When Love Hits a Wall

“Lord… bring down retribution on my persecutors.”  - Jeremiah 15:15

Jeremiah was calling upon God to exact pain and punishment on his tormentors – his friends turned enemies.  These are tough, hard words from the mouth of an angry man.  Jeremiah had reached his limit.  Jeremiah had hit a wall!  Jeremiah had done his best to speak God’s word to his own people, and what he had received in return was pain and persecution - flat out rejection!  The passion he felt for his people had turned to anger.  His conviction for his vocation had been transformed into disillusionment!  He was angry with everyone and everything.  Jeremiah found himself in a wilderness - a wilderness of bitterness.  Jeremiah was living in a kind of exile – the exile of his anger and despair.  

He was angry with his persecutors, many of whom were, more than likely, his own friends and neighbors:  “Lord… bring down retribution on my persecutors,” he shouted in God’s face.  In another place (18:21) he said, “Let my persecutors children be given over to famine; may they fall to the power of the sword; let their wives become childless and widowed.” Let’s face it, Jeremiah was one angry dude!  

He was also furious with God:  Confronting God, feeling forsaken and forgotten in the task that God called him to fulfill, Jeremiah shook his fist in the face of God and said, said, “You are a deceitful brook, like waters that fail.” 

I believe Jeremiah was even disappointed with himself for not disregarding God’s call in the first place, (1:4-10) when God first beckoned him, and Jeremiah had insisted that he was too young and too inexperienced for such a mission. In chapter 11 we hear Jeremiah complain, “But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.”  (11:19) It was as if he was saying, “How could I be so naïve to get duped into this?”   
Any love, any affection, any compassion Jeremiah might have had for his people, for his God, for his mission had evaporated like the morning mist, burned away by the blistering sun of rejection.  He had hit a wall, reached his limit and could go no further.  His love had decreased and converted into seething anger and dark disillusionment. 

 Have you ever felt like Jeremiah – even a little?  Have you ever been in the wilderness of that exile?  When has your love and compassion hit a wall and reached its limit?  What were the circumstances? 

·        As a parent or teacher perhaps it was a rebellious or troubled child that challenged your love and compassion to the breaking point? 

·        Was it a betrayal by a friend or loved one? 

·        Perhaps it was unfair or unjust criticism at work or school? 

·        Were you victimized in some way, crushed under the oppression of an antagonist or the unceasing attacks of an adversary? 

·        Envy of the fortune of others has the power to diminish love and compassion. 

·        Perhaps it was a time when you selflessly gave of yourself, but your deeds were rejected or scorned, or went unnoticed and unappreciated.

·        For a pastor maybe it’s a stubborn or resistant congregation.

Whatever - we all have had the experience of our love decreasing, hitting a wall and then being propelled into a wilderness of anger, despair and disillusionment – cast into exile.

When it happens we lose a little piece of our humanity, even if we feel justified in our feelings – even if we feel the other deserves our anger and disparagement.  When we get caught up in it, we feel like we are a little less than we were before. 

I intuitively know that when I love, especially in challenging circumstances, I become more: more fulfilled; more fully human; more completely the person I am called by God to be; and when my love hits a wall, I become less: I am less fulfilled, less human, and less living in the image of the person I am called by God to be.      

And then, we hear the apostle Paul say to us this morning, “Let (your) love be genuine.” (sincere, authentic).

 But how do we do that?  How do we love like that when we find ourselves in exile – in the wilderness of anger, disillusionment, despair, and rejection?  Is it possible for my love to be rekindled when I am in a similar place as Jeremiah?   When I find myself in that wilderness, words like, “Let (your) love be genuine,” only make me more crazy; make me more frustrated because the words sound preachy and serve to remind me of what I have lost – the person I am not – at that moment!  

But even so, Jeremiah still longed to be made whole. In chapter 17 he cries, “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be made whole.”  Even though he felt justified in his anger, he recognized it was not a place that he wanted to dwell for very long. He didn’t like the kind of person his anger was turning him into.  He longed for a way out of this terrible exile.  Is there a way out?

When I find myself in Jeremiah’s exile, I experience it as a paradox and peculiar irony.  When my love  decreases to anger, my anger provides a certain short term sense of gratification, but the longer I stay there the worse I feel, and the more I long to be empowered to love again, and I pray Jeremiah’s prayer, “Heal me, O Lord, heal me!”    

Jeremiah isn’t alone in this, but actually is in some pretty esteemed biblical company.  We see it in today’s gospel.  When Jesus revealed that his itinerary included going to Jerusalem to die, Peter’s love hit a wall.  Peter blocked his road, “God forbid it, Lord.”  Jesus got pointedly confrontational and said, “Peter, you get out of my way!  You’re a stumbling block to my mission.”  Jesus then went on to explain that following him meant taking up their own crosses of sacrificial love. 

 It wasn’t the only time that Jesus, in the face of the disciples decreasing love, confronted them with his increasing love.  In fact, it seemed to be the rhythm of his entire ministry.  There was the time Peter came and asked (Matthew 18:21-22), “If someone sins against me, how often should I forgive – as many as seven?”  It sounded generous (was generous), but Peter had put a limit on love.  Jesus said, “Oh no, not seven times, but seventy-times-seven.”  (70 x7 is a Hebrew idiom for “as many as it takes”)

When the scribes and Pharisees dragged a woman accused of committing adultery before Jesus, and demanded she be stoned to death as the law required, Jesus leveled the playing field with the words, “The one among you who has never sinned cast the first stone,” – hence elevating love over law. 

Jesus’ increasing love, time and again, crossed forbidden religious and social barriers where human love usually stopped in its tracks and hit a wall; by touching the unclean, cavorting with sinners and embracing those that the community had ostracized.

You see, this is what the disciples and the early followers of Jesus repeatedly experienced in his presence.  When their love decreased, became narrow and hit a wall, Jesus’ love increased and surpassed whatever confining boundary had stopped them.  When they were exhausted after following him the first mile, and felt they could go no further, Jesus kept walking and inviting them to move their feet and follow him a second mile, third, fourth – or more! 

 Finally, just as he said, the movement of Jesus’ feet did take him to a cross, and Matthew tells us as he hung there dying, he began to sound a lot like old Jeremiah, “My God, my God why have forsaken me?”   I believe as Jesus spoke those words, he too was in the wilderness.  But, the ironic thing about it is that those despairing words were still words of love.  And you may ask, “How can that be?”  How can, “My God. My God, why have you forsaken me,” be words of love?   Even though, at that moment, he could not see or perceive that God was there, he still called upon God because he could do no other.  Not even the cross, not even death, nothing in life could destroy his love for God, because the love he loved God with was none other than God’s love for him empowering him to love in return even when his heart was all but broken – even when he had hit a wall. 

The good news is that Jesus’ words are our words, the words of all of us when we have hit the wall – the words we all must honestly speak, in all their brutal rawness, when we have reached the limit – when we feel we can love no more – when our hearts are broken - and our spirits tapped.  

Like Jeremiah, and like Jesus, when we find ourselves in exile, perhaps the only thing we have left to give God at that point, is our anger and despair. And to not give it to God, to not speak it to God, to not articulate it, would be the ultimate failure of love.  Jeremiah still loved God enough to express his anger, his pain, his disappointment, his disillusionment.  It was the way out of exile for Jeremiah – who went on from there to be God’s faithful prophet - and the way out of exile for us as well. 

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” were ultimately words of love spoken by Jesus. For at that point, it was all Jesus had to give – and he gave it – to God.  That’s a great deal of what these passages are about - a real faith, an authentic faith, a genuine love - that even has room for our anger and despair, when we’ve hit the wall - and find ourselves in a wilderness of exile. 

In the end Paul’s words, “Let your love be genuine,” are less a command and much more a promise.  The promise is that on the weary feet of faith, we will come to love at last, because we have first been loved - even in the wilderness of exile – because Jesus too has been in the same wilderness for us and with us.   Our Lord Jesus journeys with us and leads us out of exile into the joy of restored love.   Amen.