[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Words

He read the words quietly, soberly, without added drama but with authority, 
his voice carrying them carefully down the nave to the church doors. We sat 
in our pews absorbing them, hearing them again: familiar words, strung 
beautifully together, with that profound *rightness* that only the Spirit 
(or J.S. Bach at his best) displays. "If I speak in the tongues of men and 
of angels and have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal."

These -- not the words of condemnation and judgment that we mine from from 
their context in Scripture and heave in anger at each other -- are the 
hardest words in the Bible. The most demanding, the most exorbitant, the 
most difficult. These are the words that hold the mirror up to my soul and 
show me just how ugly it can be.

The last week had called out unaccustomed love from me, love that would 
take me into dangerous country, full of strangenesses and chasms and the 
bones of dragons. The week showed me where the limits of that love might 
likely take me, places I'd rather not go, but I knew that going there would 
be the right thing to do.  And then, this episode of love ended with a 
casual, almost accidental slap that left me reeling with hurt and anger. 
_Got you again!_ , that's what it felt like, although that wasn't the 
intention.  What hurt worse was that I got handed all the responsibility 
for the problem: "I'm okay, you're not okay, and that's my final word." 
That's what I really couldn't forgive.

So much for "love is not easily angered; love does not keep a record of 
wrongs." All I can do is look at the last week and wait for the Prayer of 
Confession, which I need very badly.

The words keep coming. "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it 
does not boast, it is not proud." That's the way it's supposed to be -- I 
know that, and not just because Paul says it with such grace and authority. 
I can tell the truth when it sits there staring at me, however kindly.

But to *do* this? To put these words in action? Actually live love out, 
live up to it?

Love asks a lot. Love is counter-cultural. Love goes up hard against our 
narcissism, our selfishness, our desire to have our cake and eat it too. 
Love insists on "thou" when we'd rather say "me". Love calls on us to be 
honest with ourselves when we're really rather not be. Love takes us places 
we do not want to visit and compels us to actions we're rather not take. 
Love leaves us horribly vulnerable; it confronts us with our own neediness 
and insecurity. _Who could possibly want my love?_ is, for all too many 
people, a constant inner whisper.

This is a broken world, and what's most broken in it is love, because we're 
human and the world's brokenness has broken us too. And so we learn, the 
very hard way, that love puts you in danger. Love gets you hurt, sometimes 
almost to death. Love's failure leaves you disappointed and lonely. Love 
demands more from you than you feel you have to give, and then it turns 
around and bites you. Infatuation may be delicious, but love is sheer 
bloody hard work.

Ah, there's the passage I need to hear most, this Sunday morning:  I can 
only do this love stuff poorly and partially because I am as yet only a 
child who can manage only childish things, especially in this context, 
where the dragons whose bones litter the landscape once ruled my own 
childhood. The love I learned then was one that came with a high price tag 
and a whole lot of broken parts. I can love only murkily and selfishly and 
imperfectly. Even my love for my children is flawed and insufficient, and 
that's the very best love I've ever been able to muster.

We hear Paul's description of love and register its rightness, and then we 
go right back to living our lives as though these words were lovely 
irrelevance, like something precious in the shop window. We look for a 
moment, registering its beauty, and then trudge onward believing that if we 
have to ask the price, we can't afford it.

Hear, my soul: there are the ultimately terrifying, comforting words, 
carried coolly out into the winter air: "Now I know in part; then I shall 
know fully, even as I am fully known." To be fully known is perhaps the 
most frightening thing I can possibly imagine. As a preacher said, "If you 
really knew me, you wouldn't like me nearly as well as you do." I know how 
ugly I can be; I go out in public only after I've put on my better face. 
The notion that God might actually love me enough to be patient and kind, 
forgiving and not grudge-bearing, reaching out to me in humility -- that 
God hopes in me, trusts in me, perseveres with me, has faith in me: I don't 
think I can quite take that in. Not today, at least.

The words wind down into that finally statement: "These three remain, hope, 
faith, and love, and the greatest of these is love."

All I can do when love failed as dismally as it failed last week is to 
remember that Paul had it right. It's not the theory that's the problem. 
I's the execution.