"At that time prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them named Agabus stood up and predicted by the Spirit that there would be a severe famine over all the world; and this took place during the reign of Claudius. The disciples determined that according to their ability, each would send relief to the believers living in Judea; they did this, sending to the elders by Barnabas and Saul." [Acts 11:27-30]
Love is hard work.
Don't let anybody fool you on that count. Love, if it is the genuine article and not simply a flurry of endorphins in your brain or a flutter of emotions in your gut, is hard work.
Our culture is, generally speaking, not great at recognizing that, because so often we equate "love" with a feeling, and, well, it is easy to feel things. Feelings come and go like the breeze--you don't have to do any work to feel something. What is hard is choosing to act with compassion, with kindness, with self-giving--that is to say, with love, even when you don't "feel like it," when it requires sacrifice, and when it requires more than just an emotion or empty talk to actually help someone. (Case in point, when there is a national or global tragedy and the news anchor reporting or interviewing some victim ends the segment with the practically meaningless line, "Our thoughts are with you..." What does that even mean?)
On top of that, sometimes we Christians are not great when it comes to talking (or thinking) about the direction of the Spirit in our lives, either. Sometimes we end up sounding like the Holy Spirit is just a religious version of Peter Parker's Spider-Sense in the comic books--just sort of a mystical "gut feeling" or emotion. And if that's all we mean, then "listening for the Holy Spirit" is really just sort of our religious jargon for "doing whatever we feel like doing." Isn't that convenient? You feel just a sort of random impulse, and you get to attribute it to the Holy Spirit's direction! That's sort of like the inverse of the old Flip Wilson bit, "The devil made me do it!"
But see, here's the rub. In the stories of the early church, the Spirit kept leading the first followers of Jesus to do things that they didn't "feel like" doing at the time, and in fact, the Spirit sometimes had to pull them out of what they "felt like" and into the difficult work of persistent love. Honestly, I'm never going to "feel like" being kind to people who have been rotten to me, or crossing outside of my comfort zone to get to listen and talk with people who are very different from me. By definition, my "comfort zone" is where I'm comfortable, and none of us will ever "feel like" leaving what we are comfortable with--sometimes we have to be led, pulled, or cajoled, kicking and screaming, to go where the Spirit is really leading us. And sometimes the Spirit leads us to act, to speak, to give, in ways that we wouldn't have chosen if it were up to us. But that's just it: the Spirit leads us to actually practice love, and genuinely loving others is hard work.
So here's an example. At some point in the 40s or 50s AD, a pretty bad famine affected parts of the Mediterranean world. It might well have been felt everywhere, or at least all across the Roman empire, but this weather-related crisis was felt particularly hard in the territory of Palestine, and in particular in the city of Jerusalem. We who live with grocery stores and sprawling Walmart Supercenters all around us have a hard time really getting our heads around the idea of having limits on our access to food--we are used to having avocados and oranges available every day of the year, and we get fussy if our favorite brand of cereal is sold out at the store. But here was a real, honest-to-goodness famine--and it meant that the Christian community in Jerusalem was particularly affected. By this point in the Christian movement, the church had spread to all sorts of other locations in the non-Jewish world, and it would have been easy for those Gentile Christians simply to say, "Hey, if you're low on food, that's your problem--we've all got to take care of ourselves here." It would have been very easy for the Gentile Christian communities to say, "We don't particularly feel like having to pay additional money from our limited resources to help you all who are feeling the effects of the famine more severely than we are. Hey, we have our own lives to worry about, and our own pantries to fill." It would have been easy for the early Gentile congregations to say, "We are sending you our best wishes and our thoughts are with you," and never let that move them to real action or sacrifice.
And if that had happened, it would have been a shame.
Blessedly, the Spirit of God did not allow such shallow, self-absorbed thinking to win the day. And the early Gentile Christians, who surely could have said, "Hey, it's everyone for themselves in this life--it's just not fair for us to be expected to help someone so far away and for us to have to contribute more than others do so that people far away who we've never met can have a little relief from the bad weather and famine," instead did the hard work of love. They organized a collection. They held themselves accountable. They made an agreement to all support the needs of the people who were to be hardest hit by the famine, and they sacrificed some of their money to help the church in Jerusalem. And they did it because that's exactly what happens when the Spirit really is leading you. It's not that you know the right thing to do because all of a sudden you "feel like" doing it. It's the voice that leads you to live in the self-giving way of Jesus, even when you don't feel like doing it at all. That's part of how you know it's really the Spirit--it's not something you would have picked for yourself if you had been the one doing the choosing.
This is the story again and again the book of Acts: the Holy Spirit pushes the followers of Jesus to think through--and then to act out--what genuine love looks like, beyond fleeting feelings or momentary emotions. The Spirit led those disciples to reach out to include those they didn't really "feel" like welcoming, and to forgive those they didn't really "feel" like forgiving, and to care for people they had never met who lived far away, even if it meant being asked to contribute when they would never see any direct benefit from it. The Spirit kept leading those early saints to do things like these because that's what love looks like.
Think for a minute about the episode mentioned here in today's verses from Acts. It's positively radical what the early church did in response to the humanitarian crisis of their day. They stopped thinking about themselves first. The Christians in Antioch didn't protest that it wasn't "fair" for them to be asked to support those in Jerusalem who were at risk of starving. Neither did they lament that the rest of the empire would laugh at them if they gave to the needs of the church in Jerusalem, or get upset that they were being taken advantage of. Nobody said, "Look, we have to look out for ourselves first, and you all are going to have to pay your own share and take care of your own needs." And nobody whined about how all these Gentiles were going to be giving up their own wealth to give it to Christians in Jerusalem, and how it wasn't fair that Jerusalem Christians weren't doing "enough" back for them in Antioch. They just understood--this is what love does. This is what the Spirit is leading us to do. We know it, because it's not just a matter of what we "feel like" doing. Love is hard work, and love means you make the commitment, you follow through, and you give of yourself for the sake of the other, whether you "feel like it" or not. The early church got it--actions come first, and the feeling follow, not the other way around.
Now, consider for a moment that the passage here we're talking about is in the Bible. For us Christians who take these stories as God's Word for us, as breathed by the same Spirit who is mentioned in these verses, that means we are called to take these kind of stories as formative of the kind of people and the kind of love we are called to embody. Yes, love is still hard work--but we are still pushed by the same Spirit to do the hard work of loving people. Even when it means we give out of our abundance. Even when it means we won't see a benefit ourselves from our giving. Even if it means putting the needs of others before our own. That's what genuine love is.
This should be crystal clear for us--and yet, so often in our day, religious-sounding voices say things like, "We have to put ourselves first... and other people far away are just not as important." Religious-sounding voices say things like, "We have to protect our comfort levels, our interests, and our stockpiles first, not helping out other people when we may not see a benefit from it." Religious-sounding voices say things like, "If you give but don't get anything back, you'll look like a loser--you'll be a laughingstock! You'll be taken advantage of!" It almost makes you wonder what those religious-sounding voices of our day would have said to the early church taking up a collection in a bunch of Gentile congregations to send relief hundred of miles away to a bunch of Christians in Jerusalem who would never pay them back.
Look, love is hard work. That hasn't changed, and it never will in this world. It may be a famine in Jerusalem in the first century, a homeless family in your town, a civil war in Syria, or the threat of more severe famines and droughts in the twenty-first century and beyond, but genuine love is always hard work. It means putting the needs of others, whether you know them or not, before our own comfort level. It means more than telling people on social media that we are "sending thoughts" with no cost to ourselves. And we just may not 'feel' like it. But that is part of how we know it is the Spirit's leading--the Spirit will lead us in directions we never would have guessed for ourselves, and sometimes in directions that are straight out of our comfort zones.
Today, let us commit, you and I, to the hard work of loving in all the places where the Spirit leads.
O Spirit of Life, pull us beyond what we feel like doing, and lead us in your direction--and let our feelings shift as you re-orient us in light of your love for all.
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