"Endless love" by millzero

The first kind of love says, “I love you if…”  John D. Caputo has a great quote on this.

“Let us speak then of love. What does it mean to “love” something? If a man asks a woman…”do you love me?” and if, after a long and awkward pause and considerable deliberation, she replies with wrinkled brow, “well, up to a certain point, under certain conditions, and to a certain extent,” then we can be sure that whatever it is she feels for this poor fellow it is not love and this relationship is not going to work out…Lovers are people who exceed their duty, who look around for ways to do more than is required of them. If you love your job, you don’t just do the minimum that is required of you; you do more. If you love your children, what would you not do for them? If a wife asks a husband to do her a favor, and he declines on the grounds that he is really not duty bound by the strict terms of the marriage contract to do it, that marriage is all over except for the paper work. Rather than rigorously defending their rights, lovers readily put themselves in the wrong and take the blame for the sake of preserving their love…A world without love is a world governed by rigid contracts and inexorable duties, a world in which – God forbid! – the lawyers run everything. The mark of really loving someone or something is unconditionality and excess, engagement and commitment, fire and passion. Its opposite is a mediocre fellow, neither hot nor cold, moderate to the point of mediocrity. Not worth saving. No salt.”

"I'll Give You All I Can..." by Brandon Christopher Warren

So we see that “I love you if…” isn’t really love at all. Which brings us to “I love you because…”

The Greeks had different words for different kinds of love. “Storge” is the affection of familiarity. I love you because you’re family, because we’re neighbors, because we’ve shared a cubicle wall for 3 years. etc. etc. “Philia” is the friendship of comrades. I love you because we have a common goal or interest. “Eros” is the romance of lovers. I love you because I can’t help but love you, I’m madly in love with you and I’ll die if you leave me.

Obviously, these are an improvement on, “I’ll love you if…” But they cannot be the goal because they cannot stand the test of time. Those who were familiar move away. Those who shared a common interest develop new ones. Those who were madly in love find that passion has passed.

I think dogs exist to teach us unconditional love. Original work "Love" by Noël Zia Lee

Now, at last, we come to true love. “I love you anyway.” This is the love Jesus exemplified on the cross, the love he called, “agape”. Sacrificial love is not the same as being a doormat. Jesus was no doormat. He knew where he was going, and you could help him or you could kill him, but he was going. Sacrificial love sees the need and finds a way. It is medicine for a world trapped in a cycle of violence and selfishness.

That’s a great question, so let’s ignore it for a second and do an experiment. The experiment works like this: using today’s text, take out the word love and replace it with my name. Ready?

Rob is patient. Rob is kind. Rob does not envy. He is not boastful or proud. Rob is not rude or self seeking. Rob is not easily angered. He keeps no record of wrongs. Rob does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Rob always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Rob. Never. Fails.

What’s so funny? I’ve been doing this experiment for nine years, and in nine years no one has ever believed me! Fine. Laugh away, but someday, someone is going to believe me. And when I meet that person, I’m going to introduce them to my wife so she can knock some sense into them. There is only one human who fits this bill, and it’s not me. We keep looking for an adjective to describe love, but it never works because love is not a what. It’s a who.

Jesus is patient. Jesus is kind. Jesus does not envy. He is not boastful or proud. Jesus is not rude or self seeking. Jesus is not easily angered. He keeps no record of wrongs. Jesus does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Jesus always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Jesus. Never. Fails.

"Oboe and Metronome" by Tony Newell via Flickr on a Creative Commons License

Suddenly, it’s not so funny. My love is a joke. God’s love is reality. That’s the source of our unity. Have you ever hear an orchestra tune? It always starts with one instrument, always the same one. Anyone know? Right, the oboe. Do you know why? Because it’s the only instrument that can’t be tuned. When they are all are in tune with the one, they are automatically in tune with each other. The church is never closer to unity than when it’s members are in tune with God’s love, as exemplified by Jesus.

But we take unity too far. Suppose I play the oboe. It all starts great. Everyone’s listening to me. Everyone’s in tune. Then we start playing. I read my notes. I know my part, and I can hear that other people are playing it wrong. Their notes don’t match my music. I’m running around the orchestra yelling, “You’re playing it wrong. You’re playing it wrong!” Do you get the joke? The only one in the entire orchestra who’s doing it wrong is me.

Hear this. God’s love is bigger than our heads, like a symphony is bigger than an oboe. We can’t understand it all. We barely understand our own part. Ask any musician and they’ll tell you. We don’t get it. We get glimpses. We get moments. And the only way we get them, is by practicing diligently, performing gracefully, and listening carefully.

So, everyone should just believe whatever they want and mind their own business, right? No. Vehemently, NO. True tolerance requires and opinion. Actually, it requires two. If there are two of us and only one opinion, what is there to tolerate? But if I know I’m right, and you stubbornly refuse to admit that you’re wrong, and I don’t proceed to pound the stupid out of you, that’s tolerance.

To misquote Jesus, “What good is it if you tolerate those who tolerate you? Even the pagans do that!” Tolerance is the bare minimum. We are called to unity. I don’t care what your stance is on any of the divisive issues of the day, my stance toward you doesn’t change. Actually, that’s not true. I do care. I care very much where you stand on the divisive issues of the day. I care so much it hurts, but my stand toward you still doesn’t change. I’m to love you with God’s love.

God’s love doesn’t hold a sign that says, “God hates fags.” God’s love doesn’t scream, “Baby killer” into the face of a sixteen year old girl. God’s love doesn’t blow people up and call it suicide. We feel it just as strongly. We are just as convinced. But God’s love finds another way.

There is a sense in which tolerance is destructive to fellowship, because fellowship isn’t us agreeing to disagree. True fellowship is us both tuning our hearts to the reality of God’s love, and living in the friction and tension that creates. Because it’s exactly that friction and tension that will slowly grind the rough edges off our hearts.

This side of heaven, we will never have one church. The best we can hope for is a unity without uniformity, a unity of believers whose only certainty is that they don’t have a lock on God’s love, a fierce people who refuse to settle for either the bland uniformity of the “one right answer” or the equally bland uniformity of the lowest common denominator.

You’ve heard about them. They are patient, and kind. They do not envy, or boast. They are not arrogant. They are not rude, or self-seeking. They are slow to anger and keep no record of wrongs. They do not delight in evil but rejoice with the truth. They always protect, always trust, always hope, always persevere. And they do not quit.
Is that us? Some days. I guess we need more practice.

Benediction: It’s God’s symphony. Everybody plays. Some of us just don’t play in tune. Today, we hear in part, like listening through a tinny radio. Someday, we’ll hear it all. For some, it will be the final proof that life is not the solo we demanded, as even our strident discord is gathered into a larger harmony that owes none of it’s beauty to us. We will be confronted with a song we have spent our life refusing to learn. We will not know how to play, and we will weep. But some of us will recognize the tune, because we’ll hear our tiny part in the mix. The little notes that we practiced and played so long will finally make sense as part of the larger whole. And we will join the song.

Date: April 19, 2009
Texts: Acts 4:32-35, I John 1:1-2:2
Video Here

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Pastor Rob stands in the pulpit of first church and calls Peter a secret communist. Right? Of course not. That’s just silly. Peter wasn’t a secret communist because it wasn’t a secret at all. He kept it right out there in the open. It says right there in the text. “No one considered their property their own” and “They laid it all at the disciples feet.” Peter was a red commie.

You teenagers out there don’t realize what a big deal this is. When you hear “Russia” all you think of is gangsters, Vladimir Putin, Chechnya, but that’s about it. Kids, that’s nothing. I remember driving out to get ice cream and seeing a sign in one of my neighbors’ windows that said, “Kill a Commie for Mommy.” I remember reading Popular Mechanics, and it didn’t have flying cars or supercomputers, it had instructions on how to build your own fallout shelter. We didn’t call it Russia; it was the Red Menace, and they weren’t interested in tiny Chechnya. They were going to take over the world… or blow it to radioactive cinders. Either way, they were bad, scary bad. So you see, it’s really important if Peter was a communist, because it undermines Christianity. If Peter was a communist, maybe I shouldn’t be a Christian.

Of course you and I both know that Peter wasn’t a communist. Communism hadn’t even been invented yet. Calling Peter a communist is about as anachronistic as calling Caesar a Republican. Sure, they both favor a strong military and conservative domestic policy, but we’re ignoring 2000 years of history here. You can’t just take an idea from today, drop it on some ancient person, and call it close enough. Meaning is about context. In this case the context is Lenin and Marx. If you showed them this text, they never would have claimed it as their own, because it’s grounded on faith and love instead of force and fear.

The text reveals no proletariat uprising. There are no rich men hanging from trees. The dialectic says these common workers should be rising in revolt, reclaiming the fruit of their labor. But the text shows just the opposite. The working classes are still being oppressed. Only now, they’re volunteering for it. They are willingly selling their goods and sharing the proceeds out of some misguided religious sense of brotherhood.

This is the opiate of the masses at work. They should be angry, and instead they’re listening to Peter and James talk about love, and forgiveness, and heaven. To a communist, Peter is at best a deluded hypocrite, and at worst he’s a con artist colluding with the powerful to keep the people complacent. “Must be nice to only work one day a week. Even then, all you have to do is talk, and people line up to throw money at your feet.” Marx would’ve hated Peter.

So he’s not a communist, and he’s obviously not a capitalist, so what is he? Here’s a radical suggestion. What if he’s a Christian? What if following Jesus actually meant following his example instead of just mentally agreeing that he is the Son of God? What if we were known for our faithfulness? What if our ministers were known for their wisdom? What if joining a church meant that you would never starve, and your children would never be orphans? How do we get there from here?

I’m not sure, but I’m certain it doesn’t involve inserting our politics into a 2000 year old text. We have so conflated politics and religion in this country that it is now practically impossible to have an honest conversation, because two honest human beings will eventually have a difference of opinion. Only now, it’s not a difference of opinion. It’s a moral deficiency. You say you’re not convinced about global warming. I say you’re raping the earth and killing your own grandchildren. You say you like this new president, and I say you’re socialist and you’re killing your own grandchildren. Then we go to church and we wind up having arguments over whether or not St. Peter was commie.

You have your opinions. I have mine. That lady over there has some to. But we were not brought here today because of our common fiscal policy. We’re here today because we need some hope. We need some peace. We need some joy. Because the world is messed up. And we’re messed up. And we don’t know what to do about it. We like what this Jesus guy had to say, and we want to know more. I want to know more. So I went to school, and learned Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew. We’ll, I tried to learn Hebrew. I learned history, and philosophy, and theology. And you know it all comes down to?

God is not angry at you…       Can we just stop for a second and hear that?

God is not angry at you.

So stop trying so hard. You cannot earn God’s love. God already loves you without limit, without condition. So stop trying so hard. Remember that children’s story I like to tell at baptisms? Here’s this little baby getting baptized with her family standing all around her, and the question I have to ask is, what in the world did that baby do to earn so much affection? Fill a diaper?

God’s love outshines those parents the way the sun outshines the moon, and for exactly the same reason. A parent’s love is a pale reflection of God’s love. Why? Because parents are human, and sooner or later we start setting conditions. Sooner or later, we start with the rules.

Remember that time I asked the kids not to think about pink elephants? That’s where rules get you. Rules tell you what not to do, make you want to do it more, and then makes you feel guilty about it afterward. Forget the rules, and focus on the relationship. What does God really want from us? For us to obey all the rules? Of course not. If all he wanted were obedience, we could have made a bunch of wind up toys. You wind them up. They go where you point them. Perfect obedience. That’s not what God is after.

He wants the same thing any parent wants. He wants his kids to grow up and not be psycho. He wants to spend time with us. He wants a relationship. He doesn’t care about rules. The rules only exist to protect the relationship. We have rules about theft because we need to trust our neighbors. We have rules about football because we want play the game. We have rules about cars because we don’t want to kill each other. That’s why Jesus said you take all the rules, add them up, and you wind up with love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.

There are no rules. There is only (1) relationship… and (2) stupid things that get in the way of relationship. Seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. You think the church just pulled them out of a hat? They are sins specifically and only because they break relationships.

Suppose you offended your best friend. And I don’t mean something small, I mean something stupid and selfish. You got a picture in your head? Ok, you know what you did. What do you do now? It depends on two things. Do you love your friend, and does your friend love you? If you minimize it and explain it away, if you’re too ashamed to even ask forgiveness, then you don’t really love your friend. True love can’t stay away. If you’re afraid to apologize, if they forgive you and you keep apologizing, then you don’t really believe they love you. Because real love is unconditional. Real love gets back to the business of living. It doesn’t keep score, and it doesn’t care about rules. It’s cares about relationship.

Your best friend doesn’t want your apology. Your best friend wants to hang out. If an apology clears the air after you did something stupid and selfish, then great. But the apology is not the point. The relationship is the point. Your best friend doesn’t want you to feel guilty. If guilt motivates you to stop being a jerk, then great. But feeling guilty is not the point. The relationship is the point.

We came here today looking for a little hope, a little joy, a little peace. Here’s my hope. In the cross we see a God who has every right to be angry, but who chooses to love instead. Here’s my joy, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Here’s my peace. That I don’t have to earn God’s love, it was already given. And I can’t scare him away. He’s already seen it. All I can do is the only thing he ever wanted me to do.

Love.

St. Peter: Closet Communist? by Rev. RJ Brink is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at revsmilez.com.

hi
i love the sermon, but more than that i love the lord. i am also nuts about him question is how do i convince my other fiends about him. i live in South Africa and we have diffrent cultures here. we have started a worship group in our church and maybe you could give us advise on how to talk to our peers to love him as much as i love him

your brother in Christ
God Bless

Francis of Assisi (or St. Francis, depending on your church background) was an amazing teacher, and preacher. But most of all, he was a reckless lover of God. He said, “Preach constantly. Use words when necessary.”

It is not your job to convince. Your job is to love God and love your neighbor. The Holy Spirit does the convincing. Paul says to be prepared to give a reason for your faith. Your love for God and your neighbor should shine in such stark contrast to the selfishness of the world around you that people will come and ask you questions. When they do, speak as honestly and truthfully as you know how, and leave the rest to God.

The biggest barrier to the spread of the good news is Christians trying to “help” God.  If it were possible to force people into the kingdom, God would have done it already.

Theme song: “Stand Up Comedy” by U2

Note: Sorry, no audio or video for this one.

God is nuts about you, crazy in love with you.  If God were a 13 year old girl, she would write your name all over her notebook, and write sappy poems about you in her journal.  She would blush every time you looked at her, and if you didn’t look at her, she would go home a soak her pillow with tears.  If God were a 26 year old man, he would shower you with gifts, bring you your favorite flowers, leave his home and his family and follow you to the ends of the earth.  He would propose to you from the pitcher’s mound at Yankee Stadium so that the who world could see how much he loved you, or maybe he would propose to you all alone, on the spot you first met so that you would know that he loves you and you alone.  If God were a person, his love would outshine Romeo and Juliet like the sun outshines a 60 watt lightbulb.

So put yourself in God’s shoes.  You love someone with your whole heart, and every day they find a way to break it.  Your true love cheats on you.  Your one and only is a junky, addicted to so much garbage that you’re certain their death will be painful, and it will be soon.  How do you feel?  Sad?  Angry?  Lonely?  Welcome to the Old Testament, where God tries every trick in the book to win his true love back.  He pleads.  He cajoles.  He argues.  He coddles.  He threatens.  He cries.  And for something like 6000 years, he doesn’t go away.  He picks a people, and lives with them until they learn what it is to worship a God who actually exists.  Not some heavenly gumball machine, insert prayer – receive rain.  A living God, who makes demands, who wants you to change, who won’t go away.  God lived with them, annd over the course of 6000 years they began to learn.

They learned that God cares about outcasts.  The people everyone else ignores or abuses, those are the people God had them defend.  They learned sometimes good things happened to bad people, and sometimes bad things happened to good people, and they couldn’t understand why.   They learned that religious perfection is a mirage.  No one keeps the rules perfectly.  And even if you could, God desires mercy more than sacrifice.  The sacrifice that is pleasing to God is a changed heart and a renewed mind. But the harder they tried to change their hearts and renew their minds, the more clear it became that something was wrong.

Our love is not the sun.  Our love is not even a light bulb.  It’s a candle, flickering fitfully, bending to every breath, guttering at the slightest wind.  Our love is fickle.  It’s as if we don’t know how to be faithful.  We give ourselves to whatever attracts our fancy: money, sex, power.  We give ourselves to habits that enslave and degrade us.  If God’s love were gold, we’d trade it for dirt.  We are broken. Humanity is fundamentally, inescapably flawed.

They learned one other thing too, perhaps the most important thing of all.  They learned how to repent.  Today, we say sorry and all is supposed to be forgiven, but we know it’s really not.  Because we know we’re not really sorry.   Mostly we’re sorry we got caught. But it was alot harder to cut someone out of your life back then because the villages were smaller and sooner or later you would need their help, so you had to repent.  The Hebrews had a special tool for this, called sackcloth and ashes.

Suppose you did something really horrible to your best friend and you wanted to make it right.  You would a find a big sack, cut some holes in it, take off your clothes and put the itchy, dirty sack on instead.  Then you go to your fireplace grab a big pile of ashes and throw it over your head.  Why ashes?  Because when Adam sinned for the first time, God said, “You’ll work every day of your life, and then you’ll die.  You were made from dust and to dust you will return.”  Ashes are a reminder of our common brokenness, of the common end that waits for us all.  Dumping ashes on your head is a public admission of guilt and a silent plea for forgiveness.  Now you’re ready to go sit in front of your friend’s house and wait, and wait, and wait.  However long it takes  Eventually, your friend is going to take pity on you sitting there all miserable and humiliated.  Eventually, your friend is going to come out of the house, bend down and help you up, maybe give you some food or some water to wash your face, and send you home.

Think about that for a second.  No one has to say a word the entire time, but how much is said in the silence!  You admit to yourself, to your friend, to the whole neighborhood that you did wrong.  You must be sincere or you wouldn’t endure the pain and the humiliation. You could get up at any time, decide this isn’t worth it, and go home.  And your friend must really have forgiven you, because vengeance loves nothing more than humiliation and suffering.  The Hebrews lived with God, and they learned how to repent.

John the Baptist came, preaching hellfire and brimstone, and people turned out in droves.  Because they thought the day had finally come.  God was finally coming to put things right.  The oppressed would finally see their vindication, and the evildoers would finally get what they deserved.  So what did they do?  They came out in droves… to repent.  They had finally learned that all their righteousness was rags, and their only hope was to recommit themselves, again, to God.

Perhaps they learned a little to well.  Religious types turned sackcloth and ashes into a show.  They would claim to have sinned against God, so they would find the dirtiest nastiest sack they could find, and they wouldn’t just throw ash on their head, they’d smear it all over their face, then they would go sit in the center of town and wail and weep so that the ash and dirt would streak down their faces.  And everyone would walk by and say, “My that person is really holy.  They must really love God.  Why can’t I love God that way?”

Jesus said forget all that.  When you pray, don’t pray like the hypocrites do, standing on a street corner, go pray in secret.  When you fast, don’t mar your face so that everyone feels sorry for you.  Wash your hair and put on your work clothes and go about your business.  When you give money, don’t ask them to name the new Children’s wing of the hospital after you.  Do your good deeds in secret, so that the only person you have to talk to about it is the one person who matters.  Notice that he doesn’t say “If you fast…”  “If you pray…”  “If you give to the poor…” He says “when”.  It’s a given.  After 6000 years they finally learned that if you want to love God, you have to love the people he loves, and that’s everybody, especially the outsiders, the oppressed, and the unworthy. Even yourself.

What has your faith cost you? The early church understood this far better than we do. Listen to the words of Paul “We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed;sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

They endured everything and had nothing, and behaved as angels.  We endure nothing, have everything and behave like spoiled children.  Or we endure much and claim the world owes us.  Or we have nothing and use it as an excuse to take.  If you believe that you live and you die and that’s it , and you happen to be selfish, then take what you can and enjoy the ride. If you’re noble, leave something for your kids.  If you’re really noble, leave something for everyone’s kids.  But if you believe that you live and you die, and you see God’s face, then repent.  Live like Paul did.

Ditch the talk – look at reality.  Physically do something different.  Give something up, or add something in, but do something different.  We can externalize blame, we can rationalize failure, but our actions speak louder than our words.  Pick absolutely anything that appears frequently in your life.  You could even pick it randomly, and give it up, just to prove to yourself that it doesn’t own you, or maybe to find out that it does.  Think of one small thing, that if you did it, would drastically improve your life.  One small, simple thing – and do it.  Prove to yourself that you can actually make things better, or maybe find out that you really do need help.

This is not a show.  If you choose to receive ashes, do not go visit your friends or go out to eat.  Do not wear them as a badge.  Go straight home, look at yourself in the mirror, and then wash it off.  Remember your baptism, and look yourself in the eye again.  Am I doing this because I love God or because I love applause?  There’s a simple way to know.  Do it in secret.  What matters is who you are when no one is looking. Because that is when you discover your true self, that is when your relationship with God grows or dies.  So give something up, or take something on, and share it only with God.  Because God is crazy in love with you, and would love nothing more than to spend the next 40 days by your side.

Note: You may have to turn the volume up in order to hear. Our sound system doesn’t seem to like me.  :)

Video Here

You and I both know Christians who are so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly good.  On the other hand, we all know Christians who are so earthly minded that if God picked them up and dropped them in heaven they wouldn’t believe they were there.  The problem is Jesus was a radical, and we’re not.  When Jesus first spoke words like “born again” and “kingdom of God”, they were shocking, even dangerous words.  Why do you think they killed him?  All he did was talk.  And yet today, when someone starts throwing around phrases like “born again” and “kingdom of God” we don’t even listen.  Those words, once so powerful, have become catchphrases for a subculture.

Jesus wasn’t interested in creating a subculture.  He was interested in changing lives.  He saved his harshest words for the Pharisees, and yet they had a lot going for them.  They studied the scriptures.  The prayed a LOT.  They always showed up for services.  They gave generously.  Their families were solid. Their language was clean.  You could tell just by looking at their clothes that they were religious.  You could shut your eyes, talk with them for two minutes and you’d know.  And that was the problem.  You see, no one is that good.  The only way you look that good is if you’re hiding something.  And by hiding something not only do you prevent any healing from happening your own life, but also in the life of your family.  And everyone around you who’s buying into the lie now feels guilty for not keeping up.  That’s the problem of religion as subculture, and Jesus railed against it.

Jesus wanted to radically change lives.  Your old self has to die so that your new self can live.  It’s like you’re being born a completely new person.  But that’s difficult, dangerous, terrifying. We’d rather pretend everything is ok.  Or if we have to change, we’d rather change by degrees.  A little nip here, a little tuck there.  So we make a promise to ourselves.  “I will never do that again.  I will never do that again.”

But it doesn’t work.  You know why?  Because if you’re arguing with yourself, you’ve already lost.  Your brain knows that your resolution is at least partly a lie.  If it weren’t you wouldn’t have to make the resolution.  No one has to psych themselves up to go get ice cream.  If you’re arguing with yourself, then your will is fighting against your appetite.  Unfortunately, will power is finite, but your brain’s ability to rationalize is not.  So the outcome is a forgone conclusion.  You will eventually give in and do the thing you hate.

You have to become a new person.  The old person has to die so that the new one can live.  And what does this new person look like?  Simplest terms?  “Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.  And the second is like it, Love your neighbor as yourself.”   Let’s break that down.

Love God with all your heart. Jesus looked at this world and he wept.  He saw the abuse of power, the twisting of religion, and he was enraged. Do you think God expects us to be happy happy, joy joy, 24/7?  God is not surprised by our feelings.  There is no need to hide.  How can God heal your heart if you won’t give it to him?  We come her on Sunday and put on our best clothes and our best faces.  And part of that is OK.  It’s respectful, it’s even helpful.  When I was a teenager, I really made my mom angry one Sunday because I had been obnoxious to her all week, and then we came to church and I was all sunshine and roses.  She thought I was putting on a show, but the truth is it was easier to be nice to her at church.  I felt like my best self at church.  With the clothes, and the songs, and everyone watching, it was easier to be good.  So some of that dress-up is ok, but honestly folks, who are we trying to fool?  If you’re carrying a load of anger on the inside and smiling on the outside how does it heal?  If you’re in pain, or afraid, or depressed and you smile all though church and go home to whatever habit you’ve adopted that helps you numb out, how does it ever get better?  You know where that road ends?  God wants to heal us, but that only works if we love God with our whole hearts, even the broken parts.

What about your soul?  Love God with your whole spirit?  Well, let’s put it this way.  Suppose you’re in a relationship and the only time you ever talk to your significant other is for 30 seconds at meal times?  What kind of relationship is that?  Or suppose you talk to each other, but all you ever do is complain about your life and ask for stuff? How long is that relationship going to last?  Now imagine if you only showed affection for your partner once a week.  One day a week you’re all lovey dovey and the rest of the week you haven’t got the time.  You see where I’m going with this?  Paul says to pray without ceasing. Devote yourself to prayers so that it becomes a part of you, like breathing.  You don’t even have to think about it because it’s the habit of your life to seek God.

Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.  Ever since the enlightenment, we’ve carried an argument in our heads that says there is an inescapable conflict between faith and reason.  Reason is what’s real, it’s the stuff we can prove with argument and evidence.  Faith is for all the rest of that silly religious stuff that we still cling to because it helps us feel better. That’s a misrepresentation of both faith and science.  If God made the world, then it has some sort of order or rationality at its root, which means it is understandable.  If God made the world from scratch, then it’s contingent, it didn’t have to be this way.  Which means reality is not self evident, you have to go out there and look at it.  You have to admit that you don’t know, and immerse yourself in the thing you don’t understand until its patterns become clear.  You have to live with it, live right in it, until your imagination finds a way to grasp it, your intelligence finds a way to name it, and your wisdom finds a way to apply it.  That’s real science, the art of finding things out, and faith conflicts with none of it.

But finding things out is only one of the magnificent things your mind can do.  It can also make stuff up.  We are miniature creators, made in the image of our creator, and the process of creation mirrors the process of discovery.  We begin in the imagination, but instead of discovering the connections that are already there, we make new ones up.  Then we use our intelligence to make that new thing real.  And once it’s real, we use our wisdom to make the best of it.  Loving God with all your mind means discovering and creating as an act of faith, as an act of worship.

Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.  Feeling close to God is wonderful.  Praying with God is wonderful.  Thinking Godly thoughts is wonderful, but it’s not enough.  You have to physically do something.

Up until the steam engine, the average person had two options.  You could do agriculture, or you could learn a trade.  If you work is physical like that, then this whole thing plays out pretty clearly.  You bring your whole heart to your work and it becomes and expression of your emotions.  You bring your whole spirit to your work and the work itself becomes a prayer.  You bring your whole mind to your work and the work becomes art.  You bring all your strength to the task before you and when your strength is gone, you rest.  That all make sense when your work is digging a ditch, or planting a garden, or making a violin.  But what if your job is implementing diversity, increasing sales, or finding a way to keep 125 people working in spite of an economic downturn.  What does loving God with all your strength look like then?  I don’t know for sure, but I have two ideas.

First, it helps me to remember that every project we have, no matter how abstract ultimately breaks down into physical next actions: pick up the phone, dial the number, send the email, draft the memo.  I can’t get my head around the whole project, but I can do this next one thing well.  The second trick that helps me is to remember that strength, time, and energy are all part of the same equation.  In a digital world, we can only rarely bring strength to bear on a given responsibility.  But time and energy?  Those we can control.  For many of us, loving God with all your strength means we’re spending our time and energy on things that honor God and draw us closer to him.

Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.  The obvious question then is how do you love yourself?  You take care of your needs.  Food and shelter.  Security.  Belonging.  Respect.  If Maslow is right, then our highest need is to experience meaning and purpose, to realize our inner potential.  To love your neighbor as yourself, meet their needs.  Imagine a world where we spent more money fighting poverty than we spent on cosmetics.  Imagine a world where no one had to wonder when the next bomb was going to explode.  Imagine a world where great teachers received more respect than mediocre basketball players.  Imagine all the human potential that will be forever wasted in the next minute being applied to a cure for cancer.

An amazing vision.  How do we make it real?  How do we meet people’s needs?  Well, one thing is certain.  We can’t force it on them.  God doesn’t force his love on us.  If God chose to, he could reveal himself in a way we could not ignore. But then we wouldn’t be us anymore, would we?  And whatever we felt at that point could never be called love.  Maybe awe, maybe fear, but never love.  So God chose another path.  He came to us, identified with us.  What is the primal scream of the Old Testament?  What do the prophets cry over and over again?  “How long, O Lord?  How long must we wait?”  And then we hear the words of Jesus as he cries from the cross, “My God, My God.  Why have you forsaken me?”  He became one of us.

So we follow his example.  We become like those we serve, we identify with them, until there is no “them” anymore.  There’s only “us”.  Paul says, “Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.”

So what, should we all just go convert to someone else’s religion?  No way.  Jesus did not come here to blend in.  He was one with us, and he hid from nothing.  But everywhere he went, his presence was living critique.  He didn’t fear the Romans.  He did admire the Pharisees.  He didn’t curry favor with the Sadducees.  He was light and life, and everywhere he went brokenness became whole, hidden things became visible, and death and sickness lost their power.  If you’re talking to someone and they can tell in the first minute that you’re a Christian, there’s something wrong.  On the other hand, if they can work closely with you for a year and not know you’re a Christian, something is wrong.

Perhaps our problem isn’t that we need to learn to speak the culture’s language.  Perhaps we speak the culture’s language all too well.  Perhaps our problem is we never learned to speak our own language, the language of faith, hope, and love.  True Christianity is infectious.  It is caught, not taught.  I have never met a person who was argued into heaven, and I’ve met very few non-Christians who give a slightest care what the Bible says.  You are the only Bible they will read, the only sermon they will hear.  But how can they read it in you, if you haven’t read it yourself?   How will they see something different in you if you’re just as stressed and scared as they are?  We need to be transformed.  Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.  Then love your neighbor as yourself.

In that situation, most people would pick one of two responses.
1. They would get scared and hand over the cash.
2. They would get angry and kick his butt.

Neither option takes a second to look at the kid. All they see is a knife. Love takes the time to see our enemies for who they are, human beings, children of God. Was the guy’s reaction “safe”? No way. But maybe safety is overrated. Maybe love matters more.

When faced with evil, we’ve got two big popular options. We can be active or passive, defiant or obedient. The warrior takes on evil. The monk endures evil. Both make logical sense. They’re predictable responses. If I invade your country, I can reasonably expect that some of you are going to take up arms to kick me out and some of you are just going to put up with it and wait for me to die.

Defiance feels great emotionally, but it might get you killed. Obedience doesn’t feel great emotionally, but you’ll probably save your neck and that feels pretty good too. But even if you fight and win, you’re going to have to fight again. Even if you obey and the king dies, there’s just going to be a new king. Violence and victimization just give birth to more violence and victimization.

We need a third way. You might call it defiant obedience: walking the extra mile, turning the other cheek. It takes people by surprise. It feels bad emotionally and might get you killed, but it’s the only thing that might change the system for everyone else. If you win, you win your enemy. If you lose, you reveal your enemy. Salt and light.

-Derek Flood of sharktacos.com (full essay here)

If you’ve got the time, give it a read. It’s great stuff.