Sunday, October 29, 2017

Religion of Love

St. Paul’s Church in Bergen, Jersey City NJ
October 29, 2017

Year A, Proper 25: The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18
Psalm 1
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46

Religion of Love
            I’ve mentioned to you before that about seven years ago now Sue and I spent a year living in Gainesville, Florida, where I served as the Episcopal chaplain at the University of Florida and rector of a small suburban church.
            That year away was a challenging experience, for sure, one that has continued to shape my ministry, my priesthood, ever since.
            We didn’t really prepare for the big changes involved in moving from New Jersey to Florida, but even before we left we got some pretty strong clues that we were about to enter a different world.
            Just before we moved Gainesville was in the news.
            Some of you may remember that there was a so-called Christian minister in Gainesville who gained national and even international attention because of his announcement that on the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks he was going to burn many copes of the Koran, the holy book of Islam.
            Obviously burning the book considered holy by millions of people was designed to be a provocative act, and sure enough, it provoked lots of controversy – and it stirred up lots of concern among our families, friends, and parishioners who worried about what kind of mess we were about to get into.
            In the end, this so-called Christian pastor ended up canceling the Koran-burning, and I’m happy to say that he did not represent any of the many people we met and got to know in Gainesville.
            In fact, one of the highlights of my time there was the opportunity to work with other campus ministers, a surprisingly diverse group that included all the “usual suspects,” Catholics and Protestants, Jews, Mormons, and…the Hare Krishna.
            Before going to Florida, I hadn’t thought about the Hare Krishna for years and I guess I had assumed that they had been kind of a fad from the 1960’s and 1970s that had pretty much died out. As far as I knew, they were no longer seen chanting and handing out flowers on city streets and at airports.
            Well, I don’t know why, but it turns out that Gainesville and the surrounding area has the largest population of Hare Krishna devotees in the whole country!
            We would often see them dressed in their colorful outfits, happily chanting away outside the university gates, chanting away in rain or shine, chanting away as passing drivers honked their car horns in support or in mockery.
            They had a thriving campus ministry called “Krishna House” that was just a few blocks away from where we lived and each weekday on campus they served a cheap vegetarian and very popular lunch called, you guessed it, “Krishna Lunch.”
            I had it a few times and can tell you that it was delicious.
            The Hare Krishna campus minister, whose given name was Carl, became a friend – and was a friend to all of us, no matter our religious affiliation.
            I remember one time he came over to our place to check out Morning Prayer (which must have seemed really dull compared to the worship he was used to!). After the service, some of us sat around talking and somebody asked him how long he chanted each day.
            He gave a sly smile and offered a very wise answer: “As much as I need.”
            The Hare Krishna seemed to be pretty well accepted in this Southern city, though I do remember one time when a couple of devotees were beaten up after a football game by some guys who were probably pretty drunk.
            All of the campus ministers and I rallied around our friend Carl and his shaken community.
            Now if you Google the Hare Krishna you’ll see that like every religious organization they’ve suffered their share of scandal and division, and there are some who think of them as a cult.
            I don’t know anything about that, but I have to tell you that from the outside they looked like the most joyful and peaceful people I had ever seen – it looked to me like they were practicing a religion of love.
            A religion of love.
            And, frankly, I thought then, and have thought many times since, that if you and I looked and acted like they do, we’d probably have a lot more people in church, or at the very least, we’d be living the kinds of lives that Jesus calls us to live.
            Real Christianity is a religion of love.
            In today’s Gospel lesson once again a religious leader, this time it’s a Pharisee who’s also a lawyer, asks Jesus a question (to test him, we’re told, but maybe he just wanted to know what Jesus would say.)
            “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
            Now, this was a good Jewish question – a necessary one in a religion with 613 commandments covering most areas of life – a good Jewish question that was asked a lot.
            And, sure enough, Jesus gives a good Jewish answer:
            He quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
            And, he quotes Leviticus 19:18,  “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
            We’re not told how the Pharisees responded to Jesus’ answer but there couldn’t have been any objections to this very Jewish answer:
            The greatest commandments are to love God and love one another.
            Though I wonder how we look to outsiders, the truth is that both Judaism and Christianity are meant to be religions of love.
            St. Paul often gets a bad rap but in many ways he was an apostle of love, traveling around the known world sharing God’s love that he saw so clearly in Jesus, and calling his new Christians to love one another.
            Recently I met with a couple to talk about their wedding and when it came time to talk about the readings they were clear they don’t want Paul’s great hymn of love from First Corinthians, not because they don’t agree with Paul but because it’s read at nearly every wedding.
            And, they’re right, it is read at nearly every wedding, and for good reason, because even two thousand years later, the words of Paul still touch us:
“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”
We may have forgotten it. We may not always behave like it’s true, but we Christians belong to a religion of love.
And, Christian love is not so much an emotion or a feeling but an action, or a series of actions.
Love is a way, the way, of life.
And, to live a life of love it’s not necessary to dress up in an unusual outfit and chant on the street, like the Hare Krishna.
(Which is good because I’m self-conscious enough already!)
But, to live a life of love it is necessary to welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked.
And, sometimes, it means responding to evil and hatred not with more of the same, but with love.
Gainesville has been on my mind lately because, as some of you probably saw on the news, a little more than a week ago a Nazi by the name of Richard Spencer spoke at the University of Florida.
In the days before his appearance there was a lot of understandable concern that we’d see a repeat of the violence that happened in Charlottesville. So, the governor declared a state of an emergency and the different levels of government spent more than half a million dollars for tight security.
Unfortunately, there was one shooting off campus, and few fights did break out, but the good news is that the counter-protestors far, far outnumbered the people of hate, the people who wanted to hear words of hate.
But, here’s my favorite, most loving, response to this evil and hate.
While the Nazi was speaking, a University of Florida music professor climbed eleven flights up into the university’s carillon tower and proceeded to play “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
As the bells rang out the familiar tune of the Negro national anthem across the tense campus, it was not so different from the Hare Krishna chanting and dancing in public no matter what - it must have been a reminder for everyone who recognized it – certainly many Christians and, who knows, maybe even a Hare Krishna or two, that we are called not to hate but to love.
Real Christianity is a religion of love.
But, is that what people see when they look at us?
Amen.