What's Love Got to Do with It?

Young at Heart Message

This past week, I had the opportunity to attend the morning session of a workshop put on by the Calgary Alliance for the Common Good.

I will admit that when I showed up there, I was not expecting to be participating in this workshop.
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I was expecting it to be a conversation with my Lutheran colleagues around the concept of “welcoming the stranger.”
 
It turned out to be an ecumenical gathering of Christians from a number of different denominations, including a Deacon in the Catholic Church.
 
The topic was still about “welcoming the stranger,” so at least I got that part right.
 
I was only there for a few hours, but what I took away just from that morning session was priceless – it gave me a lot to think about in terms of our ministry here at Good Shepherd.
 
We began that session by introducing ourselves and answering a few questions about our faith and our churches.
 
I thought it might be of value today to take a few minutes to answer some of these questions ourselves.
 
We won’t have time to go around the whole room and ask everyone here the questions, but as we have done several times before, I would love to hear at least some of your answers to these questions.
 
I would also like to ask our AV team to summarize our answers for us so we can mull over our answers, perhaps another day.
 
So I have three questions that I want to ask today. I will ask one question at a time. I’d like to give one minute of silence after I ask the question for you to think about it before I ask for responses.
 
The first question is this:
 
Why does this church matter to you?
 
What does our church do well?
 
What could our church do better?
 
Wonderful, thank you to everyone who responded!
 
These questions aren’t necessarily easy questions, and the final question especially requires some significant self-awareness among our membership to be able to really dive into the things we could do better as a community.
 
And of course, these are questions we can continue to ponder and wonder about together as we move forward as a community of Christ followers.
 
The Message
 
But, now that we’ve answered those questions for ourselves, let’s talk about why these questions matter.
 
Many of our answers to these questions beg more questions.
 
For example:
 
·       What is the role of the church?
·       Why do we need it?
·       What is our responsibility to it?
 
And, perhaps the most important question we must ask is this: what would Jesus think about the way we do church?
 
In our scripture passage today, Jesus’ words were clear:
 
Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
 
That’s it.
 
And yet, within those fourteen simple words derives a tremendous amount of complexity and uncertainty, it seems, in our world today.
 
We don’t always love one another, do we?
 
There are some people in the world who seem incredibly difficult to love.
 
But Jesus didn’t say “love one another… except…”
 
He said “love one another…” period.
 
I wonder, then, if this is the guidance we need to determine the answers to some of the questions we asked earlier.
 
·       What is the role of the church?
·       Why do we need it?
·       What is our responsibility to it?
 
It seems to me, the answer must have something to do with loving one another.
 
One of the things that came up in the workshop this week was a phrase I hadn’t heard before, but which really resonated with me.
 
It is the idea of “poverty of experience.”
 
What does this mean?
 
Well, I took it to mean that, very often, we lack perspective on things we have not personally experienced before.
 
I could give you many, many examples of this, but the one I want to specifically address today is poverty of experience around the plight of immigrants and refugees.
 
We currently have at least five people who have been coming to our church regularly who are dealing with the immigration process in one way or another.
 
And, as we know, two of our new members specifically are refugees.
 
Most of us have significant “poverty of experience” when it comes to what immigrants and refugees deal with when moving to a new country.
 
And now, our church has a slightly better idea because we personally know people who are going through the process.
 
And, because we have heard at least part of their story and have had the opportunity to get to know them, we have learned a bit more about their experience and what is involved in the process.
 
And, we have grown to love them as part of our community.
 
But, I want to point out a significant element of “closing the gap” on our poverty of experience around these issues:
 
They found us. We did not seek them out.
 
They became a part of our community, and we got to know them and love them and learn about their experience because they found us.
 
But, going back to our questions again about the role of the church, why we need it, and what our responsibility is to it, I wonder what it would mean for us to step outside of our comfort zone and reach out to others in similar situations?
 
Who are the people in our community that we have a responsibility to (as part of Huntington Hills, Calgary, Alberta, or Canada) that we have not yet met?
 
Stick with me here for a minute, because it does come back to love.
 
Do we have a responsibility to anyone other than ourselves and those who find us?
 
When we ask who we might have a responsibility to that we have not yet met, I am talking about anyone in the surrounding community who has not yet walked through our doors.
 
And, I’m talking also about the next generation of people who aren’t yet born.
 
Can the love that Jesus commands extend to all those we have not yet met?
 
If so, how?
 
I know that it can sound overwhelming. And, we cannot possibly address every concern within our own community, let alone the entire city of Calgary or the entire province of Alberta.
 
But, as we think about what Jesus meant when he told us to love one another, we do have a responsibility to think outside the walls of our own church community.
 
And I know what many of you are thinking.
 
There are only so many of us, and we only have so much energy, and that energy seems to be waning.
 
All of that may be true. But Jesus didn’t say “love one another, except… when you’re tired and your energy has depleted.”
 
We do a wonderful job of welcoming the stranger who walks through our doors.
 
Jesus would approve of that, I think!
 
And yet, he might push us to stretch our notion of love beyond ourselves.
 
To look at the resources we have and the assets we hold and wonder together how we could use them to best serve people beyond the walls of our church.
 
Are there other ways we could help immigrants and refugees, for example?
 
Instead of merely welcoming the stranger when they walk through our doors, could we invite them to walk with us in community?
 
Could we accept Jesus’ pat on the back that we have done a great job welcoming the stranger, and also walk with him as he pushes us to take the next step?
 
And what might that look like?
 
As we close today’s message, I would ask us all to just ponder these questions. 
 
There are a lot of questions I’ve thrown out today.
 
And some of it is my own way of mulling these things over myself.
 
As a pastor, it’s my job to ask these questions and wonder if there is more we could be doing in our ministry and if so, what that might look like.
 
But it’s not just my job. It is our job. Jesus certainly didn’t expect only pastors to be thinking about these things.
 
Pastors come and go from church communities, but the community itself remains to serve and love one another.
 
What that service and love looks like evolves and changes over time.
 
But we must continue to ask these hard questions in order to bear witness to evolution and change, and in order to bear witness to the love we are consistently called to share with others.
 
Jesus invites us each and every day to love one another as he loved us.
 
His love extended well beyond the boundaries of his own people and his own community.
 
And, it extended far beyond the generation of people he met. His love extended through time and space to meet us here.
 
So, as we go from this place to love and serve one another, may we wonder together how we can love as Jesus loved us and extend that love beyond the boundaries of our church community.
 
May we continue to welcome and love the strangers who walk through our doors.
 
And, may we consider how we can extend that love to all of those we have not yet met, and what that might mean in our context.
 
Amen.
 
Let us pray:
 
God of welcome, God of the stranger. We come as strangers. We come as those who you welcome. We come as those called to welcome.
Christ, who reached across all lines, Messiah who looked the “other” in the eyes with love. Challenge us with your radical example of love. Stretch us to engage the way you engage. Humble us to receive and be.
 
Spirit who challenges, Spirit who connects, Urge us to compassion, Break down our resistance, Strengthen our resolve, Tear open our hearts, Mobilize our minds, Flow through our bodies, as Your vessels who will be conduits of welcome, compassion, justice and love. Amen.

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