Where Has Love Led You?

Matthew 18:15-20    Romans 13:8-14

September 7, 2008    Season of Pentecost

In the words of a well-known song, what have you done for love?  When you look back over your life, what are the things that shine out at you as having been motivated by love?  It is interesting to look under the surface now and then, in order to figure out what our motivations might be.  It is interesting to consider just what it is that pushes us to do the things we do during the normal course of a day or night.  And, I wonder just how much of what we do is actually motivated by positive forces such as love, and how much is motivated by more negative emotions.  Most choices we have are a choice between a positive and a negative motivator.  Even an outcome that seems neutral or even positive can sometimes have its source in negative impulses, so this goes deeper than the surface level of things, deeper than simple appearances.  One of Jesus' parables points out the difference between what happens on the surface verses what happens at a deeper level of a person when he tells the tale of the two brothers.  One brother promised to do something his father asked but never did it, while the other brother said he would not do it or could not do it, and yet in the end he did what was asked.  Staying in his father's favor was among the many motivators for the first brother and so he promised whatever he felt his dad wanted from him and maybe hoped that he would never notice when he didn't follow through.  The other brother may not have seemed respectful of his father when he said "No" to his request, but in the long term he was actually the more faithful son.  He responded honestly to what was asked, recognizing perhaps the high level of commitment it required of him to follow through.  Maybe he didn't think he could do it at that point in his life, in his schedule, whatever, and so he felt he owed it to his dad to be honest enough to tell him "No." The fact that he eventually did follow through and do what was asked, points to the fact that his heart may have been working on him during that time.  And his heart urged him to do as his father had asked.

Love as a motivating factor is pretty interesting, and also highly complicated.  Sometimes it is as simple as saying, "I love you, so I want to do this for you."  But most of the time, there is more to it than this.  Think over the decisions you have made in the last little while - as you reflect on them, can you discern which ones were driven by love and which ones were driven by other factors?  Can you remember how it feels when you do something out of love, versus when you do something out of fear or one of its allies?  I imagine that if we all paid more attention to doing whatever it is that we do out of love, then we would notice far fewer problems in our lives.  There would probably be less stomach upset because we wouldn't be as tense as we tend to be when we do things we don't really want to do for bad reasons.  Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Non-Violent Communication, speaks of the importance of being able to do whatever it is we do "as joyfully as a child feeding a hungry duck." There is freedom in getting in touch with what we are want to do out of love, and equally in being able to recognize the things we cannot.  If we act out of love, we would probably feel more comfortable with our relationships with others overall.  Since honest responses would be the order of the day, there would be a  greater deal of clarity between us and other folks, no sense that someone is hiding their true feelings from us.

This is all very helpful from a practical standpoint, but the Bible takes it further than this, deeper than this.  The Bible, and Paul in particular here, help us see that when love is our focus, everything else falls into place.  When love is our guide, we don't have to consult other guidebooks.  We are able to discern what is the best course of action simply by turning within and listening to our own hearts.  Paul is quoting Jesus when he goes so far as to say that there would not even be a need for laws, if only we would pay attention to the single and central law of love.  This is such powerful information for us.  We are a people who have gotten pretty far by using our minds.  The great hope of our society over the past 200 years, has been science and her discoveries.  When my grandmother died at the age of 102, it was mind-blowing to consider everything that had changed during the course of her lifetime - from a childhood where horses were the most popular means of transportation next to walking, trains, cars and airplanes were invented and improved so much that any other mode of transportation seemed ridiculous.  Central plumbing, refrigeration and electricity each made impossible-to-believe-in strides over the course of those 100 plus years.  Looking at all of this, it is easy to see why folks started trusting the work of their minds and the work of scientists far more than they did the seemingly simple wisdom of the heart or the teachings of love.  All of that science was just so much more intriguing and promising in terms of what they had to offer to our culture and society.  And yet, if you step back enough to see just what it is we have given up in the shadow of all of these gains, you will see that we have almost lost what makes us human.  Our hearts are what make us truly human, moreso than our minds.  Our hearts are what enable us to follow in Jesus' footsteps by caring and giving, teaching and loving.  You cannot force yourself to do the kind of things that Love requires, or at least you can't do it for very long.  A woman I knew way back in my first church, at the age of 68, felt the need to do something more with her life.  Her heart was calling her in a way that she had never experienced before.  And so, responding to that call, she travelled to India to work with Mother Theresa and found herself kneeling in prayer with arthritic knees on cement floors at 4:30 in the morning before going out into the streets to feed and wash the impoverished people who lived there.  When she returned home after several months in Calcutta, she told me that she could never have done what she did just because she knew in her mind that it was a good thing to do.  It was her heart that enabled her to endure the difficulties and stretch far beyond her previous comfort levels to be the hands of Christ to the people for whom she cared.  

Love has the ability to change the world more readily than any other power.  If you know something is right, in your heart, then you simply do it, trusting that the barriers will be moved when they need to move out of your way.  I know most of us are probably not ready to go out and do everything our hearts call us to do, because we are all too capable of seeing the barriers for ourselves.  Truth be told, we don't really trust our hearts to guide us, especially when our minds scream out far different instructions.  But maybe we can start by listening to the voice of Love a little more closely.  Maybe we can begin by giving our hearts equal time in the mad rush of all we hope to accomplish on any given day.  Knowing that morning prayer was important to him, Martin Luther King, Jr. was once asked what he did when he faced a particularly busy day.  "Do you just pray on the run?"  He said something to the effect that on those days he got up even earlier so he could have more time for prayer, knowing that he needed God's sustaining love to carry him through the difficulties and challenges.

God of Love, you speak to us through our hearts.  Tune our ears to hear your voice.  Open our minds to hear your voice.  Strengthen our hearts to hear your voice.  May we love as you love.  Amen.