Keep It Up--June 14, 2021

Keep It Up--June 14, 2021

"For God is not unjust; he will not overlook your work and the love that you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do." [Hebrews 6:10]

I need to say this, because I need you to know it is true:  what you do matters. And the efforts you make, even just in the course of an ordinary day, to bring goodness, joy, love, and truth into the world through your words and actions and choices, those are beautiful and blessed.  They matter.  They are worthy of being named and celebrated and honored.  And they are not in vain.

Now, I also need to say this next thing, because it is easy to misunderstand that first point.  What you do matters, but not in the sense that your actions are what saves you, and not in the sense that your good deeds rack up "heaven points" while your sinful deeds cost you "demerits" toward some final eternal score tally.  The New Testament has no room for that sort of bean-counting theology, and anyone who says differently is trying to sell you a load of dingo's kidneys. No, no, no, a thousand times no.

And yet... we still need to be able to say that our choices, our actions, and our efforts to show love in this life--they mean something.  And it is worth building your life on showing love--to God, to neighbors, to strangers, to enemies--even though it's not about achieving some post-mortem heavenly high-score.  It matters, because love matters.  It always matters, even if not in the ways we think at first.

This seem especially important to say at a time like this, when it can be so easy to feel like any one of our efforts are futile.  In a time like the last year and half, when so much of our usual connections with others have been strained, it has been easy to feel like nobody else cared, or nobody else was making an effort or saw the worth in the work you were doing. It has felt sometimes like your best attempts to bring light into the world ran headlong into a brick wall of gloom and were swallowed up in shadow.  Sometimes maybe it felt like you were the only one in your circle of coworkers or neighbors willing to go to any trouble to help protect neighbors from sickness.  

Maybe you were the only one willing to risk looking silly or foolish, or to go beyond what was comfortable or convenient in wearing a mask or getting a vaccine or making sure to check on a neighbor who needed some human connection.  Maybe there have been times lately when you felt like the only one who cared when someone else was picked on, or insulted, or belittled, and you wondered if it made any difference to show support and love to the people in the crosshairs  Maybe you have wondered why others in your circles of friends... or family... or <ouch!> church community haven't been upset at the casual racism woven into so much of our common life... or at the indifference toward neighbors struggling with homelessness or addiction or violence and abuse.  Maybe you have been faithful in some ministry of caring, without recognition or fanfare, and you have felt like you were on the verge of burning out, and you have wondered, "Did any of my effort matter?"

If it's any consolation, preachers feel like this a fair amount.  Sometimes we feel like we have done our very best to speak a word from God about the extravagant, persistent love of Jesus, only to feel like we haven't gotten through, or we weren't as clear as we thought we were, when the listening world continues to be as self-centered and hateful as ever.  It's really easy for any of us to wonder, "Does our effort mean anything?"  It's really easy to ask, "Can my attempt to speak love, feeble as it is, be heard at all against all the angry noise around us?"

So the writer of Hebrews wants us to hear--you and me included here--a loud and clear YES.  Yes, your efforts matter.  They are not in vain--even if you can't see the impact they make.  Even if sometimes it seems futile to be a voice of love in a culture that seems hell-bent on finding new way to hate each other.  Even if it is fashionable to ignore unpleasant truths about ourselves, it is worth it to insist on speaking the truth--and demand that it not be banned from being told.  Even it feels lonely to be the only one you know who cares about something, it is worth it to be someone who cares.  Even if you have tried you very best, and your very best efforts still look like failure or disappointment, it is worth it make the effort of love anyway.

And that's because this is precisely the way love works.  A system of points will only care about the outcome of our efforts and whether they are measurably, quantifiably successful or not.  But our efforts to show love matter, whether they look "successful" or not, because that is the nature of love.  So even if you really are the only one speaking up or taking the time or putting forth the effort in some way, your work matters.  It is precious to God... because God loves you.  And because God refuses to let those small actions, simple words, and little choices be lost in the sight of eternity.  They matter.  And so do you.

Please know that today, no matter what else comes, and no matter what other people do or don't do.  What you do to bring goodness and love into the world as a reflection of God's own goodness and love, it matters.  Keep it up.

Lord God, help us to trust that you can take our small and feeble efforts and weave them together into the whole of your Reign of justice and mercy for all.