Love as a Doctrine

LOVE AS A DOCTRINE

Rev. Kathleen Ellis

16 October 2005

A few months ago, I was asked to give a sermon at another church and I entitled it “Friendship, Why Bother?” It seemed at the time appropriate for their situation and what they had been through and what they asked me to talk about. Since then I’ve noticed their website sermon archives lists the title simply as “Friendship”!

I started thinking about other words that we use to describe the elevation of human spirit and of community, and also these same words that can hurt so much when used without respect.

Friendship was certainly high on that list and today I will speak of another word that can be used to elevate or in an abusive way, debase the human spirit. You guessed it: the word is “love”

Don’t you just love talking about love? I wonder if anyone stayed away today because that was to be the topic of this sermon! Some are away for the sake of love—at the couple’s retreat this weekend.

People have a wide range of stories about love, not all of them pretty. There is love, coupled with respect and affection, that gives us a feeling of belonging and worth, there is the word “love” that comes form the mouths of insincere people, who respect not who you are, but what they can get from you. And then there is the “3^rd party love” that is expressed in terms that we have seen on church marquees:

“We care because HE cares”. Does that mean if HE didn’t care, you wouldn’t either? And that word HE does not always mean God or Jesus, it can be a spiritual leader, a charismatic political demagogue, or even a Jim Jones, who loved his flock so much that he killed them all.

Lyndon Johnson had a saying attributed to him: “When a man tells you that he loves you, button your back pocket.”

Love can be a beautiful part of our lives. This morning I want to bring up different ways we express love, how we see it and different ways we can receive it and hopefully, some wisdom to know that love is not enough.

Matthew McNaught, minister at First UU in the 80’s, delivered a sermon called “Is Love Enough?” He suggested that the word “love” in the Bible might be replaced with the word “respect.” “Respect Your Neighbor as Yourself”, “Respect One Another”, “For God so respected the world, he gave his only begotten son”… think about THAT.

Love is expressed in multiple ways. First comes to mind a person I know (not in this church or town) who “loves everybody”. He freely distributes hugs, signs every letter and email “with love”, would be offended if it were suggested that he did NOT love everyone! Yet this person has a core that cannot accept or express love at all, cannot maintain a one-to-one relationship with another person, but hops around “loving” a new person and cause every day. Even in a dating relationship he is looking for a better prospect. He exudes optimism but I wonder where his core of respect and affection lie.

Another man I know is a quiet, thoughtful person who has little to say, but who acts out his love on a daily basis. He has had the same friends for years, at least since high school. He talks and listens to his children, he stays in touch with people; he asks questions about how people important to him are doing. He gives anonymously to causes, and has even given his clothing to a stranger. No, this isn’t Jesus, it’s someone who is alive today, living in Texas, someone you would pass on the street without noticing.

Then we have third party love, a person who loves because he/she is commanded to. Do people who receive that kind of love really feel the love? When working in a shelter a few weeks ago, I saw a printed sheet put into packets. It said to the effect: “I love you because you are special” and it was sent to hundreds of people. It did no harm, might have made some people feel good and it was certainly better than an insult.

In dating relationships, the “L” word is often a carefully thought out thing to say. Who says it first, do you reply because the other person said it, or because you feel it too? Does the other person really mean it or is this manipulation? Maybe you felt it first and were afraid to say anything. But the relationship changes when “love” is mentioned or written. Why is that? It’s an “open sesame word” to so many people.

To some people, the word “love” opens them up to a great need that they have. They will take a casual “Luv ya” from a thoughtless airhead and consider that a long-term commitment is under way. Others cannot accept love, no matter how heartfelt, because they have been damaged by what people have done with this word.

Many have been disappointed in love. Some of them get a second chance, like Phil Barnhart and Sandy Allen, new Live Oakers, did at their wedding last night. Each of them has a daughter from a previous marriage, and each girl walked her parent down the aisle. Margaret, 9 years old, thinks her dad must really be in love, because of all the hand holding lately. Mason, 18-months old, wore a dress that matched her mom’s and was the epitome of adorable as they walked down the grassy aisle toward me.

Phil and Sandy made their promises: “I wish to be your partner, your friend, and your traveling companion so that we may go through life together. Loving what I know of you, trusting what I do not yet know, I would share whatever life may bring to us: Good times or hardship, success or failure, sickness or health, laughter or tears. I ask only that you be true to yourself, and honest and patient with me.”

As they journey through life together, sometimes they will walk hand in hand; sometimes they’ll barely see each other. Though they will share moments of glory and valleys of darkness, most of their days will be ordinary ones. What will make it worthwhile are the times when one sees something so wonderful they will call out, “Look! Look!” And together they will recognize more beauty than either could possibly have seen alone.

I encouraged them to cultivate patience, laughter and honest humility to sanctify their marriage. It takes a lot more than love alone.

Mixed feeling about love also characterize how many of us feel about the concept of God. To some of us, the word “God” brings a warm feeling of being cared for. For many others, it revives old family and community hurts done in the name of God. For others it means nothing, a superstitious abstraction.

Against this backdrop of love in personal relationships, let’s add the element of community. All of these different expectations of love—from families of origin to families of choice; from friendships to partnerships—all of it together makes for an interesting expectation that this will be a loving community.

Cecil Williams, a United Methodist minister who moved to San Francisco and into Glide Memorial Church, was a speaker at my seminary a few years back. He told us that he took the cross down from the sanctuary, though it was a Christian church. He told the congregation: “I am never going to tell you that God loves you and leave it at that. What I can say is that I will try to love you and I want you to try and love other people. That’s what I think Jesus wants us to do”

Putting love into action, Cecil changed both the policies and practices of the conservative church, helping to create the Council on Religion and Homosexuality in 1964. When he took the cross down in 1967, Cecil exhorted the congregation to celebrate life and living instead of the death of Jesus.

The church offered a safe space to groups ranging from the Hookers Convention to the American Indian Movement and the Black Panthers. In the midst of their political work, Glide never forgot the basic needs of the community. The meals program was launched in the 1960s, serving one free dinner a week to all comers.

Poverty, drug abuse, violence, and despair persist in San Francisco as they do across the country. But in four decades of work to address these problems, Glide serves as an oasis in a desert of hopelessness, marching to the edge where victories for social justice are won. Glide is a place where old, destructive ways of being are thrown out and new ones created. Where love is celebrated and a simple call of welcome goes out to all races, classes, genders, ages, and sexual orientations.

In our hymnal there is an affirmation that some congregations read in unison each week.

Love is the doctrine of this church,

The quest of truth is its sacrament,

And service is its prayer.

To dwell together in peace,

To seek knowledge in freedom,

To serve human need,

To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine—

Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.

--L. Griswold Williams

First UU Church in San Antonio has some of these words engraved in stone at the entrance to the sanctuary: Love is our sacrament. Service is our prayer.

But our own mission and vision statements say nothing about love. Key words include diverse, consensus-based, spiritual, non-judgmental, nurturing, and demonstrating shared values, perspectives, and concerns. We aspire to be a place where mind and spirit are both challenged and cherished.

Love can be a value or an ideal, but not a doctrine. Love rests either on personal feelings and emotions or on an abstraction as in love for all humanity. I love Live Oak as a community, and I love many of your endearing qualities, including energy and enthusiasm, commitment and loyalty, the way you raise your children and the way we help you raise them.

Love has been a guiding principle in my life. God is Love, they taught me; later, God is a verb. So is Love a verb? It’s easier to be passively loving. Love as a verb demands something of us.

Jesus said to love one another, to love our neighbors as ourselves. Over time I have managed to expand my notion of neighbor and love them at least in the abstract. But respect and courtesy seem like more practical goals for daily interactions. In a letter Paul sent to the Colossians, the new Christians in the town of Colossae, he wrote,

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, let love guide your life . . . and be thankful.

And Matthew McNaught with his substitutions would have suggested: “let respect guide your life…and be thankful”

You may not be concerned about whether the Lord has forgiven you. The greater need is for individuals to work through their disagreements and come to the peace of forgiveness. Go to the mountaintop of the world and look down. You will find cruelty, fear and hatred, bitter prejudice and warfare.

You will see devastation, most recently on the Gulf Coast—nearly 1500 dead after two hurricanes; Guatemala—nearly 1500 dead in mudslides; Pakistan and Kashmir—40,000 dead from the earthquake; Niger—40,000 dead from drought-induced famine; hundreds of thousands now homeless around the world and dispersed all over the country, even to the apartments across Live Oak’s back fence.

Knowing all this does two things for me. It reminds me that my own difficulty in living a life of love is nothing compared with a struggle for survival. It also compels me to consider: How can love for humanity in the abstract translate into love for my neighbor?

By imagining myself in the shoes of someone whose family was buried alive, I can continue to give to trusted organizations and to try one small deed at a time if I am physically unable to do more.. I can also recognize our common humanity, and the need to work for a world where fear and distrust do not throw up a sandstorm that prevents love and respect from forming. Mark Morford, who writes for the San Francisco Chronicle, had these suggestions in the face of the world’s tragedies:

Personally, I suggest balance, a little bit of everything. Stay informed, read like mad, feel the world deeply . . . Study the news intently and donate money to charities and volunteer when you can and, if nothing else, quite literally hunker down and pray your [head] off . . .

Some of us can do a lot, but all of us can do a little, listening to our children and their dreams, being there for a stranger who doesn’t need more than a smile, remembering the widows mite, which was all she had to give and for that she was blessed.

How can we as a congregation embrace one another through life’s challenges? We can be witnesses who see with a hawk’s eye view rather than get tangled in exhausting details. We can also remind one another that who we are, deep down, is the true blessing we bring to each other. We are all, in the end, like newlyweds, new mothers and fathers, discoverers of great truths with joy in their heart, fellow travelers on a long and winding journey that will never end.

Enjoy the trip. Should we bother with Friendship? Should we bother with Love? And all of God’s people said: “Sure”!

Amen