warning: touchy-feely God stuff

This weekend I spent in the distant village of Garrison, NY, taking part in the annual spring UCF (United Catholic Fellowship) Retreat. Our time was spent listening to talks, singing worship&praise music, small group discussion, and just general quality community time. The head of the retreat asked me to give a talk titled "God as a community of love" and I will paste it below. As a disclaimer of sorts, the talk is Christian-flavored with distinct Catholic overtones. I tend not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and have gotten very positive feedback from others. It's a 25 minute talk, so it's obviously a lot of words and might take awhile to read if you so choose....enjoy!

There is a renowned ethicist that works part-time in the Simon Center for the Professional Military Ethic at West Point by the name of Gus Lee. I was first privileged to hear Mr. Lee’s thoughts this past summer as I was preparing to be a platoon leader for our Cadet Basic Training. To my non-military brothers and sisters, rest assured that that will be last time I talk about anything army-ish! But Mr. Lee gave one of the ethics talks to the Basic Training leadership and I was awestruck by the conviction and authority that he spoke with, and by how much he excited me about a topic that society tends to beat to death. Now as with most lectures, I can’t remember a thing he said, what his message was, or what the topic of discussion even was, but I do remember walking out of that auditorium and thinking to myself that I needed to buy one of this guy’s books and educate myself some more. He obviously knew a lot about his field of professional ethics, a field that not only interests me but is also required in my current career and possible future career in business.

Well Mr. Lee’s words apparently weren’t that inspiring to me, because it took me 8 months to finally search for his books on Amazon, and I got one in the mail the other week. The title is Courage: the Backbone of Leadership. As I lay in bed one night and cracked open this book, I was reminded of the mysterious ways in which God works. When I laid in bed that night, I was not only reading Mr. Lee’s book on courage, I was also pretty preoccupied on the topic of Christian love of which I had been asked to reflect on here for you today. I thought for sure that I would get great takeaways from Mr. Lee and be inspired by his thoughts, and I have been in a certain sense, but I only made it to page 2 before I found myself disagreeing with him. Yeah, the second page. God’s love is something so amazing and the tenet of Christianity that speaks to me the most, so I’m going to read you a section from his book but substitute the word “love” where Mr. Lee uses “courage.” You see, Mr. Lee got the framework perfect, he just got that one word mixed up in my opinion. Here goes:

“Thus love – or its absence – determines all outcomes. Modestly put, love decides quality of life and personal as well as institutional success. Love is so crucial that it sits in the heart of us. That’s why we can’t help but admire and follow love until we demonstrate it. Love – not brashness, greed, or recklessness – was, early in our evolution, the one quality needed for human survival…no generation, regardless of war, peace, depression, or prosperity, is spared the need to demonstrate love.”

Now if I was in your seat, I probably would have just been pontificating on what is sure to be a fantastic lunch from Heather and the kitchen crew, so I’m going to reread that section once more so you can really take it in!

“Thus love – or its absence – determines all outcomes. Modestly put, love decides quality of life and personal as well as institutional success. Love is so crucial that it sits in the heart of us. That’s why we can’t help but admire and follow love until we demonstrate it. Love – not brashness, greed, or recklessness – was, early in our evolution, the one quality needed for human survival…no generation, regardless of war, peace, depression, or prosperity, is spared the need to demonstrate love.”

I have trouble formulating my own thoughts, but I have no trouble warping someone else’s as you can see. But doesn’t that all make perfect sense? Love decides the quality of our life. How true is that? I know it certainly is for me. The level to which I feel loved is directly related the level of my contentedness in life. When I feel the love of my parents (whose love often is more embarrassing that it needs to be), when I feel the love of my four brothers (who display their love in unique and sometimes painful ways), when I feel the love of my old volunteer community (one of which has joined us this weekend), when I feel the love that fills this room and that is spilling out into the hallway and through the cracks in the windows, and most importantly when I feel the love of the Lord, I experience that contentedness that I seek always. It’s that quality of life Mr. Lee speaks of. Neither quality of life nor contentedness means that life is all ponies and cotton candy, two things that make me pretty happy by the way, but we will never go astray when we’re aware of God’s all-encompassing love.

I’m not a Greek scholar, I’m not Saint John, I’m not CS Lewis, and I’m not Pope John Paul 2 or Pope Benedict – all who have written well known works on love – but I’ll happily steal their thoughts and make some conclusions of my own. First, I think I’ve got something here and we’ll see if those heavy hitters can back me up. The Greeks have three words for love: agape, eros, philia. CS Lewis describes four different types of love in his very cleverly named book The Four Loves, they are: affection, eros, friendship, and charity. But, here’s what I think…let’s keep it simple: there are really two types of love that we run into in life, and I’ve already alluded to the distinction between them. One is the love we receive from God and the other is the love we receive from other people. To me it’s sad that we use the word “love” to describe that we which we receive from God and from others, because they are so vastly different. The things that we experience from God, especially His love, are so beyond human capacity and comprehension that human words do not begin to do God’s love justice. It would be criminal to claim that you could fully understand or express God’s infinite love for humanity. But I’ll give it a try anyway…

The closest word that we have to describe God’s love is “perfect.” What does the word “perfect” connote for you, what are its ins and outs? We can describe perfection with its negative: the absence of fault, God’s love has no fault. Ever. And beyond that, I find it really hard to define perfection. It’s one of those words that you can’t but help using the word itself in the definition. We’re pretty sure we know perfection when we see it, maybe even we think we know perfect love in some way. Think about it this way, especially you math-brained folks: God’s love for us is perfection raised to the nth degree. It is infinitely more perfect and beautiful than anything we’ll ever experience on earth. That’s not to say we can’t or won’t experience some pretty awesome love among mankind, but it doesn’t come close to touching God’s love. I’m going to come back to that line of thought in a little bit.

How do we experience God’s love? Not to diminish its gravity, but the fallback answer is always grace. Christopher West, a Catholic author that you should all read when you get the chance, describes grace as “God’s love poured into the human heart through the Holy Spirit. Grace enables men and women to ‘become who they are,’ to live and love as God intends. Grace penetrates the whole human person, body and soul, and enables us to ‘give up our bodies’ through the sincere of self.” And what is the primary vehicle of God’s saving grace to humanity? Well the sacraments of course! We all had the chance last night to experience one of those grace-bestowing sacraments- that of confession. I don’t know about y’all, but after I’ve admitted my wrongdoings and made a sincere act of contrition, when the priest says the words of absolution I feel an incredible electricity flow through me. Think about those words and see if you don’t get goosebumps: “God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to Himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” I mean…wow! Isn’t that a sweet thing? God’s love, through his grace and unrelenting forgiveness, comes to us when we reciprocate that love by admitting our failures.

So to recap so far: love comes from grace, grace comes through the sacraments, so where did all these sacraments come to us from? Through Jesus Christ and his work on our earth two thousand years ago. So how appropriate that we talk of love today as we prepare to journey with Christ on Palm Sunday into the streets of Jerusalem where he will be lauded with cries of “Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest!” only to be jeered a short time later to shouts of “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Hello? I’m pretty sure crucifixion is at least a mild indicator of God’s love for us. Before he even gets to that point, he sweats blood in the Garden of Gethsemane which is an actual medical condition brought on by extreme stress, it’s not just some dramatization by the Gospel writers. He is betrayed by one of his disciples. He is scourged, the whip used contained shards of metal that dug deep into the flesh of his back only to be ripped out. He carries a 100 pound log across his shoulders to Golgotha, and he is most definitely in shock because of all the blood loss he’s experienced. After getting there, no small feat in itself, he is thrown on the ground (and remember his back is a bloody and painful mess) and spikes are driven through his wrists, he is hoisted up and his feet are also spiked down. Each breath is pure agony, as he must push up each time to catch one. Ever heard of the word “excruciating”? It is derived from the word crucifixion. As the hours passed, Jesus experienced collapsing lungs, a failing heart, severe blood loss, while hoisted naked upon a cross out in public. And what are some of his last words, words that require precious, painful breath? “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Think about all that when we hear the Passion read either tonight or tomorrow during Mass. God showed us incredible love by sending his only son to our lowly earth, and Jesus shows us the highest form of human love by dying for us. It started in the Blessed Mother’s womb, came into the world in Bethlehem, and dies on this cross in order to secure our eternal salvation. If that’s not love, I’m really not sure that we’ll ever know what is! Saint John the apostle wrote in his first letter [chapter 3]: “the way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us.” Incidentally if you’ve never read a whole book of the Bible, start out with 1st John because it’s super short but full of great thoughts to include the topic of love.

Okay, so if you remember I made the claim that there are two types of love we experience: God love and human love. I just talked a little bit about God love, so what do we think about human love? We have the love for and from your family, love for and from your friends, and you may experience love for and from a significant other. If these loves are true, we see that the line between God love and human love can be quite blurry with no clear distinction. If we allow it, and we definitely should, God permeates our relationships and guides us in our efforts to love. But I think the way in which we best experience human love with the added bonus of God’s love is in community. Where there is true community, there is God. God is love. So using my logic skills learned in philosophy, the whole if A then B, if B then C, therefore if A then C thing or some variation of that, where there is true community, there is love…with God right in the thick of it all!

All of this is at work in the first Christian community, from the Acts of the Apostles [chapter 4] we read “The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any his possessions was his own but they had everything in common. With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all. There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need.” Now let’s not get up in calling the early church a bunch of communists because of this “redistribution of wealth,” but what we should see in Saint Luke’s writing is the love that pervades their community.

Does anyone here feel like they are a part of a community? I should hope that by the time we part tomorrow that each and everyone one of us feels like we belong to that true community that experiences true love through God’s presence. We sometimes give our communities names: UCF and CCM and Capuchin and (Sister’s community?). And in this room we see that true community doesn’t really need a label and it can be from all sorts of different places and walks of life. Community doesn’t need to be a church group either, although it tends to help. The most influential community in my life was the volunteer community I was a member of in Phoenix at a place called Andre House. We served 400-700 meals six nights a week, and provided clothing, showers, laundry, phones, blankets, and lockers to the homeless population, a drop-in resource center of sorts. There were different levels of community involved at Andre House- there was what we called the Core Community consisting of 9 full time volunteers. There were people who showed up on a regular basis usually once a week to help work the different ministries. And then there was the supporting community such as the benefactors, donors, and other organizations like the foodbank that supported us. It was all very beautiful the way that the community sustained and supported itself, and the ways in which I saw God’s love at work. I asked my friend and co-volunteer from Andre House, Kurt, to describe why the community was an important thing to him and he said “André House was an experience that allowed me to live and witness true Christian community by living in formation with my peers. It taught me how to live as Christ to others – how to be His hands, His feet, His ears, His mouth. I was transformed by faith to live the Beatitudes each and every day with deep conviction and humble heart.” I didn’t give him any hint as to why I asked him that question, but notice he used the word “true” to describe the community that helped him live as Christ to others. Remember: true community brings love, God is love, so true community is love. And as I looked through my journal from Andre House I found this bit that I wrote after one of our group psychologist meetings. The facilitator asked us to reflect on our expectations of Andre House and I said “I was thinking that I didn’t have many expectations of my experience but that so many things have happened that I didn’t expect. I never expected community to mean so much to me.”

The other night I was talking to my friend Sarah about such things. Sarah is a master of divinity student at Emory and about to be ordained as a United Church of Christ minister, so I figured I would see what I could get out of her. When I asked her what she thought about the relationship between God, love, and community, Sarah said this: “the community part is what drives the other parts. You see God’s presence as a community works together, supports each other. Think about the response to Haiti- the community response ([from] all over the world) I think showed God’s presence and love.” It was pretty powerful, wasn’t it? And it continues to be. So I invite you to think about what both Kurt and Sarah said as you reflect upon your weekend so far and as you finish it out: let the community teach you how to live as Christ and to show you God’s presence and love. If you need a challenge, let it be that. Let the community teach you how to live as Christ and to show you God’s presence and love.

I’m gonna steal one last thought, this time from Pope Benedict, that further supports this idea of experiencing God and love through community: “In the Church's Liturgy, in her prayer, in the living community of believers, we experience the love of God, we perceive his presence and we thus learn to recognize that presence in our daily lives. He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has “loved us first”, love can also blossom as a response within us.” Well said Your Eminence, well said!