Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost
What Does Love Look Like?
By The Rev. Christie Webb -
525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear.
525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year?
How about love? How about love? How
about love? Measure in love.
Just like this song from Rent says, a good year is measured in love. The Apostle Paul agrees- as he writes in the letter to the Romans: “The commandments… are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Love. But what does love look like?
I saw a Facebook post this week that reported the answers a group of professional people got when they asked 4 to 8 year-olds, 'What does love mean?' Here are some of their answers:
'When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore... So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love.' Rebecca - age 8
'Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.' Chrissy - age 6
'Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and just listen.' Bobby - age 7
'If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate.' Nikka - age 6
'Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.' Tommy - age 6
'Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.' Mary Ann - age 4
What does love mean to you? What does love look like? What does loving your neighbor as yourself look like?
Back in the 1990s a Christian Band called DCTalk had a song called Love is a Verb. I think that is so true. Love is a verb. It is lived out in our actions, whether that be painting the toenails of our beloved, or sharing our french fries, or licking their face… oh wait, no, that’s not really acceptable for anyone else but dogs.
It seems fitting this day as we celebrate God’s Work Our Hands, as we consider how our hands do God’s work in the the world, to stop and consider how we do in fact show God’s love with our very own hands. How have you shared God’s love with your very own hands this week? Some of you may have shown God’s love by mending a boo boo with a bandaid. Or giving a blessing to children. Or making a lunch. Or helping someone steady themselves as they walk down the stairs. Others of you showed God’s love by calling a friend. Or cooking or serving a meal, or setting up refreshments for church. Some of you showed God’s love by picking up a piece of trash on the sidewalk. Or waving a friendly hello to someone. Some of you showed God’s love by filling a little pantry, our little pantry right here on the corner of Maple and 14th. Some of you showed love by bringing cans of soup to help fill up that little pantry. Some of you will learn today of ways you can even more use your hands to do God’s work through that little pantry.
Our hands do God’s work. Our hands show God’s love. Which is a wild thing to consider, isn’t it. These hands. These regular hands. They do God’s work. It makes all that we do holy. All that we are holy. Because it isn’t just our hands that do God’s work. It is our voices. It is our feet. It is our minds. It is our hearts.
Which brings us to our gospel text for this day, and a specific way our hearts do God’s work in mending conflict in the midst of community.
The instructions are this: “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” It sounds so simple, but the courage to do that work, to do it directly like that, to go and have a difficult conversation with someone, that is hard work. That is holy work. That is God in our presence, Lord help me do this hard thing, kind of work. It is “love your neighbor as yourself” kind of work. Think of it- if someone had a problem with something you had done, how would you like to have it handled? Do you want them to go and tell everyone else and not talk to you? Or do you want them to come directly to you? [Pause] Right. Directly to you. So you can work it out, before it becomes a big thing. So when we go directly to someone we are loving them in the way we would want them to love us, even if it requires great vulnerability, great discomfort.
In my experience, direct interaction usually works. But if it doesn’t Jesus has a next step- then you bring others along with you, as mediators, observers, to keep you both honest. Then if that doesn’t work you tell the church. And if that doesn’t work “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and tax collector.”
But what does that mean? How are we to treat Gentiles and tax collectors? Well, if we live like Jesus, which we strive for as we are God’s hands, hearts, voices, feet, arms in the world, if we live like Jesus, we invite them to dinner. We eat with them. We talk with them. We heal them. We include them in the community. Just like Jesus, God with us, did. Which is hard work.
Which leads us to the best good news of our gospel: we don’t do it alone. We are never alone. Jesus says: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” So when we are doing the hard work, the vulnerable work, the challenging work together in Jesus name, we are not on our own. Jesus is there with us. Jesus is there strengthening us. Jesus is there with courage for us. Jesus is there with love, pouring out on us and through us out into the world, so that we can love, love our neighbor as ourselves.
Friends, is there a broken relationship among you that needs tending? Is there a task on your heart that needs doing? Is there a way God is calling you to be God’s hands, hearts, feet, ears, mind in the world this week? Whatever it is, could you do it with God’s help? Could you do it if you recognized God at work through you? Could you do it if Jesus was with you? Because God is. God is with us all, empowering us to give, to share, to reconcile, to love our neighbor as ourselves with hand, mind, heart, everything that we are. Imagine what God could do with that love in the next 525,600 minutes. [Pause] And then go, live it. Be God’s Hands in the world. Be God’s love in the world. Thanks be to God.
Amen.
The Rev. Christie Webb
Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sermon for:
September 9 & 10, 2023
