“Revolutionary Love”

Karen Sloan 13/12/2020

Readings - Mark 12:28-34, John 13:33-35, Luke 6: 26-36, Story from prayer of the frog

Today is our third week of advent, which for us is love.  Let me remind you of what we finished with last week… It was a quote from Frederick Buechner,

“Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me.  To see reality not as we expect it to be but as it is, is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily, that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.”

Love, it’s what we talks about, sing about, dream about, but what actually is it and where does it come from.

I have a friend, who was a catholic and is now an agnostic.  He says the only reason he is not an atheist is because of love.  Love, that great mystery that drives us to be better than we are, that drives us to connect with one another, that drives us to look after one another 

I did a wedding yesterday, and of course we talked about love.  The love that comes when two people want to spend the rest of their lives with one another.  As I say in the ceremony, the sudden rise in heartbeat, and sweaty palms type of love.  And of course we need that type of love.  But what happens when life does not go according to plan, when we get older, slower, dimmer, and maybe can’t hear one another. And our life is not what we had hoped for.

There is a great quote from the novel , “The Brothers Karamazov, a classic, written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I have used this quote before, but it is one of my favourite and so I am going to use it again today.

“Love in your dreams is such a marvellous and glorious thing.  Yet love in reality is active, labour and fortitude.” 

 When I use that quote at a wedding, which I did yesterday, what I and  the couple are really saying is that here is not the love of a romance novel or a dream, but the mystery of love in real life. A love that requires commitment, fortitude and sometimes labour.   

For the love that is being affirmed is not just a condition of the heart, that comes and goes, but an act of the will.  And the promise it makes is to will the others good, even sometimes at the expense of our own. Even through the inevitable ups and downs of our messy, chaotic, joyful and sometimes sorrow filled lives. 

In fact, the couple, young and not so young, are committing a life of relationship. A life guided by love but also by forgiveness, compassion, understanding and loyalty. They are committing to each other for the long term, when they have sweaty palms and when they don’t!

It is a huge promise, but a beautiful, exciting promise, as it always is at a wedding.  But it is a promise that speaks to all of us as well. Of what human life at its most human and its most alive and most holy must be.

Of what human life at its most human and most alive and most holy must be.  While I wish I had said that it actually another quote from Frederick Buechner. …

Richard Rohr had similar thoughts as these when he wrote about Revolutionary love in a recent blog post. Not just about marriage but about life.  He says,

“Love is more than a feeling.  Love is a form of sweet labour, fierce, bloody, imperfect and life giving, a choice we make over and over again. If love is sweet labour, love can be taught, modelled and practised.  This labour engages all our emotions. Joy  is the gift of love, grief is the price of love. Anger protects that which is loved.  And when we think we have reached our limit, wonder is the act that returns us to love…

Revolutionary love is the choice to enter into wonder and labour for others, for our opponents and for ourselves in order to transform the world around us. It is not a formal code or prescription but an orientation to life that is personal and political and rooted in joy. 

Revolutionary love can only be practised in community.

We birth the beloved community by becoming the beloved community…...”

So love guides us every day.

But what does it really mean?

What does this mean in real life, in the real life of people. In  our messy, chaotic, joyful and sometimes sorrow filled lives.  

Well,  I have seen it first-hand this week and this month and this year, and I am sure you have too. We saw an example of it in the video shown for the kids, but really it was for all of us.

I have seen it in one of my workmates, who is the mother of 2 autistic sons, who loves them deeply and who fights for them at school and protects them at home so that they have the best chance of a fulfilling life.  And who risks alienation from those who say she is too fierce, too stubborn, too intervening.

I have seen it in friends who look after aging parents.  Not out of duty but out of love, who sit with them over lunch, takes them shopping, helps them with their medication and listens patiently to them when they get mixed up with their words or ideas.  It is not easy and sometimes it is labour but it is revolutionary love in real life.

I have seen it in the two dads who recently sacrificed their own lives to rescue their family members, only to drown themselves. Which happens more often than we know….

All amazing acts of love.

 But love is more than family. What about the real life love shown to others, not just our parents and children and relatives or even friends.   Who are part of the wider community, and often are strangers to us.  For as Richard Rohr says, we birth the beloved community by becoming the beloved community

I have seen it on the TV, when I was watching a documentary on the White Island Volcanic eruption in NZ, which occurred a year ago, last week.    If you saw the documentary you would have been in awe of the 2 young men, who were the first responders, and with no real emergency training, still went out in their helicopters to the island.   Who comforted the injured, stayed with the dying and rescued so many.  And spoke about it as though it was the right and normal response to such a crisis. 

Or in this person who arrived after the motobike accident on the freeway last Sunday, and who held the woman’s hand so that she would not be alone as she died from her injuries… (read paper)… 

Or the many many nurses and doctors who have died or become very ill caring while for those with Covid -19. Who have sacrificed their own health and well-being for the health and well-being, both physical and psychological, of others.

And I see it over and over again in those who give up status and wealth so that they have time to support those marginalised in our society.   There are so many examples, but I mention here those who help at the Mowanjum community, who value relationships over outcomes, and who stand beside and travel with the people of that community. Or my friend Lisa who works so hard to assist those who are homeless in our city. And I saw plenty of people last night, hunkered down while the rest of us were enjoying the Christmas lights.

…..

Love, it is so much more than a feeling, it is a movement and a way of life. A commitment to the other.

Where does it come from, this type of love.  Good question. Well, I am with my friend when he says it’s a mystery, but I believe it comes from the great spirit residing in all of us, whether we name it as God or Allah or Yahweh or even if we don’t name it at all.

God of life, God of love.

Because love gives life.

This is not a God of the classic Christian understanding, a God beyond the world, changing things on a whim or in response to some great prayer train, but an immanent presence that leads to life, a creative, loving, and compassionate life. I believe that at every level this spirit urges for communion and relationship, so that atoms combine with atoms, molecules with molecules, cells with cells, and people to people.  We have this urge to connect with one another, as though it is in our DNA. 

We are interconnected to one another and all of creation in ways that seem so sacred, its why the ancients referred to God as love, as a shorthand way of describing this presence.

 ……

So I like to think that the story of the universe, the story of creation, and the ongoing story of us is also the story of God.  And this story is about love.  And today, this divine urge that comes from deep within, can be transformed into a life giving, and loving and loving way of being in the world. If we let it.

But sometimes we need a guide, and Advent is a time of waiting and remembering this guide.

For we see this guide in Jesus. Jesus spoke about justice and peace, and equity and inclusion.  All words for love.

We heard his call to us today in one of our readings….

“Love one another, as I have loved you, by this we will be known as his disciples”. 

Not by saying it but by doing it, by following my lead.  Not just as a warm and toasty feeling but an action, a life affirming action. Requiring compassion and courage. and sometimes labour!

As Richard Rohr suggests, we are to follow Jesus into the world, where ever he leads, in order to become the beloved community. For when we become the beloved community, amazing things can happen. and usually does.

 Amen