God-sized Love: May 10, 2015

Mary Johnson lost her son in 1993 after a then-teenaged Oshea Israel got into a fight with him at a party and shot him. After 12 years and with many unanswered questions, Mary could no longer live with the unknown, so she went to visit Oshea in jail. After their first contact, Mary describes an incredible experience:

“I began to feel this movement in my feet. It moved up my legs, and it just moved up my body.”  Mary looks at the young man who killed her son as she continues: “When I felt it leave me, I instantly knew that all that anger and hatred and animosity I had in my heart for you for twelve years was over. I had totally forgiven you.”

Mary and Oshea, who has finished serving his time, now live as neighbors in the same duplex, and Mary has even referred to Israel as “son” in interviews.

Oshea tells Mary: “I admire you for your being brave enough to offer forgiveness, and for being brave enough to take that step. It motivates me to make sure that I stay on the right path.”

Love one another as I have loved you.  This love Mary shows Oshea is that kind of love, that all-forgiving, sacrificial, lay-down-your-life-for-another, Jesus kind of love.  This is a love that puts another’s interest first; in fact, this love recognizes that the other’s interest is in my best interest.  This love demonstrates that those who bless are blessed; those who give, receive; those who heal are made whole.

When I hear this story, I am overwhelmed and inspired.  And yet, at the same time, I think to myself, “I don’t think I could do that.  I don’t think I have that much love or forgiveness in me.  But, I want to.  I want to love like this.  Oh, Jesus, I want to be able to love like this.”

And that, my friends, is just the crack the Holy Spirit needs to invade our hearts: the desire to want to love this way.

Did you hear what Peter did?  Peter, a regular guy a lot like you and me, but a guy so swept up in the passion of Jesus that Peter decides to trust in a new way, to follow a new path.  You see, Peter had been taught that the Gentiles were out---outside the circle of salvation.  But then God sends a vision to Peter and sends Peter out to meet Cornelius, a Roman centurion.  Today we hear Peter as he talks to his fellow Jesus followers and explains what he has experienced.  Peter now believes that Cornelius, a Gentile, has been saved and that God desires the Gentiles to be inside the circle of salvation.

And as Peter is talking, the Holy Spirit falls on them all---a radical outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  Peter and the early church are presented with the opportunity to learn something new concerning the divine persistence to act on behalf of those who have been excluded.  The early church’s understanding and teaching of who was in and who was out was being changed---not by their own doing---but by the intervention of the Holy Spirit.  By the extravagance of the Holy Spirit and the wideness of God’s grace. 

Neither Peter nor Cornelius were able, by themselves, to cross the boundaries that the world and the early church had set in place---both of them required the Holy Spirit to intervene---to pour herself out on them in order to love in this bold, inclusive Jesus kind of love.

It’s the same for us.  We need the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to ease into the cracks of our hardened hearts and minds---to break down the barriers and knock over our boundaries that keep us from loving others as Jesus loves.

I bet we’ve all experienced this kind of Holy Spirit transformation.  Maybe it was when someone hurt you deeply, yet there was something greater than the hurt, something deeper, so you slowly moved toward forgiveness, allowing yourself to open your heart and arms to that person again.  Or maybe, you were given a chance to learn something new about someone---or a group of people---you would have considered the “other.”  And as your mind was opened to the truth about that person and that person’s life, you recognized your story in his story…you saw what you had in common…and like Peter, you were changed.

The other night, Murray and I watched a film called Pride.  It is the telling of the true story of how a group of young adult gays and lesbians from London decided to help striking miners in Wales.  You see, this group of young people had received a lot of harassment and bullying---from the police, society and media in London---it was 1984.  So, when one of the young men read about miners in London who were receiving the same treatment, he decided to ask his friends to join him in supporting the miners.  He recognized their common mistreatment and thought it only right to help out another who was being maligned.

Many of his friends didn’t want to bother.  At first, it was just six of them. They called themselves the Lesbians and Gay who support Miners---LGSM.  Not fancy, just direct.  They collected money, which bought food and household needs for the striking miners.  The strike lasted a year. And throughout that year, people’s hearts were changed.  These two groups who had once avoided each other---sometimes even hated each other---learned how to love one another, sacrificially, because they moved and acted based on their common humanity instead of their differing lifestyles.  At the end of the film, their solidarity and love toward one another is so moving and inspiring.  Individuals on both sides had laid down their lives for one another. Sigmund Freud once wrote: “How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved

God tells us today—the world’s boundaries, divisions and barriers will be defeated.  By our faith.  By our faith made manifest, our beliefs acted out in our words and our actions, loving one another as Jesus loves.  Sacrificially. Not waiting until you feel it or until the other deserves it.  As C.S. Lewis writes: “Don’t waste time bothering about whether you love your neighbor. Act as if you do.”  And Dorothy Day reminds us: “I only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”

What might it look like for us to love, to take concrete action for the benefit of, the person we love the least?  Perhaps, we could begin with prayer.  Include the least loved in our prayers.  Lift them up before God and ask for their health, their benefit, their best interests to be met.  As our prayers are lifted, the Holy Spirit will invade our hearts and we will be changed.  Amazing grace will happen.

As Jesus followers and Jesus lovers, we are not allowed the luxury to think along the lines of: my kind, not my kind.  For us, those of us who know and love God---there is not a single person on the face of the earth who is not our kind.  In Jesus there is no us and them; there is only us.

This love, this love that recognizes meeting the other’s best interest is meeting my best interest, this love that sees we are bound to one another because God has bound us together, this is the love that changes the world; the love that defeats evil.  This is what conquers our separation from one another, and therefore, from God. This is what we are to choose, day after day, situation after situation, person after person---even when the world around us refuses to love this way.  Even when it doesn’t make sense.  Even when its seems the end is in sight.  Because we know the Good News: God’s love wins. Neither evil nor death get to have the final word; God does. 

Throughout history, people have done drastic things to try to please the God or gods they believed in.  Animals and people have been sacrificed.  Crusades and jihads have been waged.  Witches have been hunted.  Heretics have been burned.

Those events may sound archaic and foreign to us, but we have ways that are just as destructive:

Friendships are ended.  Families are divided.  Fingers are pointed.  Doors are closed.  Names are called.  All in the name of the God we are trying to serve.

Jesus never instructed or gave us the authority to judge and condemn.  Rather the commandment we have is that those who love God must love all others as well.  All others.  No exceptions.Maybe it is human nature to want to do drastic things to please God.  Beloved, there is nothing more drastic than loving everyone, regardless of whether we agree with them, understand them, or even know them.  That’s a pretty radical thing to do, an incredibly bold and courageous way to live.  In fact, it is so huge it requires a God-sized love.  The good news is---that’s exactly what God gives us.