Strong Enough--September 6, 2023

Strong Enough--September 6, 2023

“As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” [Colossians 3:12-14]

Nobody is saying it is easy. Just that it is worth it.

I’m not usually one to go looking for deep spiritual truths in Will Smith-driven summer blockbusters, but you can learn that lesson from the 1997 hit Men in Black. There’s a scene pretty early on in the movie where Will Smith finds out he has been invited to join an elite—but absolutely top-secret—agency that handles trouble from space-aliens who are living among us on Earth. Like everything in life, the offer has pluses and minuses: if he takes the job and puts on "the last suit you’ll ever wear” (the stylish but non-descript black suit and tie is the uniform of the Men in Black), he will get to see unbelievable sights, do incredible things, and know secrets that most of us poor unknowing schlubs couldn’t dream of. But on the other hand, it will mean leaving behind a whole life, and his old identity—his old job, old interests, old clothes, and old name. Even his fingerprints will have to be erased.

So before he makes the decision (and given that there have been a couple of sequels and now a reboot to the movie, you already know that he decides to do it), Will Smith’s character asks Tommy Lee Jones, a veteran member of the Men in Black, “Is it worth it?” And carefully but confidently, Jones gives his answer, “Oh, yeah, it’s worth it… if you’re strong enough.”

Well, there’s the rub. Putting off the old self (even, like in the movie, literally having your old identity erased from every record or memory) and putting on the new self in Christ is not easy stuff. And it’s not easy precisely because it requires love. And Christ-like love—love for neighbor, stranger, and enemy, as well as for those we are privileged to call sisters and brothers in Christ—is tough stuff.

Not because it requires heroics, mind you. Christ-like love is tough for almost the opposite reason—it requires ordinariness. Paul says we are to clothe ourselves “with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” Those would just be empty words or concepts if they didn’t show up in the little actions, the small but powerful words, the extra bit of attention shown to someone when you were already busy, the willingness to go out of your way or inconvenienced without getting a parade thrown in your honor for doing it. Love—the kind we are clothed with in Jesus—is difficult to practice, because it’s not about cliché, choreographed (and often empty and faux-heroic) gestures like heart-shaped boxes of chocolates or sweeping string music in the background. It’s about the little moments, the details, where compassion is practiced. It’s about the little trespasses being forgiven without drama or a fuss. It’s about small moments of patience, where you are willing to be delayed or put to a bit of trouble or go out of your way, regardless of how you feel about doing it. It is about the small moments of courage when you speak up for someone else, even if you run the risk that others won't like it, or when you call out the casual mean-ness you've heard another would-be follower of Jesus use against someone else. These are moments that come and go, and it is their smallness that makes them challenging--there's usually no fanfare or drum-roll, only the calling to be decent and kind when no one else is looking.

Practicing Christ-like love is hard because it summons us out from the limelight and onto our knees at the water basin, or behind the scenes, or just plain out of notice. That is, of course, the very nature of love, which isn’t all that interested at pointing to itself, but is much more interested in turning toward the other. That will chafe against every instinct in our bodies and spirits, which want to make a mark and leave an impression and get the recognition for all the important “stuff” we do around here. So, yes, it will be hard for us to “clothe ourselves with love”… but it will be worth it.

This conversation—the one we are having right now—is what makes this whole business about “clothing yourself with love” more than just a lovely bit of poetry. We could just have left it at that. We could have just said, “Oh, isn’t it nice to talk about love, and let’s pretend we’re all just draped in love, wrapped up in love, swathed in love…” and never gotten around to actually saying or doing what love really looks like. We need to be clear then in this moment. If we are going to proceed any further in the Christian life—today, or ever—we have to understand it will mean learning the hard work of loving people, in all their (and our!) messy details, at inconvenient times, even when they won’t understand or see what you are doing.

It is hard to take off the old self and put on the new. But is it worth it?

Yeah… it’s worth it. The love of God is strong enough.

Lord God, clothe us with your love, and let it pull us into your mission in the world today.