Radical Love
Psalm 23, 1 John 3:16-24, John 10:11-18
May 7, 2006
Rev. Marcia J. Hauer

“He hits me sometimes, but I still love him.� “She lies and cheats, but I still love her.� You’ve heard statements like these. If you watch television or go to movies, you’re familiar with these and many other dysfunctional kinds of love. When most of us think of love, we think about emotions. Sometimes we think about romance or the love we have for our children, friends or pets. That is fine as far as it goes. It’s love with in socially accepted boundaries—even, as in the first statements, if it is wrongheaded.

The love the bible talks about is not bounded by any kind of convention. In fact, the love the Bible would have us express is radically different than anything that comes from popular culture. For instance:

• “Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind and strength.� In other words, love God more than anything or any one. Don’t let anything get in the way of putting God first. Not your job, your family, your significant other, or anything else. Nothing is as important as God.
• Love yourself. Love all of who you are, not just your public face. Know that God made you and loves you unconditionally and love yourself just as much.
• Love your neighbor. You neighbor is every person on the planet not just the people next door or those you come in contact with or those with whom you agree. Some of your neighbors are hard to love. Love them anyway.
• Love your enemies. How do you love someone who hates you or wants to do you harm?

This is radical stuff. It has little or nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with behavior. It’s difficult to live out. All you have to do is look at a newspaper and see all that is being said about undocumented workers to see how difficult the commandment to love your neighbor is to live. All you have to do is look at the recent refusal of the United Methodist Judicial Council to reconsider their decisions regarding a pastor’s ability to exclude a gay man from membership in the church that pastor serves to see how difficult it is to love our neighbors. All you have to do is pick up a newspaper to see how difficult any of this is.

As I’ve thought about love this week—what it is and whit is not—I came to the realization that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s fear. There’s a church not far from where I live that had a message on its readerboard that said, “God enables us to love the fear out of one another.� I’ve been thinking about that statement and have come to believe that fear is the thing that keeps us from loving fully. It’s fear that keeps us from going out and making the world the place of justice and peace that God desires. We might say that our efforts don’t do anything because we don’t have enough power to change anything. In reality, our impotence is not our lack of power, but our abundance of fear. I was listening to Leonard Bernstein’s Mass and heard words I’d not paid attention to before. It comes during the confession and one singer sings:

What I need I don’t have
What I have I don’t own
What I own I don’t want
What I want, Lord, I don’t know.

Later, all the singers sing:

What I say I don’t feel
What I feel I don’t show
What I show isn’t real
What is real, Lord, I don’t know.

These words speak of the anguish we all feel when we are afraid to be real—to reveal all of ourselves to those who care about us. Revealing all of who we are carries risk, of course. Ask any gay or lesbian person about their experience of coming out to friends and family. Ask anyone who has had to carry some secret and that they eventually had to tell. Sometimes the price for telling is the loss of family or friends or both. Sometimes the price of telling is higher than that. But not to tell feels like, as the Psalmist says, living in the valley of the shadow of death.

Our Scripture lessons this morning all talk about love, one way or another. Psalm 23 talks about a God who loves us enough to set a feast for us in the presence of our enemies. That’s a powerful image—God acting as a servant feeding the psalmist, anointing him, pouring wine for him, all while his enemies watch. God embodies love in action for the poet. Lest we begin to think that all this love is for us as individuals, we need to remember that God does it all for God’s name’s sake and that banquet is for all of us—even our enemies.

Most of the Psalms can be categorized as one of 3 types.
• Orientation—the psalms that say something like how blessed is the one who follows in God’s ways. To this one is given all the good things in life. But the wicked aren’t like that. Since they do bad things, the wicked get bad things in return. In short, you get what you deserve.
• Lament—These are the psalms that begin with short statements and angry words to God. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?� These are expressions of faith when God seems entirely absent.
• New Orientation—In these psalms, the psalmist has gone from feeling smug, to being in the pit and is now on the other side. Things are different on the far side of pain. People are not nearly as sure that good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people. These psalms are the result of having experienced undeserved problems.

Psalm 23 is one of New Orientation. The Psalmist knows he has enemies, knows that life isn’t always good and knows that God loves him through it all and that God is there no matter what.

As I think about it, love isn’t worth much if we confine it to the realm of emotion. Of course we do nice things for people we love and, when love is primarily in the realm of emotion, what we do for others becomes charity—giving to those less fortunate than we. But when love is action/behavior oriented, those things we do for strangers becomes part of who we are as members of God’s family. We are caring for our sisters and brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles. As members of God’s family, acting on the love God has already given us, we begin to see one another as equals rather than as members of one category or another. We come closer to living in god’s realm in its fullness.

If God truly is our shepherd, leading us in the paths we should follow, we have nothing to fear. And if we have nothing to fear, there is no work of justice too great for us to do—that’s love at work. That is the work that we are called to do.

Zephania Kameeta paraphrases Psalm 23 like this:

The Lord is my shepherd;
I have everything I need.
God lets me see a country of justice and peace
And directs my steps towards this land.

Even if a full-scale violent confrontation breaks out
I will not be afraid, Lord,
If you are with me.
Your shepherd’s power and love protect me.

You prepare for me my freedom,
Where all my enemies can see it;
You welcome me as an hououred guest
And fill my cup with righteousness and peace.

I know that your goodness and love will
Be with me all my life;
And your liberating love will be my home
As long as I live.

As we come to the Communion table today, may we all taste and see how much god loves each one of us and how much God loves all of us. Then, as we leave this place, may we walk into a country where justice and peace prevail—a land where we take action so that justice can flow down like water and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

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