…If I am to answer this question honestly, I’d have to say “yes”, “Yes, I sometimes do expect a pat on the back for loving the loveable.” I mean, when we do things well – if we are especially kind, loving, generous, and gracious – isn’t there within us a hope that what we do will be noticed? Does it matter that it was “easy” to help, share, give? The challenge, for me at least, is to respond with love regardless of the situation – to respond with love and a gentle word to the person who is rude to me in the store… to respond with love and a prayer for safety for the person who cuts me off in traffic… to respond with love and compassion to the person who seeks to harm me or my family… What does this kind of love look like? and How do I live it?
Today’s scripture says it is a generous love, a grace-full love – the same kind of love that God showers upon me. I think the difficulty begins with our categorizing everyone. Now this isn’t always a bad thing – for example, categorizing helps us remember people we’ve met, helps us remember things about them. But often we carry this categorizing business too far and categorize people as worthy or unworthy, loveable or unloveable. If someone does or says the right thing – “right” being whatever I agree with, of course – then I find it’s easier to be kind and generous… God doesn’t ask that we believe a certain way before God loves us – God simply loves… The difficulty, I believe, is that we live in a place between the world we see each day – the world of hurt and cruelty and abuse – and the World of God that is not as easy to see with our eyes – the world where we are called to respond to one another with the grace and love of God. It is God’s love for each person that gives them value, makes them loveable – yes, even me. So how can I find others loveable? …By seeking to see them through the eyes of Jesus…
In my humanity, I am humbled by the love of Jesus Christ – by the way he loved each person as they needed to be loved… so in faith I seek once again to live the question, “How is God calling me to love this person?”…
3 comments:
Maybe God would except being polite?
I would have to agree that the answer is yes. We do expect a pat on the back when we love the loveable. We expect to be rewarded when we "do the right thing". We earned gold stars in kindergarten, first place ribbons in sports, scholarships, job promotions and raises at work ... all because we did the right thing. Why would we expect less from God? After all, haven't we been good children?
Our problem lies when we only love the loveable. But who is unloveable? Who gets to decide who the unloveable one is or what they did to become unloveable? The media? our personal judgment? The Bible? Could the unloveable be me or someone in my family?
I have sometimes struggled with the verse that instructs to love our neighbor as ourself. Not because I don't know who is my neighbor is but do I love myself? Isn't that vanity?
Sometimes I don't like myself very much, much less love myself. When I return anger with anger or respond to rudeness with rudeness I am ashamed and do not love myself. And how quickly we can move from side to the other!
The solution, for me at least, is that I must love others as God has loved me. And looking at it from that point of view, there are no unloveables.
...getting rewarded for doing the right thing... it reminds me of one of Jesus' parables - the one where the workers who came late received the same "reward" as the ones who arrived early. How we (or at least I) so want to think that we get a better reward because we responded right away, or the "right" way, or... Our society teaches us that doing what is expected is not a reward in itself, but should receive an extra reward. And I don't think the church has done much to counter this thinking/teaching.
I think most of us are guilty of categorizing and classifying what it means to be unloveable. Perhaps it's another way of buying into the "good children" mentality. "If I'm better than..., then I must be one of the loveable." right?
No, I don't think it's vanity to question whether or not we love ourselves. I think that is part of the point - we should treat others at least as well as we treat ourselves, and we should treat ourselves as well as we treat others. I question how many of us know our true worth - that is, our worth as understood from God's view? God loved each of us so much that God gave of God's self - just for me, God gave... just for you, God gave. I know I really do not grasp the fullness of that.
In this week's reading there is a quote from Madeleine L'Engle that says, "I have a point of view. You have a point of view. But God has view." I think that is what I fail to see or at least remember. It is not that God has a different point of view from us. Rather, it is that God has the only encompassing view. If we could see as God sees, how different our lives and this world would be.
Thanks for the conversation.
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