October 26, 2008 Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
I Thessalonians 1:1-3, 8-9, 2:5-8; Matthew 22:34-40
To love God with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul and all our
strength; to love our neighbor as ourself: as has often been pointed out, these are
not the two greatest guidelines, they are the two greatest commandments. They
are law. They are binding. We are bound by these commandments in the sense
that if we are going to try to follow Christ’s way, we are going to have to figure
out how to love God and neighbor every day.
But we are bound by the love commandments in another sense, too. As you
may recall, the word religion comes from a Latin root meaning to bind together.
Jesus picked these two commandments out of hundreds in the Jewish law as the
most important, the two defining characteristics of his way. So these
commandments bind us together as the community that has these two loves at its
heart. We are what we are as a religion and as a community largely because of
them.
To be bound by love is our greatest task, but also our greatest strength. It is
our greatest task in part because it is never done. From now to the moment of our
death, we never have to doubt what to do. We need to be loving God and
neighbor somehow always.
The question is how. This is another reason why being bound by love is
our greatest task. Not only is the job never done, but there are infinite ways to
fulfill the love commandments, and it is a challenge to know how to love God in
this moment, or what neighbors to love and how to love them. And how can we
choose love when other responses seem so much more appealing and powerful—
hate or resentment, violence or denial? Love can seem so weak or self-defeating
that sometimes just choosing it is a heroic task.
But when we do choose it, we find that as weak as it may look, it becomes
our greatest strength. At the moment we choose to love we may not know whom
or how love would have us serve, but one of the strengths of love is that if we
commit ourselves to it and set aside all our other possible courses, love will teach
us the way. Even if our love seems to lead us into mistakes or into greater
dangers, even if it seems to get us hopelessly lost, if we keep trusting in it,
eventually it will lead us out again.
One of my favorite images of this is in a classic children’s novel by the
nineteenth century Scottish pastor and writer, George MacDonald. The novel is
called The Princess and the Goblin. In it a Princess named Irene wakes up in
terror at a sound like foul goblin creatures bursting into her room. She remembers
that her mysterious great-great-great-grandmother has given her a ring with
invisible woven spider thread attached to it and told her whenever she is in danger
to follow the thread and it will lead her safely to her loving arms.
Irene follows the thread, but instead of leading her up into the old woman’s
tower it leads her straight into the heart of the goblin caves, the very goblins who
are trying to kidnap her. Finally it dead-ends in a big pile of rocks, and when she
tries to follow it back out, she cannot feel it. She weeps and despairs.
It seems as if love has betrayed her, but she decides to move a rock or two
to see where the thread goes. She soon discovers that her friend Curdie is being
held prisoner behind the stonepile. The thread shows her how to free him and then
it begins to lead them out. But Curdie does not believe in the thread, and does not
trust it. He cannot see or feel it. It seems weak and foolish. He tries to persuade
Irene to go another way and fight their way out, trusting to his knowledge and
strength, but she persists, and in the end, the thread leads them safely to her great-
great-great grandmother’s loving arms.
Christ’s love commandments, Christ’s way of love, form a thread we can
follow through every moment of our lives, a thread that often leads us into
controversy or conflict or danger, but that always leads in the end to the peace of
Christ’s loving arms.
We do not have to look to a children’s allegory to see this strength of being
bound by love. History is full of stories of people who have endured terrible
hardship or accomplished heroic tasks because of love: a prisoner in a death camp:
a parent of a young child while going through a divorce: a spouse watching a
beloved life partner die: a civil rights leader threatened with assassination: an artist
challenged with painting a ceiling in the Vatican: a church rising to face a time of
crisis.
The Apostle Paul suffered almost unbelievable hardships—three
shipwrecks, many sleepless nights, often hungry and thirsty. He was thrown in
prison almost everywhere he went. He was flogged countless times. (For an
expanded list of is hardships see II Corinthians 11:16-33.) His faithfulness to love
is what gave him the task but also the power to do all he did and rejoice. Love led
him into trouble, but it kept leading him back out again and turning troubles into
triumphs.
An example of this is in the letter we read today. We can hear Paul’s love
for the Thessalonians and we can hear how loving they were as well. He
compares himself to a nurse tenderly caring for her own children and he praises
their labors of love. But there was some trouble behind all this love.
Paul founded the church in Thessalonica and formed a strong bond of love
there, but he was soon forced to flee for his life by Jews who gathered an angry
mob of ruffians to attack him for dividing the synagogue.
Paul fled south to Athens and Corinth. Then he sent Timothy back to see
how the Thessalonians were doing. Timothy reported to Paul that they were
anxious and upset that Paul had not come himself. Love had led Paul into a
fatherly relationship with this new church, and love had led the Thessalonians to
develop attachments and expectations for Paul as their pastor, but that mutual love
also led to the situation that required Paul to leave the church and disappoint its
attachments and expectations.
Paul had a choice of how to respond to the trouble Timothy reported to
him. Paul could have been defensive or he could have rebuked, but he chose the
way of love, and out of that love he wrote this beautiful letter that became a
treasure of not just the Thessalonian church but all churches of all times.
Love is still getting churches into difficulty and back out again. This
church went through a long and arduous planning process over the past several
years. Last April that difficult labor of love culminated in a unanimously adopted
strategic plan, a plan we love. The thread led us through difficulty to triumph, but
then back into difficulty, because now we find ourselves struggling to accomplish
all that we planned. We wonder how we will do it all. Part of the answer is love.
But part of the answer may be that we do not succeed in doing it all. We may not
have the resources of time, energy or money that we hoped to have.
That is alright. The plan is not the great commandment—love is the
commandment. The plan is an expression of our hopes and desires, and we made
it as realistic as we could, but it is still just a guideline. It can be departed from
when need be. Love cannot. Love is our task, but it is also our strength. However
we depart from the plan over the years ahead, as long as we do so following the
same love that led us into the plan, we will stay on the right path.
Another reason we may need to adjust our plan over time is that the world
is changing around us. Love may lead us in directions we have not foreseen.
Twelve years ago in one of my early sermons here I envisioned this church
as a ship that had sailed over two hundred years on this hill. The ship has changed
greatly, the sea around it is almost unrecognizable compared to the eighteenth
century, but throughout that time the church has navigated by the pole-star of the
two great love commandments, and that course has brought us safely here.
Now this ship seems to be heading into a hurricane of global economic
collapse and global climate change—crises that darken the sea ahead. If we enter
a second great depression and are up to our gunwales in surging poverty, how will
we stay afloat? If sea levels rise and we find ourselves like Noah’s ark lost in a
strange new world, what course will we set then?
You are the ones at the helm as this ship enters the storm ahead. The future
of this church and community and to some extent this world depends on you and
the love in your heart.
And you know what? I could not feel more secure. I have no fear
whatsoever, because for twelve years I have sailed with you in this ship, and I
know the power and wisdom and courage of your love. I have seen it navigate
through the seas of Open and Affirming and the seas of Open to All and many
other uncharted and potentially dangerous seas. I have seen you manifest your
love for the children here. I have seen how you care for those in need in the
community. I saw a few weeks ago your outpouring of love and financial support
for a young survivor of the genocide in Rwanda. I have felt the power of your
love myself when I have been sick or grieving. And as Paul said to the
Thessalonians, I say to you: “So deeply do I care for you that I am determined to
share with you not only the good news of God’s love and Christ’s way, but also
my own self, because you have become very dear to me.”
What I want you to know today is that you are not alone. You have each
other. You have a pastor who loves you deeply. And this afternoon if you come
back here at 2:30 you will see that there are twenty-one other churches in your
Association who are also guided by the two love commandments, who are also
serving their communities’ needs. And beyond them, there are the hundreds of
churches across northern New England, and the thousands and tens of thousands
around the world, all in their different ways following the best they can the one
polestar of love. This is the greatest world-wide web, this web of love that is
holding the planet together.
We are a part of a great force, bound by love. Love is asking of us perhaps
the greatest task of our lives in the days ahead. But the greater the task, the greater
the strength love will provide. We need not fear. We need only to sail on, bound
by love, bound for love, with the greatest love always still ahead.
Let us pray in silence…..
Sermon 10/26/2008