World Communion
Sunday/ 7th October 2012
“Words, words, words! I’m so sick of
words!” So sang Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady.[1] Words fill every hour, every day. Spoken. Read. Sung. Heard. We can’t get away from them. We Presbyterians are guilty as charged. You have to admit, we’re a wordy-bunch of
Jesus lovers. Just look at how many
words are in today’s worship bulletin!
A lot of good is accomplished with
words. But words can also be a
distraction: they can prevent us from hearing what needs to be said; they remove
us from the work at hand. It’s easy to talk a good game.
On the subject of love, the writer
of 1 John has a few words for us. He offers one of the most profound expressions
of the meaning of love found in Scripture. But, stop talking about love, he
says. Stop writing about love. Stop preaching about love. Stop with the words. “Let us love,…not in word or speech, but in
truth and action” (1 John 3:18).
John knows that love is not a noun,
but a verb. It causes things to be. What it causes to be is an extension of the
one who is love. With these verses we
have the only place in the Bible where God is defined as love. Yes, there are
expressions of a loving God found in the Bible. But here we find John saying
God is love, it’s who God is. Love
is the expression of God’s Being, completely, which means that if God is to
remain God, then God cannot be anything other than love itself, the One who
loves in truth and action. How do we
know this? Jesus as God in the flesh is
God’s love in “truth and action,” the Word of God embodied, enfleshed, and
enacted because words are not enough; they’re never enough. Love, if it is love, is embodied, enfleshed,
and enacted. Love causes something to be
and what it causes to be is always an extension of the one who loves. God is love.
As lovers of God, let us love, not in words only, but in truth and
action.
So, then, what do we mean by love?
That’s the question. Sadly, what
tries to pass for love is not love. I’ve
known plenty of people in my life who say they love someone, but their actions
betray them: they do not practice what they preach, they do not embody their
love. In fact, their actions are the
very opposite of love, inflicting fear and shame, sometimes violence and hurt
and pain. And, frankly, some people
really don’t know how to love because they have never been on the receiving end
of love and respect; they don’t know what that feels like and looks like. When
it comes to love, though, we all fall short.
On this World Communion Sunday as we
consider our connection with Christian brothers and sisters around the world
looking for love, we are lifting up, in particular, the people of the
Democratic Republic of Congo, who needs a whole lot of love. Through the life and witness of Don Padgett
we as a church have a strong tie with Presbyterians in the DRC, especially in
the Kasai (the central region that has a strong Presbyterian witness). Bulape, Kananga, Tshikaji, and Lubondai are
familiar place names to us, places that know our love in truth and action. And we have been blessed with knowing
something of the pain, suffering, and trauma experienced by the Congolaise. I say “blessed” because they have helped raise
our consciousness around issues that we otherwise would have been ignorant. And in this knowledge – in this love – we
have been called to truth and action.
The
DRC is a tough place to live; it’s one of the poorest nations in Africa, among
the poorest in the world. The
unspeakable suffering and loss that they have experienced is beyond our capacity
to imagine. As a result it’s a place
where reality is a little unhinged. I
saw that eight years ago when I traveled to the Kasai with Don. And I saw it in August 2011 while traveling in
Kivu, Eastern Congo, with Rick Santos and members of the IMA World Health board,
visiting new places like Goma, Bukavu, and Mwanza. This past summer I went back
to Christ in the Desert, a Benedictine monastery in New Mexico. While I was there I met a monk who was from
Zambia. I mentioned to him that I had
spent some time in the DRC, that I’ve been to Goma and Bukavu. He was amazed. “You’ve been to Bukavu?” he
said. Then he touched my hand to see if
I was real. He couldn’t believe that a Westerner had been to a place like
Eastern Congo. Places that have been in
the crosshairs of wars and civil wars, with countless women, men, and children
the victims of war, particularly victims of sexual and gender-based violence. A
UN official once called Goma the “rape capital of the world.” On our visit we met several women who were
raped. We talked with them. Listened to
them, heard their stories. Unknowingly,
we also met and talked with their perpetrators.
I have to confess, I didn’t know
much about sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) before going to Goma. But I’m grateful for the “blessing” of this
knowledge, because it has caused me to be better informed, better educated
around this issue, and better equipped to do something about it there. But what came as a shock to many of us – and
Rick Santos shares this view in his introduction to the One In Three
sermon guides recently released by IMA
World Health through their We Will
Speak Out initiative – is that what is happening in Congo is actually
happening in one form or another to women, men, and children, but mostly to
women, all around the world, including the United States.[2]
Sexual and gender-based violence is far more pervasive than we like to admit.
The disturbing PBS-series Half the Sky, which aired
this past week, based on the book by award-winning journalists Nicholas
Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, makes this abundantly clear.[3] In 2010, the Center for Disease Control and
Prevention conducted a national survey of American adults and discovered that
“more than one in three women in the US have reportedly experienced sexual
assault, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner during their
lifetime. The same is true for more than
one in four men.”[4]
According to the National Coalition
Against Domestic Violence, “boys who witness domestic violence are twice as
likely to abuse their own partners and children when they become adults.”[5]
And it’s occurring in the
church. An internal study done by the
United Church of Christ (here in the US) states, “What will strike some as
remarkable is that the data we gathered contains nothing remarkable. The numbers of persons who have experienced
sexual and domestic violence…are very consistent with national averages.” As
Rick Santos says, “attending church didn’t make anyone less susceptible to
sexual or domestic violence.”[6]
These are sobering statistics and
difficult to hear. I know. I am conscious that this is a sensitive
subject to talk about. We’re very
conscious of this. We don’t often hear
about these things in worship. Our
silence, though, is not helpful and it’s not loving, particularly toward those who
might be included among these statistics.
But we’re talking about more than statistics here; we’re talking about
real people. The silence allows the shame to permeate one’s life. The church’s silence reinforces the shame and
the pain and keeps it in shadow. This is
not the way of Jesus Christ. As Jesus
graciously said, “For
there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except
to come to light” (Mark 4:22). Love
in truth and action calls us to speak out with and for those who cannot speak
out. And if the church won’t speak out,
who will? Love in truth and action invites us to take what’s been placed in
shadow and shame and lift it up to the light of God’s healing love, so that the
totality of one’s self can be loved and fully embraced and held.
Love in truth and action means ensuring
that our homes and church are safe places, sanctuaries
– places where God’s love is enacted and embodied, known and felt and
celebrated, places of healing and hope, places where people know that God’s
love is liberating and freeing. In the
hope of putting love in truth and action, we want to ensure that we are creating
safe places here today. I have asked
Dorothy Boulton to be available in the Crossroads room after the service if any
of our youth would like to talk about anything heard today, and I invited Dr.
Elaine Bain, a psychologist and person of faith on staff at the Suburban Pastoral Counseling Center (based here at the church), to be available in the France
Room. And I’ll be around if anyone wants
to talk.
So what is this love, then? What is God’s
love? What does it look like? Feel life? What does it do? As Jesus demonstrated and embodied with every
ounce of his being, God’s love raises the dead to new life. It is resurrection and it’s renewal. It’s liberation and new creation. It transforms everything that has died or is
dying in us and offers life. It’s a love
that is powerful and creative and always – always!
– life-giving. It calls people to life
and it fights and struggles against anything or anyone that tries to destroy or
dehumanize one of God’s beloved children.
It wants people to live and to grow and to thrive. It wants the best for God’s children. It takes delight in the uniqueness and joy of
the other – whoever the other might
be.[7]
The early church father, Irenaus (d.
c.202), the bishop of Lyon, France, said, “The glory of God is the human being
fully alive.” We glorify God by helping
people come alive, to be the people they were created by God to be. Love not
only invites people to come alive, love also creates the space for it to happen
in safe, loving communities, families, and churches where people are loved,
respected, and honored. Love creates caring spaces for people to grow and
develop, spaces that are safe, spaces that allow deep healing to occur so that
men, women, and children can grow into being the people they were created by
God to be. Several years ago one of our
young, budding theologians asked her mother, “Mom, what is the church for?
This is what the church is
for.
And this is what it looks like, a Table of welcome placed at the center
of God’s world. This, too, is love in
truth and action. And our host invites
us to come, urges us to come from north and south and east and west, trusts us –
and counts on us – to make it safe for everyone to make their way safely to the
Table, so that all can feast on the abundance of God’s love. With arms out stretched in love to a world in
need, Jesus welcomes us here and with the embrace of his arms actually creates
the space – he is that space – where
we encounter again and again the deep healing love of God, a space that
continually calls us to come fully alive!
[1]Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick
Loewe, 1956.
[3] Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl
WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women
Worldwide (Vintage Books, 2010).
[4]Cited in One in Three: Preventing Sexual
Violence in Our Communities (IMA World Health, 2012), 4-5.
[5]Cited in One in Three, 8-9.
[7]These comments are drawn from my
contribution to the One in Three
sermon guide, “Why We Must Choose Love,” 7-10.
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