love are completely bound-up together? What about the parent who constantly shoves truth down their children’s throat… but with no regard for love? Where does this lead?

This past week I heard a story from a woman in our church. When her son was younger, his curiosity drove him to reach up for a red-hot oven element. Without taking any thought to her response, this mother slapped his hand out of the way – and she slapped it hard. So hard, in fact, that it left a visible mark. If you would have looked upon this scene from far away, or from outside the kitchen window, you would have guessed that Mother was abusive and unloving. But we all know that her instinctual slap was nothing other than an expression of love. Now some might argue that the real loving thing would be for Mother to let her son find out the hard way that oven elements are not to be touched… But no one could argue that her instinctive reaction was evil or a matter of abuse.

It reminds me of a story from my honeymoon – don’t worry, I checked with Karen before I wrote this one down. Karen and I went to the Dominican for our honeymoon – a beautiful country. One night, probably around two or three in the morning, I heard a yell. I woke up, looked towards the noise, and saw Karen staring into the open bathroom door, which already had the light on. Without hesitating I jumped out of bed, picked Karen up and threw her onto the bed, and charged into the washroom to ‘deal with the problem’. I didn’t know what I was about to face. A burglar? A murderer? A monster?... nope, it was a cockroach; a rather small one, but without Karen’s glasses on, it must have seemed huge to her. After that we both had a good laugh. There was no way I was going to let this small cockroach hurt Karen – not a chance… and so I threw it off the balcony.

That’s the risk that love takes. It doesn’t always look gentle. Sometimes it takes the shape of a mother slapping her son’s hand away from a hot oven element. Sometimes it takes the shape of a newly married man, tossing his wife out of the way as he charges towards imminent danger. Love takes different shapes depending on the context. That’s why the Love vs. Truth debate is a bad discussion right off the bat. It just doesn’t take real life seriously enough. Real life has situations in which love takes different shapes. But what about love in our congregation? What about love in the relationships in this sanctuary right now?

Can you name times, in our congregation’s life, where we have decided to play the Love vs. Truth game? Where we have chosen to ‘love’, but without speaking the Truth? Where does that leave us? What does that do to the nature of the relationships among us? Does it make them more loving, when we fail to speak the Truth in love? How about the other way around? Have we spoken out in truth, but without considering the tenderness of the love in our relationships? Have you spoken ‘the Truth’ into someone’s life in our congregation, without taking enough care to cultivate a relationship of vulnerable love, where such accountability actually works? These questions have everything to do with the relationship between love and gentleness.

How does gentleness apply to love? Is love always gentle? I think it helps to remember Cheryl Braun’s talk about gentleness a few weeks ago. She used a definition that really made a lot of sense to me. She said that gentleness is ‘power under control’. A love that is gentle isn’t a love without ‘teeth’… it isn’t a love without speaking the Truth. Gentle Love is one that is controlled in its approach. Even the mother who slapped her son’s hand away from danger showed a love under control – it was under the control of the instinct of love. If she had not been gentle, but brutal, she would have pushed her son’s hand onto the stove element to teach him the dangers of fire. But if she would have been passive, and merely redirected her son to some other activity, then he would probably not have learned that oven elements are very dangerous. Gentle love is both firm and controlled.

It is exactly this kind of gentle love that Jesus is getting at when he instructs his followers to rebuke each other’s sinful behavior in Matthew 18:15-20. I would like to read it for you now (it will be on the screen). This is a passage often quoted, in the Truth vs. Love debate, by those who argue that we need to take a stand on the side of Truth. We need to rebuke the sin in the lives of Christians around us. Those who want to take a stand on the side of Love, in this debate, are then forced to read this passage as one that denies gentle love… as though Jesus were asking us to be brutal in our rebuke of sin. And it doesn’t help that this is often how accountability gets practiced in the Church. Early Anabaptists saw this passage as a central teaching, without which the life of the Christian community would fall to pieces. In fact, it was their insistence on this kind of accountability that really set them apart from their Christian neighbors – just as much, if not even more, than the teaching about nonviolence or not swearing oaths.

Accountability, as Jesus teaches it in this passage, is a constant theme in my Catechism classes, because it is the main issue that’s at stake in church membership. When someone gets baptized in our community they make a promise to give and receive accountability – and this promise refers to the accountability that Jesus teaches in Matthew 18. When you think of the word Church membership – always include Jesus’ teaching about accountability in that concept – because that’s pretty much the nuts-and-bolts of membership.

Now for the hard question: are we a congregation that practices accountability? I would say mostly “no”… Now many of us may have accountability partners – but I don’t think it would be fair to say that this is a congregational thing. It just means that we have good Christian friends, which is absolutely critical. But most of us don’t feel enabled to speak into another church member’s life, about their brokenness or sin. And many of us would not take too kindly if a member of our church did that to us. Now I could be wrong on this, but I doubt it. And I don’t think we, here in our congregation, are at all unique in this regard. I think that, across the board, in Christian churches across Canada, accountability is a thing of the past. And for many, this is seen as a very good thing. Why?

When my grandparents still lived in Paraguay, they were farmers. With thirteen children, this was no easy task. It didn’t help that one of my aunts was severely mentally handicapped and needed to stay in a group home. Because of the constant droughts, farming wasn’t paying the bills, and most of my grandparent’s money went to the group home to take care of my aunt. Since the Mennonites lived in a Co-opperative system, each Farmer could only sell a certain quota and they were all supposed to sell their crops only to the Co-Op. Selling privately diminished the Co-Ops ability to bargain collectively for better deals.

When things became too desperate for my grandparents, my dad and my grandpa would take a wagon load of produce and, late at night, they would head-off to the Spanish markets and sell some privately so that they’d have enough money to feed their family. When it was eventually found-out that my grandpa was selling goods privately, many members in the Church community openly criticized him for undermining the community’s well-being. My grandpa’s transgression and the bitter responses in the church left the community broken, and my grandparents were isolated. They eventually moved to Canada.

My grandparents moved from a community where accountability was practiced regularly, but often unevenly and frequently without gentle love – a love that considers all the information before making judgments. When in Canada, my grandparents entered a culture and a church that had, for the most part, given up on accountability – unless you committed some really heinous sin. I wonder how they experienced this change? They entered a culture and congregation with very little in the way of close family connection – but at least they were left alone and weren’t harassed for trying to provide for their family. They had left a community where love, at times, felt more brutal than gentle; and they had entered a community that felt much more passive than gentle.

In my discussions at Catechsim, I have sometimes wondered whether I should stop teaching the importance of congregational accountability. Can the larger congregation be a place where we truly hold each other accountable? Shouldn’t we just give up on that doctrine and embrace individualism… just accept everybody and all their actions as part of loving hospitality? At times, I have taught youth that they should at least strive to have a smaller accountability group, since the congregation doesn’t seem to be a place that’s vulnerable enough to really bear your heart, your sin, and your baggage.

This week, after reading the passage from Matthew 18, I realized, once again, that this wasn’t an option at all. It’s not that we shouldn’t have small accountability groups – we definitely should. Each and every disciple should have a circle of support – people to whom you can share your struggle with sin, your joyful victories, and a place where you can deal with your ‘stuff’ – your baggage, your wounds & hurts. But Jesus assumes that small group, one-on-one and congregational accountability all have their place.

I now realize that I was being way too easy on the larger congregation when I thought that we, as a larger group, weren’t a vulnerable enough place to share our burdens and to rebuke sin. When Jesus teaches on accountability he assumes two things, among others: 1) he assumes that accountability involves small groups within the congregation as well as the larger community. In fact, the Greek word for Church (ekklesia) only shows up twice in the gospel, both in Matthew. The second time Jesus speaks about the Church, he’s speaking about accountability. And Jesus says that when small group accountability breaks down, then accountability becomes a matter for the larger congregation to work with. The Church is precisely the place where accountability is most needed.

The second assumption that Jesus had is just as crucial. He taught that accountability is needed when a brother or sister sins. Not when an acquaintance you barely know, who sits on the other end of the sanctuary from you sins…. No – when your brother or sister sins – the Greek word is adelphos – a family member. Jesus assumes that folks in the larger congregation are to share a familial love for each other. In other words, we as disciples in this congregation ought to be as close to each other as brothers and sisters are to one another. In fact, Jesus even redefines family completely when he teaches that it is those who do the Will of the Father in heaven who are truly His brothers and sisters, His mother and father. Was this just meant for him? We used to call each other Brother and Sister. What’s happened? Did we stop using those words when we no longer felt close to each other? Or did we grow more distant when we stopped naming each other as family?

Paul’s discussion of love in Romans 12 & 13 ends with a sense of urgency:
“you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12 the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13 let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

The world needs a picture of Gentle Love so that it can know God who is gentle and loving. The Church is called to be a living foretaste, for the world, of the loving kindness of God. We can’t afford to follow those, like Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, who testify to a God who hates everybody that sins. And we can’t afford to avoid talking about sin, thinking that any path leads to God – when it is clearly only the path of confession and repentance, in and through Jesus Christ, that leads to God.

So what about love in this congregation? What shape does it take? Are we a close family, such that you can welcome accountability, where you can rebuke sin precisely because people are vulnerable with each other? How do we foster that kind of gentle love? Early Christians had something called a ‘Love Feast’. When their pagan neighbors heard about it they were confused or disgusted – why would people who were ‘brothers and sisters’ get together for a ‘Love Feast’? But when it became clear to the surrounding culture that these Love Feasts were a party where people shared in each other’s struggles, helping each other, rebuking each other, struggling together towards holiness and justice… when people eventually saw this part of their witness… well, the Church grew like wildfire.

You know what time it is… you know the urgency… you know that salvation is near to us now… and that the world needs a witness to true community and true gentle love. So let’s try that age old practice – let’s try “Love Feasts”. Why not have folks over at your house for lunch or supper, folks that you barely know? Why not give the world a picture of love that can speak truth in love? Why not give the rest of our churches a witness that you don’t have to choose between Love and Truth?

This morning I have a three-part challenge for you – homework if you will – to help grow a deeper sense of family care and vulnerability in our congregation. It’s my 3-2-1 plan. I challenge you all, before Christmas, to invite three people or couples from church over for a visit, lunch or supper – and make sure its people whom you haven’t ever had over before. And move past talking about the weather… and open up. Ask what you can pray for each other for. That’s #3 in my 3-2-1 challenge. #2 is that you choose two people/couples, in our congregation, as specific people whom you will pray for every week. Find out what they need prayer for, leave an encouragement card for them, etc… and #1 in my 3-2-1 challenge is that you take one further step closer to this community of faith. Volunteer as a youth sponsor. Join catechism class this year to rediscover the basics of the faith. Commit to covenanted accountable membership with our congregation. Share your testimony in church sometime. Volunteer to lead worship or song lead, or start/join a small group. That’s the challenge I want to leave before you this morning – Three ‘Love Feast’ Visits, Two Prayer Pals, and One step deeper into Church community. May you all grow together in love; to grow as a witness to Jesus, our King and Friend.