Just to love is holy
Lev. 19: 1-2, 15-18; Matthew 22: 34-40
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
October 29, 2023
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| Black and white Polaroid photo of a person wearing a black Calvin Klein (cK) t-shirt, dark shorts and a light colored protective mask, walking in a protest march, carrying a sign that reads "Love your neighbor as yourself". |
Earlier this week a young woman made a TikTok video about her first full-time job out of college and how difficult it is for her. She commutes more than an hour each way by train. In tears she talks about how she doesn’t have any energy when she comes home to cook dinner or work out. She says it’s the 9 to 5 schedule plus the time it takes to get to work and come home, all of it is draining and tiring. “How do you even find time to go out on date or go out with friends?”, she cries. She knows she sounds dramatic; she just can’t believe how upset she is.
The video was shared on Twitter with, ironically, an account by the name of “End the Misery” and the tweet went like this: “Omg, poor baby has her first job. Like…she has to commute?? Like…she has to cook dinner?? Like…no time or energy to work out?? Like…she’s working in person not remote?? Like…She. Has. To. Work. 9. To. 5??? What??”
How many of us were having the same thoughts? Just because we’ve gotten used to the grind of daily life doesn’t mean a young person should just have to suck it up and get used to it like we did. Our whole society begins to sound like the folks who don’t want to help with other people’s student loans. As one person commented, “If you suffered in life and want other people to suffer as you did because ‘you turned out fine’, you in fact did not turn out fine.” “Why should I do for others what was not done for me” is a plague upon humanity and it foils us every time.
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| Screenshot of a tweet by Daniel Shipwreck (@daniel_swensen) that reads "If you suffered in life and want other people to suffer as you did because 'you turned out fine', you did not in fact turn out fine." |
It reminds me of another song by George Harrison.
Isn't it a pity?
Isn't it a shame
How we break each other's hearts
And cause each other pain?
How we take each other's love
Without thinking anymore
Forgetting to give back
Isn't it a pity?
Some things take so long
But how do I explain
When not too many people
Can see we're all the same?
And because of all their tears
Their eyes can't hope to see
The beauty that surrounds them
Isn't it a pity?
Fr. Richard Rohr wrote, “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it, usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and invariably, the most vulnerable, our children. Scapegoating, exporting our unresolved hurt, is the most common storyline of human history.”
Not only our pain but our anger, our anxiety, our fear, our grief, our sadness, and most importantly, our unacknowledged trauma. When these unresolved emotions and unhealed wounds live inside us unacknowledged, untended we are not whole people. I think this is one reason why God gives God’s people a holiness code, holiness having the same root as the word wholeness. God’s people have lived through the trauma of being enslaved, the trauma of exile, the trauma of the return trip home. How can they be whole, how can they be one as God is one, how can they be holy, how can they be set apart when they have been torn apart from each other, from the land? How can they love their neighbor in a way that is life-giving?
William Butler Yeats wrote, “But Love has pitched [their] mansion/in the place of excrement. For nothing can be sole or whole/that has not been rent.” Or as Daniel Saint wrote in his book The Monster Within, “If you want to be a warrior, prepare to be broken. If you want to be an explorer, prepare to get lost. If you wish to be a lover, prepare to be both.” It is not good for us or for anyone else for us to love out of our pain and grief, some of it generational, inherited from those who raised us, including our culture, our country. We witness this daily in those who seek to wield power and control others, in bullying and acts of vengeance. Yet the very act of loving guarantees that we will encounter pain and grief, that the love that can make us whole will also most likely tear us apart.
And so God commands that we practice holiness, that we practice wholeness as we strive to love in our messy imperfection. To be holy is to be set apart from others, that is, to live according to God’s way of love and justice. To be set apart from the trauma we inherited, the dysfunction we were raised in. To be set apart from that which causes pain and injustice, from racism and sexism, from ableism and patriarchy, from homophobia and transphobia, from antisemitism and Islamophobia, from violence and bullying and control, from grudge-bearing and withholding that which makes us feel alive.
To be holy as God is holy is to love unconditionally, unmerited, undeserved, unlimited, especially those that the world does not love and devalues. To love in such a way as puts us at risk for the same ridicule and derision, the same discrimination. Pastor Stan Mitchell said, “If you call yourself an ally to a group of people and you aren’t getting hit by the stones thrown at them, then you aren’t standing close enough.” When we shrink from Love, when our love shrinks, so does our hope and the hope of those around us. When our hope shrinks, so does our ability to love expansively.
And so Jesus, knowing how human beings look for loopholes, tells us to love God—what is good, holy, and true—with our whole heart, mind, and strength: wholeheartedly. And to love our neighbor as ourselves. That should tell us something right there. Everything else about life hangs on those two commandments. Love is a spiritual practice, probably the hardest one there is, so every day we must engage our practice of Love.
Here again are some of my favorite words on this planet by the poet Wendell Berry and they bear repeating, like a spiritual practice:
“Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
anymore. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
...So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
...Ask the questions that have no answers.
Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
Practice resurrection.”
Not only our pain but our anger, our anxiety, our fear, our grief, our sadness, and most importantly, our unacknowledged trauma. When these unresolved emotions and unhealed wounds live inside us unacknowledged, untended we are not whole people. I think this is one reason why God gives God’s people a holiness code, holiness having the same root as the word wholeness. God’s people have lived through the trauma of being enslaved, the trauma of exile, the trauma of the return trip home. How can they be whole, how can they be one as God is one, how can they be holy, how can they be set apart when they have been torn apart from each other, from the land? How can they love their neighbor in a way that is life-giving?
William Butler Yeats wrote, “But Love has pitched [their] mansion/in the place of excrement. For nothing can be sole or whole/that has not been rent.” Or as Daniel Saint wrote in his book The Monster Within, “If you want to be a warrior, prepare to be broken. If you want to be an explorer, prepare to get lost. If you wish to be a lover, prepare to be both.” It is not good for us or for anyone else for us to love out of our pain and grief, some of it generational, inherited from those who raised us, including our culture, our country. We witness this daily in those who seek to wield power and control others, in bullying and acts of vengeance. Yet the very act of loving guarantees that we will encounter pain and grief, that the love that can make us whole will also most likely tear us apart.
And so God commands that we practice holiness, that we practice wholeness as we strive to love in our messy imperfection. To be holy is to be set apart from others, that is, to live according to God’s way of love and justice. To be set apart from the trauma we inherited, the dysfunction we were raised in. To be set apart from that which causes pain and injustice, from racism and sexism, from ableism and patriarchy, from homophobia and transphobia, from antisemitism and Islamophobia, from violence and bullying and control, from grudge-bearing and withholding that which makes us feel alive.
To be holy as God is holy is to love unconditionally, unmerited, undeserved, unlimited, especially those that the world does not love and devalues. To love in such a way as puts us at risk for the same ridicule and derision, the same discrimination. Pastor Stan Mitchell said, “If you call yourself an ally to a group of people and you aren’t getting hit by the stones thrown at them, then you aren’t standing close enough.” When we shrink from Love, when our love shrinks, so does our hope and the hope of those around us. When our hope shrinks, so does our ability to love expansively.
And so Jesus, knowing how human beings look for loopholes, tells us to love God—what is good, holy, and true—with our whole heart, mind, and strength: wholeheartedly. And to love our neighbor as ourselves. That should tell us something right there. Everything else about life hangs on those two commandments. Love is a spiritual practice, probably the hardest one there is, so every day we must engage our practice of Love.
Here again are some of my favorite words on this planet by the poet Wendell Berry and they bear repeating, like a spiritual practice:
“Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
anymore. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
...So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
...Ask the questions that have no answers.
Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
Practice resurrection.”
Benediction
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
Practice resurrection.
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
Practice resurrection.
 |
| Quote by Abraham Joshua Heschel: "Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy." Quote is superimposed over a darkened muted photo of looking upward at tall trees in the fall covered with yellow leaves under a blue sky. |
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