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.
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