Isaiah 35: 1-10
Matthew 11:2-11First Love
by Patricia E. de Jong
December 16, 2001
You cannot believe the number of folks who, upon hearing that I was preaching a sermon this week entitled "First Love," asked me, "Well, who was he?"
I am happy to say that my own first love was a nice Dutch boy from the neighboring city of Kalamazoo. He was in the class ahead of me and drove a MG. My parents thought him ideal in every way. Tall, strong and blue eyed; he filled the bill perfectly. We "went together," as they say, for a couple of years, until I became interested in going to seminary and he became interested in elementary school social work. Our diverse interests parted us, but we have remained good friends all these years.
It's probably a good thing to have a positive experience the first time you dabble in the affairs of the heart. What we learn and how we experience ourselves in maturity might even be shaped by those first experiences. Indeed, more than anything else we are made and shaped by those who love us and by those we love. The reverse is also true; we frequently come to know about the necessity of love because of the void and violence it has created when we were ignored, injured, abused or betrayed by those who loved us unwisely or not at all. Writer and theologian Sharon Parks tells the story of a little girl in a foster home who asked her foster mother to let her see her wedding ring one night before going to bed. The mother gave her the ring and the little girl clutched it in her fist and put it under her pillow. "There," she said, "now you won't leave me while I'm sleeping."
St. Paul reserved his highest respect for love, calling it the greatest of all and warning that if we are without it, it profits us nothing, we become angry gongs or colliding cymbals.
Scripture says that God is love and, therefore, that love is the law of life, even and especially when we refuse to live by the law of love. If we fail in love, we fail in all things else. Love thrives in the life of the spirit and comes alive by its tangible demonstrations or lack thereof. The poet says that loving is like using your heart like a mine on a twenty-four hour a day drilling schedule. Love is all these things and more. As the hymn reminds us, "Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down."
Last week we celebrated hope in this season of advent waiting. Love is the subject of our hope. We hold on fiercely to the hope that love is our ultimate reality. But everything around us pulls us toward cynicism rather than love, despair rather than hope, apathy rather than deep joy. It's hard to feel loving as we watch Osama Bin Laden speak on videotape, almost gleefully, of the devastation of the World Trade Centers. And we wonder what was going through the mind of John Walker, the Mill Valley, California boy who signed up to fight with the Taliban. As we watch the rising tide of refugees roaming the Middle East, we lean toward despair and hopelessness. And with each suicide bombing in Jerusalem, it remains highly doubtful that a separate peace can ever be forged. Will current leaders and this current generation be able to pull off anything that even resembles peace in that region? I would be surprised, but we can hope.
What is it in the human heart, the human spirit that continually opens us to a passion for the possible, to the spiritual intuition that, in Martin Luther King's words, "Unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality."?
It's the question of this season. Do we actually believe in love? Do we really believe in the sort of work that love does? Do we believe the world and we ourselves can be changed by the power of transforming love? The Jesus of this text believes it. He is preoccupied with people who have been marginalized by their situations, who can do little or nothing by themselves. Jesus' primary activity is the restoration of the needy and the giving of life to the lifeless.
John has doubts about him. No longer in the wilderness preaching and baptizing the new age of the one who is to come, John has been imprisoned by Herod for speaking out against him. This is a different John from the one we are accustomed to hearing. Herod wanted to kill John outright, but withheld from doing so because he was popular with the people. John is troubled and in trouble, destined to die. Gone are the wild hair, the locust and honey diet and the bravado of the desert wild man. Gone, too, is the certainty of the earlier message. From a prison cell, John asks the eternal advent question, "Are you the one who is to come or shall we wait for another?" Will you usher in God's reign of love or are we still on hold?
The people of that time, like the people of our time, wanted a liberator to come who would deliver them from danger, chaos, terror and violence into a new state of public government and personal freedom. In his view from the prison cell, Jesus doesn't look anything like a strong leader or a defiant army general. He looks like a wandering rabbi, doing good and causing trouble.
In his own person, Jesus was a herald of a new age and a new stage of what it means to love and be a lover. He was an exemplar of unlimited love–the love that is of God, the love that makes a gift of oneself, a love that has no conditions and no limits. Have you ever noticed how Jesus healed with no strings attached? How he preached a Gospel of love and freedom? How he gave to others, but didn't place conditions on his giving? Jesus knew that it is love and love alone that makes humanity human.
We have just baptized a gorgeous new child and I reminded us that the world is certainly not ready yet for our children. We are in the midst of yet another war in which thousands of children have been made homeless. We are victims of terrorism and hate which has become a worldwide security issue. Children are born every day who haven't got enough to eat, a roof to cover their heads or two parents who are alive to love them. If we are serious about loving our children, we shall have to do far more to fulfill the promise of the prophet "for the Great Highway, for the ransomed to return and come into Zion, singing with joy and gladness." Sorrow and sighing is still very much a part of the reality of the world's children.
If we are serious about learning how to love in the manner of Jesus, which is to say unlimited love, we must learn how to strengthen the heart muscles of compassion and caring beyond ourselves, for it is one of the primary ways we learn to care for those who are close by us.
Remember that love has a strengthening effect on all aspects of our lives. Not only is it good for the heart, it is good for the mind. We have to learn to be merciful when we live at each other's mercy. We have to learn to be gentle and to acknowledge the imperfections of our ethics of love. We have to remember that by going beyond mere tolerance and learning to live in the spirit of love, remarkable things will happen. A father can listen to his son for the first time. Those with heterosexual privilege can listen to the stories of fulfillment and joy in the gay and lesbian community without feeling threatened. Whites can celebrate the diversity of California without feeling edged out by Asians, Hispanics and African-Americans. Leaders of industrial nations could comprehend the impatience and insistence of those who have been named the Third World.
Love refuses to be reconciled to cruelty, injustice or helplessness. We know that no life is without pain and suffering. We are reminded of that in the four truths of Buddhism and we see it in the life of Jesus. We suffer. It is part of our neurosis to think that we can avoid suffering in our own life, by cutting ourselves off from love or relationship with others or the events of this world. But it is equally outrageous to watch as others suffer or to contribute to human suffering by remaining passive and distant — we learn to love by refusing to engage in hopelessness or helplessness.
It is too easy at Advent to speak of the coming of one who will take upon himself the suffering of this world, because suffering, evil and tragedy all remain with us. It is too easy to boil Advent down to waiting and watching for Christmas to come. It is too easy to celebrate the four words —PROMISE, HOPE, LOVE, JOY— which hang majestically, yet impotently, from our ceiling. We must be careful in an age of slogans and a time of commercial advertising, not to buy even the theological goods of this season too comfortably. It is too easy to speak of birth as a sanitized event filled with joy and light. Birth, as we all know, takes struggle and tears, agonizing determination and, sometimes, holy terror. T.S. Eliot reminds us of "the cold coming, just the worst time of the year, for a journey, such a long journey; the ways deep and the weather sharp."
The birth of love is often hard and difficult. Sometimes we must struggle for it, even as Mary did in the cold dark of a lonely night.
Today, we pray for our ability to love more and keep on loving no matter what happens. Our prayer is a part of God's tireless persuasion and infinite love which gives us continual hope for birth and new life.
I vividly recall my first love. No, not my first boyfriend or first romantic interest. This morning, I remember my mother and how infuriating I must have been growing up. I was independent, craving knowledge and freedom, and a long, long leash. Funny, no matter how far I went or how weird I got, she always welcomed me home to her heart. I think this is how it is with God. The real miracle is that no matter how flawed and infuriating we must be, God still loves us. Unlike the little girl with her foster mother, we need not fear abandonment. We have no need to feel unwanted or unloved, unremembered or unforgiven; for we are loved, just as we are.
As midnight approaches, we know that hovering above the gray clouds and hiding in the shadows is a star with its radiant light. Therefore, let us love one another, for God first loved us. Everyone who loves is born of God and is a child of God.
Amen.
Copyright © 2001, First Congregational Church of Berkeley