Love Abides
SUnday, November 1, 2015
If I could
sing, I would start my sermon today with the foundational prayer of Judaism, the
shema. It is repeated twice in our text
from Mark and, like all Jewish scriptures, it is meant to be sung.
Shema Israel, Hashem Eluhanu, Hashem Ehad.
Hear o Isreal, the Lord is our God, The Lord is One.
It is how Jesus responds when asked, “Which commandment is the first among all?” It is in Deuteronomy (6:4-5) “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” This is the scripture Jewish households post in the mezuzah on their door posts, so they always remember it. It is repeated in Deuteronomy 11:13. It is important, but it is one of more than 600 commandments in the Jewish scriptures. It is daunting today to try to follow all of these commandments and, I’m sure it was daunting in Jesus’ day, too. If you want a good idea of what it would be like, try reading “The Year of Living Biblically” by A.J. Jacobs or “A Year of Biblical Womanhood” by Rachel Held Evans.
So when the scribes asked Jesus, “Which is the greatest commandment?” They could have been serious, asking for personal reasons. For example, Deuteronomy (21:18-21) says that a “stubborn and rebellious son” should be taken “to the elders” so that “all the men of the town shall stone him to death.” Perhaps one of the scribes had a stubborn and rebellious son and did not want to have him put to death. Or, perhaps, they are trying to trick him, to get him to say something blasphemous so that they can take away the power he is amassing. Or, perhaps, the scribe has been copying laws and was just curious about which one he should focus on right then in his life, perhaps he is honestly struggling with the immensity of Hebrew law, seeking advice from a wise teacher. Either way, Jesus uses the opportunity to re-write the laws, not by changing them, but by emphasizing their loving nature. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. Love with every thing you have. Jesus takes it one step further, declaring that when love is the primary law you follow, you are close to the kingdom of God.
There is more than one word for love in Greek. The one used in this text, agape, has connotations of a social or moral love. This is not a romantic or filial love, but a code of conduct for how you treat someone when you respect their humanity. It was the name given to the communal meals of early Christianity, when followers of the way ate together in a way that broke down social hierarchy, emphasizing their one-ness in Christ. The Hebrew word, which the Greek quotes, does not have the same social or moral connotation. It is relational, someone you love, like a lover. It is intimate and carnal as well as emotional. So there is a change of meaning here from the Hebrew to the Greek.
The Hebrew says to love the Lord with everything you have, including your bodily affection. The Greek, while maintaining the need to love with everything you have, emphasizes communal relationships between people. Given that one quotes the other, we should receive this tradition with a layered meaning, both to love God intimately, (incarnate) and to express the love we know intimately in our communal actions.
It is no big revelation that Christianity is about love. That, as followers of Jesus, it is our job to express love. But what does that mean? How do we express Christ’s love? What is this love?
As a minister I have been a part of a lot of weddings. Many times have I been called to speak a prophetic charge to a couple on I Corinthians. You know, love is patient, love is kind… and yet no one, even the deepest of soul mates is those things all of the time. And if we can not achieve perfect love with the ones we love the most, how do we do it communally?
The answer, I think, can be found, at least in part, in the end of the Corinthians passage. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
So I always include this in my words at weddings. As a couple stands at the altar gazing into each other’s eyes perhaps choked up at speaking vow perhaps dizzy with nerves at least so full of emotion it is difficult to notice anything other than the eyes gazing back at them. This moment seems like everything but, indeed, the moment is fleeting. The flowers fade. The music goes silent.
But the love that connects the couple remains and, indeed, remains beyond death. At the altar, so full of the moment, a couple knows only in part but when life comes to its consummation they will know the truth about love is that love abides beyond death. Anyone who has lost a significant love to death knows that the happiness the joy the confidence of having been loved of knowing the love of another person and loving someone deeply does not die.
My grandmother’s laugh will always be with me. The pride in my father’s eyes when he watched me, thinking I didn’t notice, will always be with me.
It is possible to remain in relationship with those we love after they have died. It is just a different relationship- one about love. It is not easy. We must move beyond grief, which likely seems like the hard part.
But the other kind of love- this agape thing in the gospel of Mark, it can be harder. When we commit to being loving to all people- to all the neighbors we have we are not guaranteed to be gazed upon with love. Loving our neighbors means treating them as humans. It means seeing through their eyes- this can be quite uncomfortable.
Loving our neighbors as ourselves is not always met with gratitude. I was struggling to find the right example for this when I came across a Facebook post. And, I suppose, it makes sense that Facebook, where we encounter our neighbors in our contemporary culture, is where this wisdom would come from. The post is from Dominique Morriseau, an actress and a playwright I had to look up to know who she is.
Here is her post- I tried to just insert quotes, but I can not express the dichotomy of treating someone with the love all humans deserve, a love that speaks to our communal humanity, in the face of those who do not seem to appreciate your love, with the same depth that she does.
“My first year out of college, I was the full-time Drama teacher at Henry Ford Academy in Highland Park, Michigan.
Highland Park, for those who don’t know, is one of the most economically stressed cities in our country. The poverty in HP is third world equivalent. My mama taught here for 40 years before her recent retirement.
I had this one student, we’ll call her Tonya. Tonya had a chip on her shoulder with me. She would rarely listen. She could roll her eyes with expert rotation. I would ask her to stand up or put something away or participate with very futile results. Tonya wasn’t playing with me. She had a mission to exhaust me on a daily basis. That is what I truly believed.
Tonya was an adolescent Black girl. She was a girl. I always saw her as a girl first because I, too, was an adolescent Black girl once. I recognized that defiance. I recognized that attitude that demanded you work double time when dealing with her. When I was less than my patient self, I might’ve wanted to wring Tonya’s neck a few times. Tonya wasn’t making teaching easy. But an impoverished school and a state that was telling our district it was a failure and closing schools left and right wasn’t making learning easy for Tonya. And perhaps like the state, Tonya blamed the teachers because she had no idea that the state government was denying resources to the city in which she lived. All Tonya knew was that she was on the expendable side of education. And Tonya felt like telling all of us to go fuck ourselves.
But I wouldn’t have it. Tonya exhausted me so I worked harder. As did her other teachers. I made her sit with me at lunch sometimes and write out her frustrations toward me. I let her roll her eyes as much as she could stand, while warning her that they could get stuck that way and then, what? I remember when Tonya finally wrote me a letter in all of her annoyances once day at lunch, and I was ready to tell her she better not cuss at me or say something inappropriate or she was going to spend the rest of the week with me. Instead, the letter read, “I’m sorry for my behavior, Ms. M. I love you”.
What I always remembered was that Tonya was a girl. Just a baby girl. What I always knew as a teacher that loved her instead of a teacher that was simply disgusted by her was that she had a story deep inside that I didn’t know. What I always knew was that she was vulnerable and sensitive and complex and righteously angry at many things I may never understand. But she was a girl. I recognized that because I once was one that looked not too different from her.
My hair wasn’t always obedient. My ponytails also didn’t always lay flat but sometimes stuck out of the side of my head. My classmates sometimes clowned me for not reflecting the image of beauty and femininity that was pushed down their throats by every aspect of media. Somewhere instinctively, I also felt the injustices of the world hurling at me because I didn’t see myself reflected in my full dimension as I saw of my white peers. Somewhere internally, I knew I was not socially protected. That if I fell down and showed the bruises, somehow I would be blamed for my own abuses. I was too clumsy. I was too rough. I wasn’t just a little girl.
When Tonya rolled her eyes, I felt inclined to get in her face. To yell. To tell her I was sick of her disrespectful behavior. But I never. Never ever. Never ever ever felt moved to hurt her. To break her spirit. To flip her out of a chair or drag her or criminalize her. All I ever really wanted was to break in and access that vulnerability that I knew she carried deep, but that was cloaked under mounds of protective layers because self-protection was the only true protection she would ever be promised.
Tonya is one. Throughout my teaching of mostly Black and Latina girls in Detroit and Brooklyn and the Bronx and Harlem and Queens and Chicago, I saw a million others. A million. I watched them suck their teeth. Roll their eyes. Fold their arms in defiance. And I also saw them smile and seek approval and open up like lotuses and beg to be valued. Because rarely are they. Rarely rarely are they ever valued.
I don’t know what many of your stances are on this incident in Spring Valley High School. Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe you saw this girl like Tonya and felt triggered by her defiance and then shut off your well of compassion that this is still a GIRL. But I want you to ask yourselves, no matter your cultural background, have you ever seen footage of a little White girl treated this way? Would you? Would you ever see media justify it, regardless of her defiance? Or would they see her as a girl first?
This is for the Tonyas. For the girls who are girls first, no matter what anyone else sees. For your vulnerability and your sass and your defiance that seems to socially strip you of your femininity. You are girls. You are future women. You are full and dimensional and not animals to be dragged off and caged.
This is for your freedom. May you be liberated in all of your fragility and allowed to be your authentic, fully-feminine, complex selves. And may a teacher who is having behavior problems with you see you in your fullness and call your mama or daddy or guardian before calling the cops.”
In the end both of these types of love are what Jesus calls us to, the intimate love that binds us together for eternity and the communal love in which we treat each person with the humanity they deserve, in which we can always, always see the child of God inside of each person. May it be so. Amen.
Shema Israel, Hashem Eluhanu, Hashem Ehad.
Hear o Isreal, the Lord is our God, The Lord is One.
It is how Jesus responds when asked, “Which commandment is the first among all?” It is in Deuteronomy (6:4-5) “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” This is the scripture Jewish households post in the mezuzah on their door posts, so they always remember it. It is repeated in Deuteronomy 11:13. It is important, but it is one of more than 600 commandments in the Jewish scriptures. It is daunting today to try to follow all of these commandments and, I’m sure it was daunting in Jesus’ day, too. If you want a good idea of what it would be like, try reading “The Year of Living Biblically” by A.J. Jacobs or “A Year of Biblical Womanhood” by Rachel Held Evans.
So when the scribes asked Jesus, “Which is the greatest commandment?” They could have been serious, asking for personal reasons. For example, Deuteronomy (21:18-21) says that a “stubborn and rebellious son” should be taken “to the elders” so that “all the men of the town shall stone him to death.” Perhaps one of the scribes had a stubborn and rebellious son and did not want to have him put to death. Or, perhaps, they are trying to trick him, to get him to say something blasphemous so that they can take away the power he is amassing. Or, perhaps, the scribe has been copying laws and was just curious about which one he should focus on right then in his life, perhaps he is honestly struggling with the immensity of Hebrew law, seeking advice from a wise teacher. Either way, Jesus uses the opportunity to re-write the laws, not by changing them, but by emphasizing their loving nature. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. Love with every thing you have. Jesus takes it one step further, declaring that when love is the primary law you follow, you are close to the kingdom of God.
There is more than one word for love in Greek. The one used in this text, agape, has connotations of a social or moral love. This is not a romantic or filial love, but a code of conduct for how you treat someone when you respect their humanity. It was the name given to the communal meals of early Christianity, when followers of the way ate together in a way that broke down social hierarchy, emphasizing their one-ness in Christ. The Hebrew word, which the Greek quotes, does not have the same social or moral connotation. It is relational, someone you love, like a lover. It is intimate and carnal as well as emotional. So there is a change of meaning here from the Hebrew to the Greek.
The Hebrew says to love the Lord with everything you have, including your bodily affection. The Greek, while maintaining the need to love with everything you have, emphasizes communal relationships between people. Given that one quotes the other, we should receive this tradition with a layered meaning, both to love God intimately, (incarnate) and to express the love we know intimately in our communal actions.
It is no big revelation that Christianity is about love. That, as followers of Jesus, it is our job to express love. But what does that mean? How do we express Christ’s love? What is this love?
As a minister I have been a part of a lot of weddings. Many times have I been called to speak a prophetic charge to a couple on I Corinthians. You know, love is patient, love is kind… and yet no one, even the deepest of soul mates is those things all of the time. And if we can not achieve perfect love with the ones we love the most, how do we do it communally?
The answer, I think, can be found, at least in part, in the end of the Corinthians passage. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
So I always include this in my words at weddings. As a couple stands at the altar gazing into each other’s eyes perhaps choked up at speaking vow perhaps dizzy with nerves at least so full of emotion it is difficult to notice anything other than the eyes gazing back at them. This moment seems like everything but, indeed, the moment is fleeting. The flowers fade. The music goes silent.
But the love that connects the couple remains and, indeed, remains beyond death. At the altar, so full of the moment, a couple knows only in part but when life comes to its consummation they will know the truth about love is that love abides beyond death. Anyone who has lost a significant love to death knows that the happiness the joy the confidence of having been loved of knowing the love of another person and loving someone deeply does not die.
My grandmother’s laugh will always be with me. The pride in my father’s eyes when he watched me, thinking I didn’t notice, will always be with me.
It is possible to remain in relationship with those we love after they have died. It is just a different relationship- one about love. It is not easy. We must move beyond grief, which likely seems like the hard part.
But the other kind of love- this agape thing in the gospel of Mark, it can be harder. When we commit to being loving to all people- to all the neighbors we have we are not guaranteed to be gazed upon with love. Loving our neighbors means treating them as humans. It means seeing through their eyes- this can be quite uncomfortable.
Loving our neighbors as ourselves is not always met with gratitude. I was struggling to find the right example for this when I came across a Facebook post. And, I suppose, it makes sense that Facebook, where we encounter our neighbors in our contemporary culture, is where this wisdom would come from. The post is from Dominique Morriseau, an actress and a playwright I had to look up to know who she is.
Here is her post- I tried to just insert quotes, but I can not express the dichotomy of treating someone with the love all humans deserve, a love that speaks to our communal humanity, in the face of those who do not seem to appreciate your love, with the same depth that she does.
“My first year out of college, I was the full-time Drama teacher at Henry Ford Academy in Highland Park, Michigan.
Highland Park, for those who don’t know, is one of the most economically stressed cities in our country. The poverty in HP is third world equivalent. My mama taught here for 40 years before her recent retirement.
I had this one student, we’ll call her Tonya. Tonya had a chip on her shoulder with me. She would rarely listen. She could roll her eyes with expert rotation. I would ask her to stand up or put something away or participate with very futile results. Tonya wasn’t playing with me. She had a mission to exhaust me on a daily basis. That is what I truly believed.
Tonya was an adolescent Black girl. She was a girl. I always saw her as a girl first because I, too, was an adolescent Black girl once. I recognized that defiance. I recognized that attitude that demanded you work double time when dealing with her. When I was less than my patient self, I might’ve wanted to wring Tonya’s neck a few times. Tonya wasn’t making teaching easy. But an impoverished school and a state that was telling our district it was a failure and closing schools left and right wasn’t making learning easy for Tonya. And perhaps like the state, Tonya blamed the teachers because she had no idea that the state government was denying resources to the city in which she lived. All Tonya knew was that she was on the expendable side of education. And Tonya felt like telling all of us to go fuck ourselves.
But I wouldn’t have it. Tonya exhausted me so I worked harder. As did her other teachers. I made her sit with me at lunch sometimes and write out her frustrations toward me. I let her roll her eyes as much as she could stand, while warning her that they could get stuck that way and then, what? I remember when Tonya finally wrote me a letter in all of her annoyances once day at lunch, and I was ready to tell her she better not cuss at me or say something inappropriate or she was going to spend the rest of the week with me. Instead, the letter read, “I’m sorry for my behavior, Ms. M. I love you”.
What I always remembered was that Tonya was a girl. Just a baby girl. What I always knew as a teacher that loved her instead of a teacher that was simply disgusted by her was that she had a story deep inside that I didn’t know. What I always knew was that she was vulnerable and sensitive and complex and righteously angry at many things I may never understand. But she was a girl. I recognized that because I once was one that looked not too different from her.
My hair wasn’t always obedient. My ponytails also didn’t always lay flat but sometimes stuck out of the side of my head. My classmates sometimes clowned me for not reflecting the image of beauty and femininity that was pushed down their throats by every aspect of media. Somewhere instinctively, I also felt the injustices of the world hurling at me because I didn’t see myself reflected in my full dimension as I saw of my white peers. Somewhere internally, I knew I was not socially protected. That if I fell down and showed the bruises, somehow I would be blamed for my own abuses. I was too clumsy. I was too rough. I wasn’t just a little girl.
When Tonya rolled her eyes, I felt inclined to get in her face. To yell. To tell her I was sick of her disrespectful behavior. But I never. Never ever. Never ever ever felt moved to hurt her. To break her spirit. To flip her out of a chair or drag her or criminalize her. All I ever really wanted was to break in and access that vulnerability that I knew she carried deep, but that was cloaked under mounds of protective layers because self-protection was the only true protection she would ever be promised.
Tonya is one. Throughout my teaching of mostly Black and Latina girls in Detroit and Brooklyn and the Bronx and Harlem and Queens and Chicago, I saw a million others. A million. I watched them suck their teeth. Roll their eyes. Fold their arms in defiance. And I also saw them smile and seek approval and open up like lotuses and beg to be valued. Because rarely are they. Rarely rarely are they ever valued.
I don’t know what many of your stances are on this incident in Spring Valley High School. Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe you saw this girl like Tonya and felt triggered by her defiance and then shut off your well of compassion that this is still a GIRL. But I want you to ask yourselves, no matter your cultural background, have you ever seen footage of a little White girl treated this way? Would you? Would you ever see media justify it, regardless of her defiance? Or would they see her as a girl first?
This is for the Tonyas. For the girls who are girls first, no matter what anyone else sees. For your vulnerability and your sass and your defiance that seems to socially strip you of your femininity. You are girls. You are future women. You are full and dimensional and not animals to be dragged off and caged.
This is for your freedom. May you be liberated in all of your fragility and allowed to be your authentic, fully-feminine, complex selves. And may a teacher who is having behavior problems with you see you in your fullness and call your mama or daddy or guardian before calling the cops.”
In the end both of these types of love are what Jesus calls us to, the intimate love that binds us together for eternity and the communal love in which we treat each person with the humanity they deserve, in which we can always, always see the child of God inside of each person. May it be so. Amen.