When Loves Hits A Wall

josephholubsermons

September 26, 2010 Pentecost 18
Jeremiah 15:15-21
Romans 12::9-13
Luke 6:27-35a

When Love Hits a Wall

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

Our scripture passages this morning reflect a stark contrast - intentionally so. Jeremiah is royally honked off! In the face of his anger we hear the divine response that more or less said, “Calm down Jeremiah, I am still with you. In the passion of your anger you have lost yourself – lost your humanity.” Then we read about God’s steadfast love in the face of Jeremiah’s disillusionment. In contrast to Jeremiah’s desire that retribution befall his persecutors, we hear Paul and Jesus call for love of and blessing for one’s persecutors. These are stark and vivid contrasts!

Jeremiah called upon God to exact pain and punishment on his persecutors and his persecutor’s spouses and children: “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.” 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 once felt for his people had turned to anger against his people. His conviction for his vocation had been transformed into disillusionment! He was angry with everyone and everything. Jeremiah found himself in a wilderness - a kind of exile – the exile of his anger and despair.

He was also furious with God. Confronting God, feeling forsaken and forgotten in the task that God, after all, had called him to fulfill, Jeremiah expressed his anger at God with cutting allegory, “You are a deceitful brook, like waters that fail.” I can almost feel the heat coming off the page!

I believe Jeremiah was even angry with himself for not disregarding God’s call in the first place when Jeremiah had insisted that he was too young and too inexperienced for such a mission. In chapter 11 we hear Jeremiah complain, “I am like a gentle lamb being led to the slaughter.” (11:19) It was as if he was saying, “How could I be so naïve to get duped into this?”

Let’s face it, the line between love and hate can be a thin line, a thin line indeed. The journey from affection to contempt can be a short journey. Perhaps you know about this experience? When has your love and compassion hit a wall, reached its limit and morphed into something far less or even the opposite?

As a parent or teacher perhaps it was a rebellious or defiant child that challenged your love and compassion to the breaking point?
Or perhaps, it was a betrayal by a friend or loved one?
Or maybe it was unfair or unjust criticism at work or school?
Or were you victimized in some way, crushed under the oppression of an antagonist or the unceasing attacks of an adversary?
Maybe you incurred a deep emotional wound, even a long time ago, that continues to exert its negative power over you in profound ways.
Perhaps it was a time when you gave of yourself, but your deeds were rejected or scorned, or went unnoticed and unappreciated.
Perhaps it is nothing more than the color of a person’s skin, or the sound of their language, or their social-economic class, or knowledge of their cultural heritage, or their religion, or sexual orientation that can cause your love to hit a wall.

Whatever - we all have had the experience of our love decreasing, diminishing, hitting a wall and consequently being cast into an exile of anger, indifference, prejudice and disillusionment.

The insidious thing about it is that when it happens we lose a 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 less than we were before, because it affects our whole being and every other relationship.

I intuitively know that when I love, especially in challenging circumstances or in counter-cultural or counter religious ways, I become more: more fulfilled; more fully human; more completely the person can 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 could be.

And then in the face of it, we hear the apostle Paul say to us this morning, “Let (your) love be genuine… bless those who persecute you” Or we hear Jesus say, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…”

But how do I do that? How do I love like that when my love has hit a wall? Is it possible for my love to be rekindled when I am in a similar place of exile 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 least 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 be and dwell for very long. He didn’t like the kind of person his anger and disillusionment was turning him into. He longed for a way out of his terrible exile.

When I find myself in similar exile, I experience it as a peculiar irony. When my love decreases to some expression of anger, it 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!" The sweet nectar of my anger quickly turns sour and turns me sour as well.

It’s important for us to note that this was a significant dynamic that occurred in Jesus’ relationship with his disciples. Repeatedly, in the face of the disciples decreasing love, Jesus embraced them with his increasing love. In fact, it seemed to be the rhythm of his entire ministry. There are so many examples. 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?” “Seven” sounded generous (it was generous), but Peter had put a limit on love. In the face of Peter’s limited love, Jesus embraces him with God’s limitless love, “Oh no, not seven times, but seventy-times-seven.” (an 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 Mosaic 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 Mosaic law.

This is what the disciples and the early followers of Jesus repeatedly experienced in his presence. It was the indiscriminate quality of Jesus’ love that broke every boundary and went beyond every wall that religion and culture had built to separate people, to cultivate fear and prejudice, and to limit love.

It was the indiscriminate quality of Jesus love that:

broke the boundary between Jew-Gentile and invited people into a new kind of community;
broke the boundary between Jew-Samaritan and invited people to live beyond their prejudice;;;
broke the boundary between male-female and invited people to throw off rigid hierarchies of relative worth;
broke the boundary between clean-unclean and invited people to a new place beyond fear;.
broke the boundary between holy-profane and invited people to see the divine presence in unexpected people and places..

When their love decreased, became narrow, conditional and hit a wall, Jesus’ love increased and surpassed whatever confining boundary or wall that had stopped them. When they were exhausted after following him the first mile, and felt they could go no further, Jesus kept walking and encouraging and inviting them to move their feet and follow him a second mile, third, fourth – or more – and, of course his love went as far as it could possible go when their stumbling feet followed him to his cross, and he gave himself totally away!

The portrait of Jesus on the cross is the portrait of one whose life is coming to an end, and instead of fighting, and scorning, and begging, and whining, and cussing and spitting, we see him so content to be that he offered forgiveness to the soldiers, comfort to a thief and consolation to his grieving mother. He lived fully. He loved lavishly. He had the courage to be all that he could be in love. He became fully human in love.

That’s why his followers saw and experienced in him the Source of Life and the Source of Love; and that’s why his followers named him messiah; for he got inside their skins and called them beyond all the boundaries and walls that existed inside of them that limited their love and their humanity – and he called them into a new state of being human; a new way of being human; a new way of living in community.

Those earliest followers of Jesus experienced him as a living presence who lived inside of them. That is the deepest meaning of what they meant by resurrection – a living presence of love within them that continually invited them beyond the walls that stopped their love from going any further.

To have faith in Jesus is to recognize that he lives within us and that his consciousness and his love can well up from within us, even when our love has hit a wall and we feel we can love no more. To follow Jesus is to trust he already lives beyond the walls we hit, and he invites us beyond them; to follow him into a deeper experience of God’s limitless and lavish love. And the farther we journey with Jesus, the more fully human we become, and the more profound is our experience of God and the more God is seen and experienced by others in and through us. Amen.