Love

Preface: Before preaching I want to announce that I will not be here in the pulpit next Sunday. Next Sunday is Pentecost, and I have looked forward to preaching on the Holy Spirit. In addition, I have sent out an appeal for some or all of the people who attend our church to officially and publicly commit themselves to our congregation and present themselves for membership. That will go on without me. With my family, I will attend church next week at the Sedgefield United Methodist Church in Charlotte to witness, with joyful hearts, the confirmation and baptism of my beloved grandson Sam.  Most of you know Sam. He has attended here many times and often read the scriptures for me before I preach. He is a precious soul. Early in his life, he attended a Methodist Church with his maternal grandmother. We give thanks for this. Later, he began attending with me when we spent weekends with me.  Sometime last fall, purely on his own initiative, he began walking alone to the little Methodist church two blocks from his house. It is a congregation not much bigger than Providence. Sedgefield collaborated with two other Methodist churches to hire a youth minister and the three youth groups, each very small, began to meet weekly. Sam began attending. Then, he joined the confirmation class. I did not know about this until one weekend he said he needed to get back to Charlotte on Saturday as he did not want to miss church and confirmation class on Sunday morning. I was surprised, but thrilled.  For three months now, he has attended, and last week he called to say, “I am being baptized on Sunday, May 19. You and the family are invited to come.” I said we would. I made this promise, grateful for all the small neighborhood churches that dot the cities and counties of the United States, churches like ours. Good things happen in these churches, and a very good thing has happened in the Sedgefield United Methodist Church in Charlotte.  Praise the Lord!   Faith. Hope. Love. These three things remain.  When all else is shaking, and shrinking, and changing, faith, hope, and love remain. These are gifts of God; these are the presence of God; these are God. Where there is true faith, there is God; where there is genuine hope, there is God; where there is love, there is God. Faith is reaching back to things that happened long ago. Faith is remembering the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Faith is taking hold of Jesus, his teaching, and his healing, and his dying, and his rising on the third day. Faith is bringing that story into our story, bringing that person into our presence, embracing that way of living into today. That is faith. Hope is reaching forward to what is coming, and it is here again that our Christian story becomes our story. “I will come again,” Jesus said. Centuries earlier, the prophet said, “The lion will lay down with the lamb.” Decades after Jesus, one of the apostles had a vision of the city of God. The river of life flows down the middle of the city. On either side of the river are the trees of life and the leaves are for the healing of the nations.” Two years ago, we read through the epistle to the Philippians, including where the Apostle writes, “We eagerly await a savior from heaven, the lord Jesus Christ, who … will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” We latch hold of these promises, this hope, and pull it into our living today, so that the light of this hope brightens our path and helps us sing for joy and live with hope. Now love: love is reaching up and in, to bring into our living the transforming, sustaining presence of the universe. I We live in troubled times. Not like the civil war or the great depression or the gang infested cities of central America, or the dictator ruled countries of the world. We do not live in poverty, or prison, or debilitating pain. Our economy is strong and social security is still sending out checks. In sports, and music, and longevity, there is much to celebrate. But there is a shaking of the foundations. Things we thought were nailed down are coming lose. Things we thought would be secure are threatened. Things we thought bound us together are pushing us apart. Have you heard about Ottawa Impact, in Holland, Michigan? Or the takeover of the Houston Independent School District? Or the homeless policies in Grants Pass, Oregon? On our own property this week, vandals stole our church sign, the piece that displayed the gay flag. There is a concerted effort by powerful forces and lawless acts to intimidate gay and lesbian people, to undermine their human dignity, and reverse their civil rights. This is only going to get worse. In response to these local hoodlums, I hung the gay flag on the church sign. But the harassment of LGBTQ people will increase. Powerful people, including governors and mayors, are determined to marginalize our friends and sap their civil rights. One new denomination of thousands of churches has formed based on their resistance to LGBTQ Christians. I fully expect the U. S. Supreme Court to begin whittling away at the rights and opportunities for gay people.  The foundations are shaking. It is only going to get worse. Regardless of who wins the presidential race this fall, things are going to happen that will test the foundations of our nation, of the rule of law, of the vitality of our institutions, including churches. Once more, there is a shaking of the foundations. It is the removal of what can be shaken so that things that cannot be shaken might remain.  Things that are unmovable, things that are steady in a time of turbulence, things that remain during and after the shaking are the gifts of God. Faith is the gift to reach back in time, seize hold of something there, and bring it into the present in a powerful and transforming way. This faith is the gift of God, the gospel says. By this faith, you have been saved, Paul wrote to the Ephesians and also to us. By faith we reach back to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We take hold of that person, that event, that promise and live today as if it is true: we follow Jesus in our living, we trust God for our forgiving, and because of the resurrection, we sing for joy and live with hope. Hope is the gift of God to reach forward in time, take hold of something that is not yet, and pull it into the present so as to transform how we live. Hope is the power of God to change the present by what is yet in the future. Hope looks to the coming again of Jesus our Lord, to the appearing of our great God and Savior, to the new Jerusalem, the new heavens and new earth. Hope keeps our eyes on what we do not yet see. Hope sheds the light of tomorrow on the darkness of today. Hope pulls into today the reality that is yet to be revealed. This is the power of hope. And today, I focus my thoughts and my words on love, the greatest of all gifts. Love is the gift of God; God is the source of all love. Where there is love, there is God; where there is God, there is love. For God so loved the world, that God gave the one and only Son, Jesus our savior. But in that gift of love, we have the power to receive strangers, help the poor, free the prisoner, and declare the year of jubilee. With the gift of love, divine love, we have the power to love and serve one another. Today and every day, we reach up and take hold of this love, agape love, sacrificial love, eternal love and pull it into our broken and halting lives. It gives us the power to forgive and to give. It gives us power to understand and discern. It gives us power to serve and be served. It gives us the joy of the Lord. It gives us voice to say, the Lord is in this very room! II Love is the presence of God, and it takes the form of justice. The public form of love is justice. Justice is the fair distribution of goods and services. Justice is the community where all receive what is needed and none have more than they need. Justice is the country where the wealth is shared so that all have shelter, safety, food, work, and dignity.   Justice is the country where opportunity is available for all, regardless of outward conditions, like language, color, religion, and ability. One of the great problems in our country and in the world is the growing divide between the wealthy and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, those who have and those who don’t. Economic policy and tax policy help create this reality. Here is an example.  The wealthiest company in the United States is Walmart. Last year, they made $127 billion in profit. At the same time, many Walmart employees are on public assistance: housing, food, health care. That is, they work so few hours and are paid such low wages that they cannot live on their wages or salary. This stark division between the working poor and the inherited wealth is unjust. Many of these Walmart workers go to the food bank to get something to eat, they have a Medicaid card and receive their medicine, they live in section 8 housing. This is public assistance, this is charity, this is good people, Christian people, Muslim people preparing food for the poor to eat. This is not justice, it is charity. Yes, we are called to charity: to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. But we are also called to do justice and often as we love mercy. To love our neighbor is to do justice, seek justice, vote for justice, and agitate for justice. Love is the great gift of God when it takes the form of justice so that all God’s people can live and work in dignity. We remember that Dr. King was in Memphis in 1968. The war was raging in Vietnam, the Americans were gathering to vote in that election year, but Dr. King was in Memphis to support the strike of garbage workers for a living wage. He was leading the campaign for better wages and better conditions for those who pick up our garbage. He was being a drum major for justice. Justice is the public face of love. III. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” the poet wrote. And the personal way that we love each other is friendship. Will you be my friend? the minister asked every day, looking into the camera. His name was Mr. Rogers, an ordained minister who turned the daily children’s show into his pulpit and liturgy. His question is at the core of the Christian life. Will you be my friend? I remember my first encounter with Providence Baptist Church. It was February of 2020. It was COVID. It was worship by Zoom. You had an interim minister, who happened to be an old friend of mine from our days in Pittsburgh. Zoom presented pictures of you, on the screen. I remember looking at each of you. My eyes went from person to person. I knew no names. But I had one question: can I be friends with these people? I watched your movements and listened to your words. I noticed what you were wearing and how your space was arranged. Can I be friends with you? This is what people do when they come into our space. I don’t mean that this is a focused and intentional act. I don’t mean they say to each other as they get out of the car to come into our church, “Now, let’s just see if we like any of these people, if we can be friends with them, if they can receive us into their social circle.” No, it is often not a conscious, deliberate thing. It is often unnoticed and unintentional; it is below the surface and out of sight. But it is the same: can I be friends with these people. “I call you friends,” Jesus said to his disciples. Friendship is the side of love that we first encounter. It is also the side of love that we need the most. There is another pandemic in our land today. It is the epidemic of loneliness, of isolation, of nobody calls and nobody comes and nobody cares. It is the absence of laughter; it is the presence of silence and stillness. This is why pets are popular. Dogs and cats take the place of people. Now, I grant that often a dog makes a better friend than a person. We have a black lab that thinks she is a person, that assumes she has a place on every sofa, that assumes that she will get the attention she needs when hungry. Pets sooth the soul and warm the heart. But pets are not people, and pets cannot take the place of a friend who brings you cake on your birthday, who picks you up for coffee, who holds your hand and prays for you when you are headed to the hospital. We all need people to laugh when we laugh, cry when we cry, and talk when we talk. Every day and any day, we need a friend. A friend is the gift of love. Thanks be to God.