THE LOVE BURNING DEEP

(Romans 13.8-10)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 23 Sunday of Ordinary Time: September 7, 2008
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Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you
love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code –
don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what
isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you
can think of – finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself.
You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law
code, the sum total is love.
(Romans 13.8-10, The Message © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001,
2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing
Group)

Last Wednesday morning I got together with a United Church of Christ pastor
in Seattle to talk about the Bible readings assigned for this Sunday. For a long time
I’ve wanted to have a conversation partner to discuss Bible passages with. I’m
grateful he’s interested in doing that as well.

So Wednesday morning we drank coffee and ate coffee cake and talked about
the reading from Romans that Dick just read. Both of us were struck by what Paul
says about love. Love so extravagantly that people can never pay you back for all
the love you give. And receive love so graciously that you can never pay back all
the love others give you. Owe love to each other. That’s what it means to follow
Jesus. That’s what it means to live what we say we believe. Live love.

When I think about living the love of Jesus, I think of Father Henri Nouwen.
Nouwen says this about love: love creates a free and fearless space for people to be
authentically themselves; love transforms hostility to community; love offers food,
comfort, warmth, friendship, and strength (paraphrased from his book Reaching
Out). That is how Jesus lived. That the deep love he wants us our lives to burn with.

Love creates a free and fearless space for people to be authentically

themselves; love transforms hostility to community; love offers food, comfort,
warmth, friendship, and strength.

At the end of our time together, I biked off to my job at the Recovery Café.
And I decided to try to show that kind of love to the people I came across at the
Café that day. I think I did all right with that.
 But Wednesday night was a different story entirely. On a scale of one to ten
measuring How well did Dave live the love of Christ?, I think I’d give myself a
negative six.

I biked home from the Café quickly last Wednesday night because I wanted to
hear Governor Sara Palin’s speech at the Republican National Convention. I
microwaved a leftover burrito, threw together a quick salad, went to the den, and
turned on the TV. Mayor Giuliani was still speaking, so I listened to him. And then I
listened to Governor Palin. As I listened to both of them speak, and I watched how
the crowd was responding . . . I found myself getting more and more upset. Then I
moved to anger. And then I realized I had crossed over into that dangerous place of
hatred. But I found myself hating not only what I was hearing. I found myself
hating the people who were saying these words, and the people who were
responding to them with such unbridled joy.

I feel ashamed of this hatred toward other people. Especially during a week
when I was writing a sermon about love.

I feel ashamed because those toward whom I felt hatred are as surely God’s
children as you and I. Just nine hours earlier, in the cocoon of my dining room, I had
been talking with my friend about creating a free and fearless space for people to
be authentically themselves. And transforming hostility to community. Loving
didn’t feel so hard that morning.

Nine hours later, I was creating anything but a free and fearless space for my
brothers and sisters to be authentically themselves. Far from transforming hostility
to community, I felt like I had nothing in common with the people I was watching
and listening to.

By the time my partner Peter came home an hour after I’d turned the TV off,
all I felt was very, very sad. Because I felt like there was this huge chasm between
me and so many people in this country. I am a Christian pastor, for God’s sake. I
talk so confidently about how all people are united in Christ. I talk about how we’re
all one because Christ tears down the walls we build to separate ourselves from
each other. I sing, In Christ there is no east or west, in Christ no south or north, but
one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth. I believe the Spirit of
Christ connects us to each other with a love that is stronger than any other force.
Especially hate.

I know my hatred wasn’t just a partisan thing. During the Democratic

convention, too, I found myself getting upset. I hated hearing Senator Barack
Obama talk about “tracking down Osama bin Laden and taking him out”. As if
responsible foreign policy comes out of a script for “The Bourne Supremacy”. And I
felt myself cringe every time someone would come to the end of a speech. Because
I knew they were going to say, “God bless the United States of America.” Which is
all well and good, because our country needs God’s blessing. But then they’d stop.
When more than anything I wanted them to add, “And God bless all of the peoples
of this world.” Because I believe we too easily can come to believe God loves our
country more than anyplace else. And we in this country can too easily believe
whatever we do to any other country is God’s will. Other governments believe that
too. It’s just that our arrogance does so much more damage, because we are so
much more powerful.

In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul quotes Psalm 4: “In your anger do
not sin” (Ephesians 4.26). Wednesday night, I felt like I’d crossed the line from
anger to sin.
So I went to bed Wednesday night far from the love I knew I had to preach about
this morning. Far from feeling the love of Christ. There was no love of Christ
burning deep in me.

(As this point the church pianist sang “The Love Burning Deep”, words by Kathy
Gallaway, music by E. Sands, OCP Publications)

Come out of the darkness, come out of the shadow, come out of the endless
night,
all you who are poor now, all you who are broken, all you who are bowed by
fight.
Come into the light of God’s sacred intention, come under the shelter of Her
hand;
here you may find riches, here you may find healing, here now you may rise
and stand.

Come out of your prisons, come out from your ghettoes, come out from
behind your walls.
Leave all your distinctions, leave all your derisions, and answer Her when She
calls.
For She is your end as She was your beginning, She is the desire of all your
days,
in Her love is fullness, in Her love is wholeness, holy will be all Her ways.

No more will you rest now, no more take your ease now, no more let your life
go by;
always you will seek Her, forever desire Her until the day you die.
Her love will consume you, blazing deep within you, burning away all that is
not true,
until you embrace Her, in flesh and in spirit holy you and wholly you.

In one hand, I hold the hatred I felt earlier this week. In the other hand, I try
to hold the gift of these words. I try to imagine Jesus holding both the hatred and
the gift with me. I try to hear what he is trying to say to me through each of
them. Through the hatred and through the blazing fire that is the furthest thing
from hatred. Because it is God’s love burning deep, burning away all in me that is
not true.

And I realize something. While anger is a human response when we feel like
something we value is being threatened, I think the intensity of my anger comes
from fear. I fear the blazing love of God that burns away everything in me that is
not true. God may have dreams for me that are very different from my own. And if
I keep stoking the fire of my fears, maybe I can keep God’s love and God’s dreams
at a distance.

So it’s safer to keep that love of God that wants to burn deep kind of sputter
on the surface instead. Safer to keep my hands closed. Or filled with frustration,
anger . . . even hatred at times. Safer to keep my hands filled with books and
groceries and to-do lists and puzzle pieces. Safer to keep my hands on my
computer keyboard or my guitar strings or the telephone . . . safer to fill my hands
with what I know helps me show the kind of love I want to show and show love to
whom I want to show it . . . safer to keep my hands full than to go through life with
empty, open hands that God can drop something into that scares me to death.

What if I walk around with empty hands . . . and God drops into them some
summons to love that turns my life upside-down? What if God drops something into
my empty hand that calls out of me a love that is more than I have? More than I
want to give?

If I resist God’s blazing-deep-within-me fire, then I can stay in safe control of

my life. And be happily moderate. At-ease in my upper-middle-class life. At-peace
with a standard of living 90% of my sisters and brothers only dream of. If they can
even imagine it.

But while I fear this blazing-deep-within-me fire of God, I yearn for it. I feel
like and hope and joy when I hear God’s promise:

No more take your ease now, no more let your life go by . . .

Her love will consume you, blaze deep within you
burning away all this is not true,
until you embrace her, in flesh and in spirit holy you and wholly you.

I cannot have the life I hunger for – the life God dreams for me – unless I surrender
to Her burning fire.

I open my hands. This week they were filled with hatred. And God’s burning-
deep-within-me love took that hatred. And began to transform it. God hasn’t taken
it away. She created us to feel intensely in the face of things that we believe are
wrong. Because She knows intense passion can help build the Kingdom. If we allow
Her to transform that passion into a blazing love. She has taken most of the hatred
from my hand. And helped me see how fear fans its flames.
 So God is inviting me into that fear. Not to be at-rest in the fear. Not to be at-
ease. But actively to be with this fear I have of discovering a dream God has for me
that I cannot imagine being able to fulfill. God invites me to enter into that fear
with Christ. So God might take this fear from my hand. And transform it into an
equally passionate love. Thereby emptying the hand that once held my hatred.
Giving me an empty hand, open to her dreams. While she transforms my fear.
Transform my fear into life. Into courage. Into a freedom from fear. So I might
embrace this burning, loving God. Who dreams wild dreams for me. Who wants to
make me holy. Who wants to make me whole.

What does God’s burning-deep-within-you love hope to do in you?