Love that is unconditional, unbreakable, and unstoppable

Ruth 1

            In our reading today, I would hazard to guess that every farmer only heard “They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest,” at which point every one of you started thinking about what you need to be getting ready in the next few weeks. This isn’t bad, actually. The book of Ruth is a story about fullness and emptiness; it’s about a great revolution—barrenness into new birth, bitterness into joy, death into new life.

            Given all that, it’s also not surprising that this is a story about a couple of women. As you all probably know, women are badly underrepresented in the Bible, so when they do appear it tends to be pretty important that we pay attention. I mean, if their story was important enough to make it through all the men making all these edits and decisions about what made it into the Bible, then it must really be important.

*          *          *

            For most of us, there are two verses in Ruth that are familiar, and they appear here in the first chapter.

‘Do not press me to leave you
   or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
   where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
   and your God my God.
¹⁷ Where you die, I will die—
   there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
   and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!’ 

The Eighth Commandment, In Practice.

My favorite line in Martin Luther’s Small Catechism is his explanation to the 8^th Commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” Under the heading—What does this mean?—he writes, “We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations.” Fair enough, good start, but here’s the kicker: he concludes, “Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.”

            That last part is so brilliant and so hard: Interpret everything that others do in the best possible light. The church, by which I mean the people in the church (because what else is the church, really?), is terrible at this. We love our doctrine. We hold tight to the things we believe, and we, no doubt, have good reason for believing these things. Whether informed by scripture, or tradition, or reason, or experience, the things we believe are important. Theology helps us put together a better picture of God for the world to see. It helps us to say, “This is of God,” and “This is not.”

            Furthermore, our practices matter. Ritual matters. Every church has rituals—even the ones who think they don’t. Whether our ritual involves dressing up in funny robes on Sunday morning, candles and incense, potluck meals, long-form prayers, altar calls, communion, testimonials, standing up and sitting down, praise bands, organ, putting our hands in the air, or you name it, these rituals can connect us with God. In fact, anything done mindfully can connect us with God, and especially, those things done mindfully in a community. Pay attention, and you will see the ripples of the Holy Spirit moving in the midst of people gathered in God’s name. Our practices create space for this to happen.

            So, doctrine matters and ritual matters, but it’s obvious to anybody, whether outside or inside the church, that Christians don’t always agree on these things. Sometimes, we even disagree on things that some might consider essential for the faith. This can be difficult. But, let me remind you, we are not the ones saving anybody here. I hope we can agree on that: As Christians, we proclaim that Jesus is our Savior because of what he did on the cross. So, where we disagree on doctrine and practice, let us agree on one thing: Let us love as God loves us.

            Now, having said that, we probably do all agree with that, in principle. The problem comes when we start defining sin, and what is good, and what is bad, etc. We don’t agree on how to love. I’m not naïve to think that all of us agreeing to love means we’ll agree how that looks in practice.

So, rather than agreeing to love the same, can we at least agree to Luther’s explanation to the 8^th commandment? When we don’t agree with our neighbors, can we agree, especially then, to come to their defense? When we don’t understand our neighbors’ beliefs, can we attempt to put them in the best possible light? When we believe our neighbors are dead wrong, can we speak well of them, nonetheless?

            We aren’t the gatekeepers. In fact, I don’t believe there’s a gate for us to keep, but that’s just my belief. Take it as you may. I just hope you might try to see that belief in the best possible light, as I try to do the same with yours.

The Gathering: There's Grace for that, and hope for what comes next

1 John 1:5-10, 2:1-6

            “My little children,” writes John, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.”

            My honest first thought reading that verse? “Good luck with that, John!” The one constant in the universe is sin. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to be better; we really should—and do. I just spent a week with a bunch of high-schoolers and, let me tell you, we do our darndest to provide the boundaries they need to not do anything particularly stupid while we are in charge of them. We do this because we care for them, because we believe that on their own they will sometimes make poor choices, and, also, because we like not being sued. But, at the end of the day, all we are really doing is forcing them within boundaries to keep them safe. They aren’t choosing of their own free will not to sin; we just try to keep it from them. Given true freedom we know what they might do, and we also know that they will eventually spread their wings and, like Icarus, they may very well crash and burn. I think that’s called college.

            On the 3^rd night of the Gathering we heard from Pr. Will Starkweather, who talked about his experience with cutting himself, starting in high school. This was one of many speakers who spoke on difficult, challenging subjects that directly impact the lives of our young people. Will talked about the first time he was honest with a spiritual leader about his problems, and the pastor told him four words: “You are going to hell.”

            That is the law, friends. That is where that first verse in 1 John 2 seems to be leading us. Don’t sin. Or else. I’ve heard this kind of self-righteous blathering from pastors before. I’ve heard pastors who get up at funerals and talk about how the person who died might have been saved if only he had done X, Y, or Z—if only he had been a better person, if only she had been a better follower of Jesus; if only they would have chosen to follow. I’ve heard this stuff before.

            Miraculously, Will came back to the church—a different church, obviously, because if you go to a pastor with a spiritual problem and he tells you you’re going to hell, then you find a new pastor—and Will eventually confided in a second pastor. You can imagine the anxiety this would induce in a person who was already suffering for something whose root cause ran parallel to anxiety. He went to his pastor, shared his story, and she responded with four different words, “There’s grace for that.” Four words that changed everything.