Lenten Message, March 10, 2010,
by Anne Monson McNaughton
A reading from 1 John 4: 7-8
"Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love"
I'm not sure why Pastor Julie asked a Norwegian to give a message about love. I mean, what were you thinking? Well, this reminds me of the Norwegian farmer that loved his wife so much... he almost told her!
I began thinking how culture affects how we view God. Norwegians, if we generalize, are known to be a very stoic, nondemonstrative group. A group that is slow to accept praise, and quick to accept hardships while trying to find a way that the situation could be worse. Therefore, doesn't it make sense that our culture and environment would affect how we view God and affect our ability to accept God's love? When I was growing up, I know I viewed the cross as a symbol of God saving us from our sins, that we were so sinful, God sent Jesus to die for us to save us from our sins. But I think I completely missed the mark, because of my cultural influence. I was focusing on how sinful I was rather than how loved I am by God. I have come to view the cross as a sign of God's unbelievable love for us. A sign, that to me says, we are so loved by God, that God would do absolutely anything for us and that God would do anything to get the message to us ...that God loves us!
When Bishop Rogness spoke to us in February, he brought up the point that the Devine is present in other religions. I totally agree. After all, God loves us all....not just the Norwegians, not just the Lutherans... God loves us all. Because we are culturally different, doesn't it make sense that God would send every possible way for us to receive his message of love?
So, let's talk about love. Love is a much written about emotion. I could easily recite famous poetry, Shakespearean sonnets, and part of Paul's letter to the Corinthians in talking about love, but due to time constraints, I won't. However, I do want to talk about love's ability to change lives, love's power over hate and my personal experience with love.
First, love has the ability to transforms lives. No matter what has happened, when we let love enter our hearts, it changes us. Numerous books, movies, plays, and songs present love's transforming power. It doesn't matter if the story being told is a work of fiction or not, the transforming power is there. Here are a few of my favorite stories:
In Dr. Seuss', How the Grinch Stole Christmas, it is easy to see the Grinch completely changes when he lets love in his heart, his heart grows 3 sizes!! In Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is given the opportunity to look back on his life and remember love. When he accepts this love, his life is completely changed. Scrooge vows to keep love alive in his heart every day of the year. Dickens reminds us that it is never too late to love and what a difference it makes.
In Victor Hugo's Les Miserable, Jean Valjean is able to exchange a life of hatred and revenge for a life filled with love and redemption. Valjean spent 19 years in prison which left him bitter and angry. It is only after an encounter with a kind clergyman, Valjean is given the opportunity to change his life. He learns he is loved by God and the power that love has on him, changes his life forever, which in turn changes the lives of others. So, love certainly does transform lives.
Here is a second point I want to discuss about love, love is more powerful than hate. In Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, he talks about his experience in Nazi death camps during WWII. Frankl spent three years in four different concentration camps, including Auschwitz. He details what life was like for him and others in the camps. Here is one just one example of the physical hardships he endured:
"My legs were so swollen and the skin on them so tightly stretched that I could scarcely bend my knees. I had to leave my shoes unlaced in order to make them fit my swollen feet. There would not have been space for socks even if I had had any. So my partly bare feet were always wet and my shoes always full of snow. This, of course, caused frostbite. Every single step became real torture. Clumps of ice formed on our shoes during our marches over snow-covered fields. Over and again men slipped, and those following behind, stumbled on top of them. Then the column would stop for a moment, but not for long. One of the guards soon took action and worked over the men with the butt of his rifle to make them get up quickly."
In the midst of these physical hardships, starvation and the other unimaginable horrors of cruelty and death he endured, Frankl discovers it is love that sustained him. This is what he says:
"In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen. A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth....that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved."
After his liberation in 1945, he returned to Vienna. He learned that all his loved ones had died in camps. He chose to remain in Vienna, rather than emigrate to America, to resume his career as a psychiatrist. He strongly believed in reconciliation rather than revenge. He once remarked, "I do not forget any good deed done to me and I do not carry a grudge for a bad one." He was able to accept that his Viennese colleagues and neighbors may have known about or even participated in his persecution, and he did not condemn them for failing to join the resistance or die heroic deaths. Instead, he was deeply committed to the idea that even a vile Nazi criminal has the potential to transcend evil by making responsible choices. Frankl said "Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation."He obviously chose love, when hate would have been a very easy, understandable and justified choice. If he could choose love in these circumstances, we all can choose love because love is more powerful than hate.
Third, what do I personally know of love? Let me tell you a story. When I was in college, I started dating this guy. After we had been dating only a few weeks, he told me that he was falling in love with me. I said to him, "You are nuts, you don't know what you are talking about". You need to remember, I grew up in a Norwegian, Lutheran home. We were never told the words, "I love you". We felt that we were loved, but we were never told. Therefore, I thought the words "I love you" were too powerful ever to be uttered. So you can understand my reaction when this guy told me he was falling in love with me. Well, it turns out that Mike did know what he was saying and I was able to tell him I loved him a few weeks later. I have had the good fortune of being the recipient of Mike's love for over 25 years, and sometimes I still wonder why he loves me, but he does, and I love him. I have learned this is a very precious and rare gift to be treasured.
Anyway, this experience with Mike at college got me thinking. I realized I had never told my parents I loved them. I decided to make it my goal to tell them. I remember vividly the moment I told my mom. We were talking on the phone and at the end I said, "I love you, Mom". I had been nervous the entire phone call, knowing that I wanted to tell her this. She immediately replied, "I love you, too." This was the start of a common occurrence between my mom and me. However, I had yet to tackle my dad. My dad was the typical stoic, Norwegian man. Faced with sad times, I never saw him cry. He had had many sad occasions in his life, losing his father when my dad was only 17 years old , losing his 40 year old brother to cancer, and losing his four month old daughter to a heart problem. He grew up in an era when you were taught to be tough. After a weekend visit home from college, I hugged my dad good-bye, well with my dad it was kind of a half hug, and whispered in his ear, "I love you." He responded with, "You do?" From then on, I would always hug him and say, "I love you" and he would say nothing. So one time, after I had hugged him and told him I loved him, I whispered in his ear, "Come-on, you can do it." So he said, "Me, too". Eventually, he was able to tell me he loved me, sometimes he would say it before I did as we were hugging good-bye.
The Christmas of 2002, my parents came up from Arizona, where they spent their winter months, to spend the holiday at our home. Other family members were coming to our house for the holiday, too. Upon picking them up at the airport, it became immediately apparent that something was wrong with Dad. He seemed physically ok, but he was saying things that were confused. He had never been confused about anything. We ended up taking him to the emergency room where it was determined he had a brain tumor, a terminal brain tumor. Nothing could really be done for him. With surgery, he could buy more time, but my dad was clear that he didn't want to do that. It was decided that my mom and dad would live at our home with us in hospice care. During the two month time period they lived with us, I was able to see my dad go through many changes. Some of them were hard to see, but others were quite amazing. I saw my dad, an independent man who was always there to help others, accept help with grace. It was as if I watched the layers of this world peel away from my dad and his true spirit emerge. During the last week of his life, my dad became bedridden, he also lost his ability to speak. I saw him interacting with the next world, knowing friends and family had come to welcome him into the next world. I was sitting on his bed, holding his hand, talking to him, even though he couldn't talk to me, when he tried to lift his head; he pulled me closer to him and he kissed me on the cheek. This tough, old, Norwegian man gave me a kiss. I knew it was his way of thanking me, saying good-bye and telling me that he loved me one last time. When I think back on the time he lived with me while he was dying, even though it was sad, mostly I feel very blessed to have witnessed the transforming power of God's love.
God's love is for everyone. God's love is not in some far away heaven, it exists within us. We only need to open our hearts to this love and let it be our driving force in everything we do. We as a people of God, must make love our primary goal. This to me means loving the very person you would rather hate, accepting the very person you would rather exclude and understanding the very person you would rather judge. When we act out of love, not only do we change, but others change. In the musical, Les Miserable, there is a powerful song that goes like this:
Take my hand and lead me to salvation.
Take my love, for love is everlasting,
And remember the truth that once was spoken,
To love another person is to see the face of God.
Let's start seeing the face of God wherever we go!
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