Rev. Tessie Mandeville
January 28, 2007
Christ Covenant MCC
Decatur, GA 30033
The call of Jesus involves more than acts of charity or gift giving; it involves the transformation of relationships.
Relationships matter. They have potential to bring great joy and great pain. Relationships are those interactions which sharpen us, which call us to the highest ethic, which reach into our very souls and transform us. Relationships come in may forms—relationships with lovers, with husbands, with wives, with friends, with parents, with children, with grandchildren, with ourselves, with God. Each relationship is unique and each one takes time to navigate and to do well.
I believe, and trust that we all believe, that God wants us to be in regular, close relationship with one another so that we can develop the skill of loving. Love cannot be learned in isolation. You have to be around people—irritating, imperfect, frustrating people!
Love must be the foundation of everything we do. As we all know, relationships are wonderful and at the same time, they can be extremely challenging. There’s a popular musical comedy called, “I Love You. You’re perfect. Now Change.” That about sums up what happens to us in relationships sometimes.
Relationships matter . We live in a time that finds so may relationships shattered by anger, greed, selfishness and resentment. The call of Jesus involves more than acts of charity or gift giving; it involves the transformation of relationships.
Often we need to start with transforming our relationship with ourselves. The two biggest commandments in the Jewish and Christian traditions have everything to do with love. We are commanded to love God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our body and all our soul. And we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves. Everything depends on love. I believe it’s easy to think, ‘Well, of course we’re supposed to love God and of course we’re supposed to love our neighbors, but are we really supposed to love ourselves?” I believe Jesus makes it very clear that loving our neighbor is dependent on how well we love ourselves. Perhaps this is why we don’t feel good about the world sometimes and why our local, state, national, and international relationships are fraught with tension, bitterness and war. How in the world can we love our neighbor the way God would have us if we can’t even look in the mirror and love ourselves?
How do we learn to love ourselves? How do we learn to love our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender bodies? How do we learn to love our lean, full, dark, old, young, male, female bodies? It is a journey, often a life-long journey, to learn to love who we are. I think this is true especially for LGBT people. Thich Nhat Hahn, a Buddhist teacher and author, teaches that “to love is first of all to accept yourself as you actually are.” This is probably one of the toughest things to do. We think we need to wait until we get well, or lose weight, or get that new job, or find that special someone before we can accept ourselves.
It seems to me that in order to accept ourselves as we actually are, we have to look in the mirror and face ALL of who we are. Sometimes that means facing ourselves when we’ve done wrong and haven’t lived up to our own standards of behavior. Sometimes that means facing ourselves when we’ve hurt others, intentionally or unintentionally, and taking responsibility for our actions. We can learn to love ourselves as we face the whole truth of ourselves. As we face all of who we are, we learn that no person is all good or all bad.
“You can never love another person unless you are equally involved in the beautiful but difficult spiritual work of learning to love yourself.” We don’t have to be perfect before we can love ourselves. Even when we make mistakes along the way, we can learn to say, “I have made a mistake but I am not a mistake.” We can learn that who we are is not what we have done or not done, what we have or don’t have. Who we are is greater than all these things. Today, in this moment, we can forgive ourselves for forgetting the good that lives in us. Today, in this moment, we can:
Make a vow to love ourselves.
Be gentle in the places where we struggle with ourselves.
Be kind to those parts of ourselves that we reject or judge harshly.
Listen to the truth of who we are.
Learn to see ourselves through the eyes of love and understanding.
Relationships matter. The call of Jesus involves more than acts of charity or gift giving; it involves the transformation of relationships. As we are involved in the beautiful but difficult work of loving ourselves, we also have the task of loving others. This is often easier said than done as evidenced by the saying, “Jesus loves you and I’m trying!”
In both of our sacred scriptures this morning, the people were being taken to task on loving one another. In the gospel story, Luke tells stories of Elijah and Elisha who were sent to people outside the Jewish religion. Part of what he’s doing is laying the groundwork for the story about the Apostle Paul and his missionary work to the whole world of Gentiles. In the gospel story, Jesus’ hometown people loved him until he told them that God’s love extends beyond their own faith and belief system. And then they got angry with him. It seems people of God often become angry when they hear that God loves other people outside of their predetermined boundaries. I believe it’s quite honest to say that we, too, struggle with this at times, especially when we believe that God’s love should be confined to Christians. I grew up as a fundamentalist Christian and I understand that many of us have been taught that God’s love is for us only. But the truth is: God love Christians AND God loves people like Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Pagans, and all others who are doing their best to find their God! Jesus’ prophetic word was that love can break down our walls and boundaries.
Relationships matter . The call of Jesus involves more than acts of charity or gift giving; it involves the transformation of relationships.
The Apostle Paul says there is a more excellent way and as Christians, we are called to live it. Paul goes right to the heart of the problems in our relationships and talks about the things that drive us apart: impatience, unkindness, envy, boasting, arrogance, rudeness, selfishness, irritability, resentment, deliberate wrongdoing, deceit and dishonesty. He states his conviction that love can overcome all that seeks to separate us from one another.
Things happen in our relationships that make it possible to drive up walls of separation between us. Sharpe’s Law of Inevitable Conflict says that, “Wherever two or three are gathered, there shall be a fuss.” It’s only natural that we are going to find ourselves up against the walls of conflict sometimes, but the question is, “What do we do when communication breaks down and hostility rises up to drive a wedge between us?” Jesus says we work toward reconciliation and in fact, reconciliation is so important that Jesus tells us to stop in the act of worshipping if we remember that we need to be reconciled to someone. He says: If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Note that Jesus doesn’t say we should make a mental note to reconcile later. He says we should stop, then and there, during worship and be reconciled before we continue to worship.
This teaching reminds us that it’s important that we make the first move instead of waiting for the other person. Sometimes this is the most difficult step to make but somebody has to stop the cycle of hatred and resentment. Somebody must stop the cycle of hurt repaid by hurt, wrong repaid by wrong, hatred repaid by hatred, and injury repaid by injury. There is a more excellent way, and as Christians, we are called to live it.
A man approached Mother Teresa and said, “Mother, I want to do something great for God, but I don’t know what. Should I start a school? Be a missionary in a foreign land, build a charitable agency?” He had great visions. Mother Teresa looked at him closely, with kindness, and responded: “What you need to do is make sure no one in your family goes unloved.”
The call of Jesus involves more than acts of charity or gift giving; it involves the transformation of relationships. Often we need to start by transforming the relationship we have with ourselves. As we are involved in the beautiful but difficult work of loving ourselves, we also have the task of loving others.
My deepest prayer for us in our time of New Beginnings is this:
That the Love which overcomes all differences,
Which heals all wounds,
Which puts to flight all fears,
Which reconciles all who are separated,
Be in us and among us
Now and always.
Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life
Thich Nhat Hahn, Teachings on Love, p. 30
John O’Donahue, Anam Cara
Adapted from A Season of Non-Violence
Matthew 5:23, New Testament Bible
Frederick E. Gillis, Singing the Living Tradition
Copyright © 2007 by Rev. Tessie Mandeville. Permission granted for non- profit circulation with attribution of author and venue. Other rights reserved
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