Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Jesus taught that love hurts, but we must do it. The hurting-kind-of-love (loving someone to death) makes us like Jesus, and like his Father, and prepares us for heaven. Also, Jesus said, by sacrificial love we mark ourselves his: "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." I  hope our understanding of love will soon mature past the flower-child version ("make love, not war" -- as if that were the choice!), past the patty-cake, Sunday School version (don't hit your sister, do what mommy says), even past that syrupy sweet sentimentality that oozes from some pulpits, and passes for love -- there are preachers who will give you diabetes, if you listen too long! Who could argue with the faith if it were simply a matter of loving our mommies and daddies, when the whole family is dressed up and behaving well, or not making war when no nation is provoking us? Even the pagans do that! That's nothing! Such a bowl of cherries, such a simple-minded religiion, would never have turned the world upside down as early Christianity did. There's nothing new, or different, in it. Jesus enrolls us in the graduate school of love, where we go to die, and that's what turns
things around.

The Ladder of Love-

Imagine a ladder of love. The first rung on the ladder, the first step, is the easiest (and yet for some it is a challenge). It is to do what we say comes naturally, to love those who love us, to show affection for family and friends. Today is
Mothers' Day. They say a mother's love has no end. I always think of that delightfully awful poem by Rudyard Kipling:

If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
I know whose love would come down to me,
Mother o'mine, O, mother o'mine.
If I were hanged from the highest tree,
I know whose love would come up to me,
Mother o' mine…

Love Can Hurt Deeply -

The poem's not so good, but at least it faces the fact that loving (even loving our so-called "loved-ones") isn't always a walk in the park. Even on this first rung of the ladder -- loving can hurt." A father comes to speak of his daughter. She has taken every wrong path, made
every mistake in the book. Now she's in trouble again, for the hundredth time, and, in her pride and shame, she refuses her parents' help. The man sobs a long time, and then is quiet. It's not his daughter's behavior that makes him weep, it's his love for her. She has broken his heart. By loving her so much, he has made himself vulnerable. Had it been someone else's child he might have noticed, might have felt a twinge of compassion, but this is his little girl, and she is lost. He suffers for her. "She's lucky to have such a father," I think to myself in the silence. "Why wouldn't a child accept her father's love? Why would she make it hurt so much to love her?"

Jesus loves me when I'm good, when I do the things I should,
And he loves me when I'm bad, but it makes him very sad.  

Loving Strangers-

And that's the easiest rung on the ladder of love! To love family and friends. Jesus calls us to climb higher, to love strangers. Here our genes no longer help: "Why, he doesn't belong to my family, he's not of my tribe, he's not my color, he has a funny name, he eats funny food. I don't like him, and I haven't even met him!" The rejection rate is much higher when we try to love strangers, for the person
on the receiving end is just as bound up in his fears and prejudices as I am in mine. (I don't belong to his family, I'm the wrong color for him. My name sounds funny in his ears, and my food tastes odd on his tongue.) I hate to have my love rejected. In fact, I get very angry when other people are as prejudiced as I -- so I don't try, I don't take the chance, don't risk being hurt by strangers. (It's bad enough to be hurt by friends and family!) So I keep to myself.

Actually, I think, the suffering in loving strangers comes just as often from "our own" as from "outsiders." The early civil rights activists, in the 1960s, who tried to love strangers by going down and helping desegregate lunch counters, and bathrooms, and busses, in the South, often commented that the worst pain they suffered came not from the water hoses and the police dogs and the billy clubs, but from the rejection by friends and family back home. Relatives who accused them of being disloyal to their race. Fellow Christians who couldn't see why they would want to disturb another region's way of life. Stay close to home, love and be loved only by your own, in the osyness of your own little world, and you won't get hurt. But don't reach outside the circle. If you want to love somebody, love granny!" That's safe. But it a far distance from Jesus.

One reason Jesus got hurt, if the truth be known, was that he loved outside the circle of Judaism. When the Jews boasted to him that they were "children of Abraham," Jesus insulted them by saying that, if he wanted to, God could make children of Abraham out of field stones. That didn't go down well. Didn't play in Peoria. The Jews thought they were special, chosen, blessed. Right. But blessed to be a blessing. From Abraham on, these special people of God, this chosen race, had an obligation beyond themselves, a mission to all the world: to Samaritans (yes, the despised Samaritans), and to Gentiles, Greeks and Romans, strangers to the tribe. All would eventually become "Jewish" (in a strange sort of way) through this one, Jesus, who loved outside the circle. But you get hurt when you start loving strangers.  

Even Loving Enemies -

Finally, Jesus said we should love our enemies. This, as we might guess, is the top rung on the ladder of love, a very dangerous thing to do, as Jesus discovered, and few of us get it right. When we read our Lord's words in this regard: words about "going the second mile" with one who can only demand of us one, and giving our coat to one who steals our cloak, and turning the other cheek to him who slaps us, and praying for those who abuse us -- we should see, in our mind's eye, those early Christian martyrs dying, as they did, for God. They recited these words of Jesus to themselves as they were tortured and as they were dying, and prayed specifically that in their agony they would not succumb to hate. For that would ruin everything. It was love that had
saved them originally, and love would save them in the end. If only they could hold to it. "I give you a new commandment," Jesus said, "that you love one another. Just as I have loved you …" Let them know you are Christians by your love. The disciples, when they first heard
him say that, had no idea how much it would cost them. Discipleship proved very expensive to them all, very expensive indeed. Love (the disciple's distinctive mark), if you take it seriously, is a hard ladder to climb. Love is not a feeling, not a noun. It's a verb, an action
word. You have to get outside yourself to love someone else. Mothers know that, on Mothers' Day. The Bible's way of saying it is "you have to die" -- the old you, the self-centered you, indeed, the real you, has to be buried in baptism, if the new you, a blessed creation of God, is to love. You can tell it's love by what it costs, by the price the lover has to pay. And the higher the price the higher up the ladder you are. Every round go higher, higher, and every step costs more, makes us more vulnerable, takes us closer to death. But we must
do it, just as Jesus did.  

Just Do It-

It doesn't cost anything to love at a distance, or to love in theory. Love isn't feeling sorry for people, although pity may sometimes look like love. Love is doing for people. That's the only thing that counts. I can read a article in the Post over breakfast, about (say) the exploitation of the American Indian, and feel bad about it, for a moment or two, and forget it before my coffee's cold. Am I to boast, then, that I'm a Christian, because my heart's in the right place? Of course not. We all have feelings of love. Big woop! But few act out their love and pay the price. "Greater love hath no man than this," Jesus said (predicting his own fate), "that he lay down his life for his friends." In all love we lay down our lives. That's the unfortunate truth of it.