Choose Love.
March 10, 2024 + Faith-Lilac Way + Pastor Pamela Stalheim Lane
A young woman walked into a fabric shop, went to the counter and asked the owner for some noisy, rustling material. The owner found two such bolts of fabric but was rather puzzled at the young lady’s motives. Why would anyone want several yards of noisy material? Finally, the owner’s curiosity got the best of him and he asked the young lady why she particularly wanted noisy cloth.
She answered, “I am making a wedding gown and my fiancé is blind. When I walk down the aisle, I want him to know when I’ve arrived at the altar so he won’t be embarrassed.” 1
That’s love. Most brides-to-be look for a wedding gown that will make them look fabulous as they walk down the aisle. At this point in the ceremony - all eyes are on the bride. But this bride, in choosing to make a noisy dress, wanted all EARS to be on her – especially the ears of her future husband and so she found a way to include him. Love includes – it never excludes.
Our Gospel is about love; God’s love for the whole world. The Greek word for world is cosmos. God loves the whole cosmos. When I hear “cosmos”, my image of the world explodes to be so much bigger than I had imagined before. God’s love is so much bigger than ours and God’s love includes the whole world, the whole cosmos.
These words also inspired a black leader, Mary MacLeod Bethune (1875-1955) who grew up in the Jim Crow South. She wrote,
“With these words the scales fell from my eyes and the light came flooding in. My sense of inferiority, my fear of handicaps, dropped away. “Whosoever,” it said. No Jew nor Gentile, no Catholic nor Protestant, no black nor white; just “whosoever.” It means that I, a humble Negro girl, had just as much chance as anybody in the sight and love of God.
These words stored up a battery of faith and confidence and determination in my heart, which has not failed me to this day.2
God sent his only begotten son, Jesus, into our world, to our planet, to walk the dusty roads of Judea out of God’s great love for us – all of us – to save us. Jesus came not to condemn but to save. That’s love. That’s God’s love, a love that includes Every Body.
In a time in which there are so many divisions in our world, and at a time in which the political atmosphere has gotten especially mean-spirited, it is important for us as Christians to remember that God loves – the whole world, the cosmos. And, as one faith leader wrote, “If God didn’t send Jesus to condemn the world, then we aren’t called to condemn the world either.”3 Or our neighbor. Or the one who votes differently than you do. Or the one who looks differently from you.
Because of God’s great love, God sent Jesus to love and to save you and me and the people down the street and across the world. God also gave you and me and our neighbors down the street and across the world the freedom to choose how you will respond to the love of God. You can respond in love for God and for neighbor. Or… you can turn away.
To help him – and us – understand, Jesus points Nicodemus to a story in the book of Numbers about the Israelites wandering in the desert after their exodus from Egypt and before they get to the promised land. It is one of the many stories in which the people of God grow tired and weary of the journey, tired of Moses and tired of following God. So, they turned away from God.
Now this is not the way that I think of God as acting, but the scripture says the Lord sent poisonous snakes on the people. I guess he wanted to get their attention. And he did. Because the people turned back and begged Moses to pray to God to save them. In the past, when the people got impatient at the lack of food or water and they complained to Moses, God responded by sending manna and quails for them to eat and telling Moses to strike a rock to get water. But this time, instead of just getting rid of the snakes or taking away the venom, God tells Moses to make a snake – the same kind of a snake that was killing them – and ask the people to look up at the snake and be healed.
Look up and live! The task was not hard. But some refused. They did not want to look up at a snake, the embodiment of death and destruction, an image of the one who had killed their loved ones. Some may have said, with conviction, that they would rather die than look to a snake for healing… And so they did. It was their choice. God loved them so much he sent a serpent to save them…and some looked up. Others looked away… and they died.
I wonder if by asking the people in the wilderness to simply “look up,” God wants to be more than a fix-it God who people call in times of trouble. Instead, God, then and now, God wants a relationship with you and you and you and all people. And, as our response, Jesus tells us to love one another as he loves us.
But… God is not going to force you. God gives you freedom on how you respond. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit is whispering, “Choose LOVE. Choose life-giving love. Choose Christ’s way.
And yet, God lets us make choices. You can decide that you don’t need to be saved and that you don’t need anyone’s help, that you know best. Unfortunately for us, we then have to live with those choices.
Philip was a little child when his father died and he never really knew the story of what happened – until one day when he was up in the family attic looking at old pictures with his fiancé. They ran across an old newspaper clipping that told the story. Apparently, his parents had planned to be missionaries but just before they were to leave, his father got sick and was hospitalized. His father was a man of faith – but he was so sure that God would heal him. After all, he was giving his whole life to God as a missionary. Surely if he had God, he did not need any doctors. So, he checked himself out of the hospital. He died two weeks later. That was a costly decision. Somehow, he didn’t realize those doctors were the hands of God for him.
The good news is that God keeps loving us and inviting us to look up and live – even when we make choices that are harmful to ourselves or to others or to the environment or to our world. God has not changed God’s message: For God so loved the Cosmos – the whole world that God created – that God GAVE His Son so that ALL may come to believe in him.
God’s hand stretches beyond time and space – and God is still holding out God’s hand and saying to each one of you: come and be with me. God is not saying: “if you say these words and fulfill the requirements on the syllibus then I will love you; then I will save you.” Instead, God says, “I love you. I will always love you… and I will always love the one you call “other.”
It’s hard. Because God calls us to love George Floyd AND the former police officer Derek Chauven who leaned on George’s neck until he died. We want to choose sides. But God doesn’t. God simply loves the whole Cosmos – both those who love him and those who do not. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us choose love. Amen.
1The Remedy: Look, Lift Up, and Live The Rev. Dr. William E. Flippin, Jr. https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/65d5dcc16615fb2e210000ec/the-remedy-look-lift-up-and-live
2 Quote within the Working Preacher commentary by Alicia Vargas for March 10, 2024.
3From: Dr. Lisa Hancock, Director of Worship Arts Ministries, https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship-planning/depths-of-love/fourth-sunday-in-lent-year-b-lectionary-planning-notes?mc_cid=6f7be18551&mc_eid=a3937aa764