Love Makes Room--November 21, 2022

Love Makes Room--November 21, 2022

"Love does not insist on its own way..." [1 Corinthians 13:5]

I think this might actually be both the hardest thing about love, and the most beautiful at the same time.  Love isn't about control or coercion; it's about seeking the good of the beloved.  And sometimes what I think you should have or want or do turns out to be close to what you actually know you need... but sometimes, my wishes or agendas don't line up with what is genuinely in your interest.  But love has to be able to get over itself and admit that maybe we don't know what's best for everybody else all the time... and that maybe our calling is to make room for the needs and good of others, even if it's not what we would have picked or chosen.

That's just it: love makes room.  It makes room for other people at the table.  It makes room for people who think differently.  It makes room for seeking the good of others even if that doesn't mean a direct benefit for "Me-and-My-Group."  Love is brave enough to be humble, and humble enough not to pretend it sees all and knows all.  And that means love keeps on creating safe places where people who think, act, live, and love differently can do more than merely survive, but to thrive. Love summons up the courage and strength to say, "Here's what I would choose, but I can live with things not going my way, and I will still seek the good of all anyway, even if I don't get my way."  In a time like ours when so many resort to scorched-earth tactics rather than find some way to work together, that kind of love is a hard sell.

So much of the public discourse around us these days is no longer framed in terms of "What will be good for all of us?" but rather, "What will be advantageous for MY side?" or even worse, "What will harm the OTHER side more, so that MY side can get more power and position in the next election cycle?"  So much of the way we are trained to think and talk about issues makes everything into a zero-sum game, where your win is my loss, and my success means your failure.  And once we've accepted those terms, it becomes almost impossible to truly seek someone else's benefit--because we'll see it as a direct threat to our own advantages.

Even more heartbreaking in these days is how easily we let ourselves be goaded from, "We think differently on this subject," to "You who don't agree with me are now targets for violence."  It is one thing to be able to name differences of opinion, conviction, or deeply held beliefs.  It is entirely another thing to say, "Your disagreements are such a threat to me that I can use violence or threats to get rid of you."  And yet... here we are, coming through another weekend with multiple mass-shootings in our country, with so many more in the rear-view mirror that we have lost count and lost track, and so many of them boil down to a belief that some people are not worthy of life because someone with a gun decides "those people" are too different... and therefore unacceptable.  While the details and motives of the shooting in Colorado are still being investigated, it certainly brings back memories of the shooting in Buffalo, New York back in May, in which the gunman targeted Black shoppers at a grocery store because he felt threatened by their "other-ness."  Or the shooting in El Paso, Texas in 2019, where again, a gunman felt so threatened by other ethnic and racial groups that he believed he was justified in targeting them because they weren't like him.  Or the Christchurch mosque shootings earlier that same year in New Zealand. Or the time before that... or the time before that.

We are awash in violence, and what's worse is that so often the terrible logic behind the violence is, "I was attacking people who are opposed to my way of doing things--and therefore I decided they were expendable, or actual threats to me and my way."  And all too often, the folks pulling the triggers claim to have some kind of faith in the God we know in Jesus.  So often, the violence is committed [or condoned] by people who fear difference and think that the "other-ness" of their targets is a threat to Jesus.  In fact, all too often, it is voices who publicly name the name of Jesus who insist that it is their faith as "Christians" that convinces them everyone needs to be like them, think like them, and act like them--and how easily that becomes a license to get rid of anybody who is outside those lines.

And again, here are Paul's plain words:  Love does not insist on its own way.  The real travesty is how folks who name the name of Jesus so easily forget the love of Jesus, which doesn't demand its own way, but rather makes room even for those who do not share that way.  The terrible reality is how easy it is for people who are really afraid of losing their comfortable positions to use that fear to justify attacking people they see as threats, when Jesus doesn't respond to hostility that way at all.  There's a reason that nobody wears a bracelet or t-shirt that says, "Who would Jesus shoot?"--because there's never anybody whom Jesus would target.  There's never a point where Jesus gets so insecure about people not sharing his way of life that he feels justified in attacking the ones who don't follow him.  That's because, as Paul puts it so well, love doesn't insist on its own way.  Love is willing to make room for difference rather than enforcing uniformity. And as hard as that is for us to accept and live out, that kind of love makes a beautiful and good life possible.

Today, we are given a chance to say a clear and resounding "No" to the impulse out there to attack anybody who doesn't fit your mold.   We are given the chance to support, stand with, and advocate for folks who are feeling really scared and threatened today.  We are given the chance to say "Yes" to the love of God, which doesn't insist on its own way, but makes room for us, where we are... and as we are.

Lord God, give us the courage and humility to love others in ways that make room for difference.