At first I thought what an odd notion. “Worthy of our prayers.” I pray for Mark and Frank almost every day in the daily office I hope you do as well–but not because I think they are worthy. I never think of it as honoring them. I pray for them because they need prayer, since they have very hard jobs. I have a good old friend, really bright man – I think Mary Clare might know him too –he’s being considered for Presiding Bishop this summer, and I’m hoping he does not get elected. Honestly. He’d be wonderful for the Church. Best choice by a wide margin. But I like him. So I don’t want him to “win.”
But I thought about our visitor. And I realized – if I were new, and came here and heard Fr Platt or myself saying or singing this list of names during the intercessions, that list of names might sound like an honor role. So I just explained that prayer never means we are approving someone, or affirming their actions, or honoring them. In fact it could mean almost the opposite. What it does mean is we think they need it. Not that they are worthy.
A young person used to be one of my spiritual directees. One day long ago she had decided to work seriously on the Ten Commandments. Now most people when they do that stumble on lying or theft or adultery or murder. But my friend stumbled on “honor your father and mother.” She said, I cant do that. They were not people I can honor. They abused me, and I don’t honor them. In fact I do not love them.
She knew she was supposed to love her parents. But she didn’t and she couldn’t and in fact she said it would be wrong to love them and she knew it.
She, and the visitor, are emblems of a very real problem for anyone who takes the Gospel seriously.
You’re supposed to love your enemies. How can you possibly love those who wish you harm?
You’re supposed to love one another. What is that supposed to mean?
You’re supposed to love God. Now right now, be honest with yourself. Who is the person in the world you love best? I would guess that the answer is not God.
I believe everyone who gets a little further into our faith than the man who wrote the question sooner or later discovers this problem. I have heard many people say so. “I don’t feel any love for my parents or my fellow Christians, or my enemies, or my God. I must be missing the mark.”
Part of problem is just that word love. As I say over and over through the years, we can say I love my job I love my dog I love my church I love my spouse or partner I love God I love my best friend, and use the same word and still make sense. But in the language of the New Testament, those would have been five different words.
But the deeper answer lies the portion of Holy Scripture we hear today.
In fact, I almost always take that person to today’s passage from Gospel of John. Love, mentioned 10 times in 9 lines. At first looks a bit sentimental.
But the Fourth Gospel does this often. At first reading, every time, it seems simple, and perhaps a little obvious, and perhaps a little sentimental. Like John the disciple is so often portrayed in pictures. But take a second look, and it starts to astonish you, how much really is there! So let’s take that second look.
Jesus says, “This is my commandment: love one another. Think about it. How can he do that? How anyone command love? No one not even God can. Not if love means have warm, feelings about, or approve of, or be attracted to. Not if love means the 3 things my Webster’s says it means: 1 strong affection 2 sexual attraction 3 admiration. You cannot command those things. Way down on the list in my dictionary–because low on most peoples’ priority list–is this: “benevolent concern for the welfare of another.” Obviously that’s what the Gospel is talking about: as St Thomas says, there are in the final analysis two kinds of love: the craving to possess, and the wish to bestow. The Gospel today takes this to its nth degree: Jesus equates love at its extreme with giving ones life–greater love no one has than this, to give up the soul for one’s loved ones.
Again at first this too looks obvious enough. But read it again, and it raises tough questions:
1. Raises question: how? The key there is “as I have loved you.” How, exactly, did Jesus love those disciples? If you think for one moment he went about with them patting them on the head and saying there there, you had best return to your Gospels and actually read them through. He offers solace to the sick etc—but to the disciples, he offers no such thing. He loves them by challenging them. And of course by dying for them. Peter Abelard puts it very strikingly: Christ clothed himself in our humanity, so that we could follow his adventures in the flesh, which ended with his fight to the death, which is where he showed that no one loves more than the one who gives up the soul for loved ones.
2. Raises question: what? Feelings simply cannot be commanded. So they cannot be the what. But now let’s see. What kinds of things can we order one another to do?
Form a line on the right. Give pedestrians the right of way. Lend me your ears. Lift up your hearts.
What do those different things have in common: They are all actions. Love starts in the heart and moves through the will: Thomas says it’s the kick-back we feel when we want to do something good. Something we do, not something that happens to us. Love is an event, and we make it happen. In short love is a verb. That is a cliché. But like most clichés it’s a cliché because it’s also a fact.
3. Raises question: whom? For whom would you even consider sacrificing your life? For whom would you even think about giving your life? Child? Spouse? Loved one? Parent? Dearest friend?
The size of Christ’s love meant, he would do for anyone what we would do for that small circle of dear ones.
Of course we’re not there. Key now is baby steps. Look at Christians in Acts. They heard the prophecy that there would be a famine so they took up a collection, just as we do. Baby steps compared with what Jesus had done. But baby steps are great things when they head in the right direction. You see, all of us know about self-giving love. We know what it is, how it feels, and how to do it. Because we have all had spouses, partners, boyfriends or girlfriends, parents, children, good friends, teachers, loved ones of all kinds that we have sacrificed for. And even jobs we have fallen in love with, hobbies we love, causes, arts. All of this is self-giving love.
Our problem is with the circle. Our circles have far too short a diameter. Baby step by baby step, stretch that diameter.
So it doesn’t mean at all what many take it to and what always I think when I read it again: go around feeling something good about other people. I have known a couple of people like that, conspicuous saints or complete fools. And I envy them deeply.
And finally, our prayers for are steps in love. Baby steps, gain, but very important ones and definitely steps in the right direction.
I most assuredly am praying for Frank Griswold these days. In fact was proofing the ENY this week and I saw his name and it reminded me of something. It made me think about something that happened to me a few years ago.
I was giving a diocesan retreat in a remote diocese. It went very well, we talked all day about meditating and using icons and things such as that. That what I was called there to do. But when it was all over, their bishop pulled me aside and said let’s grab a soda. Now I in fact really wanted a soda, nothing stronger, because I had been working all day and I was parched. And I had been impressed all day with him all day–because he indeed was there for the whole event, participating, answering the questions, getting into things, trying things out. Not every diocesan would do that. So I gladly agreed, and we went off to his very peaceful office. He told me he was very upset over the Bishop Robinson matter. Not because he disagreed, which he did and he knew I didn’t. And he wasn’t mad at Gene Robinson. He was mad at Frank Griswold. The PB had made his life almost impossible. Here this Bp was, in this remote and sprawling diocese, where he sometimes traveled a hundred miles alone on a Sunday morning to visit his congregations, amidst the most conservative red state parishes you can find in the Episcopal Church. What was he supposed to tell all those communicants? He was mad at Frank. He even, if you used ordinary terms, hated him. What was he supposed to do.
I asked, don’t you think Frank knows this? You are hurting right now. So is he. Worse. He is in pain. There isn’t a thing I can say to you to change your mind that you have not thought of, nor vice versa. And Frank has thought of all this and more. Either way he knew people were going to be very very angry with him. And I know him and what is dearest to his heart is just the kind of day we spent. He’s a very contemplative man. He would like to be remembered as the PB who got everyone in the Church saying the daily office or doing meditation or taking retreats. But no. But he is going to be known for this issue. Because he had to do what he saw as just and right.
So you may be angry with him right now. And you may not consider him worthy at this moment You may not honor him as I do. But there is something you must do. I want to answer your question with a straight answer. You asked me “what am I supposed to do?”
You are supposed to love him. Christ says so, in the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of Love. You have to love Frank. You must pray for him. And you should say the same to anybody who challenges you about Frank Griswold. That is what he needs. Actually, he really is worthy of your prayers, no matter what you think right now.
I just found out a few weeks ago, I may be returning to that diocese. That Bishop, who is a healthy and vigorous type, is God willing going to be there. I think I would make the trip just to see him. Because I want to ask him. How did the prayer for Frank work?
I know what answer I hope for and pray for. Because whenever I pray for those whom I think cannot love, I get healed. I discover that St Thomas is right as usual when he says the prayer you find hard to pray is more powerful. When I pray for my friends God sometimes says yes and they get healed. But when I pray for those who wish me harm I get healed–not sometimes, always. Because blood heals. And as the Bishop of Antioch said love is the circulatory system of the Body of Christ.
