GOD IS LOVE AND LOVE IS VULNERABLE 

By Rev Fei Taule’ale’ausumai 

Love according to Jesus love challenges us to really look hard at our neighbours and in so doing we take a hard look at ourselves too.  When the homeless sit to the right of the ATM machine as you withdraw money and asks for “any loose change” have we already decided as we place our money carefully in our wallets that “I am going to turn left” even though I really, really wanted to go the shop on the right.  Are we afraid to deny them or reject them.  Is this what it means to live with the reality of the Gospel imperative to “love your neighbour as you love yourself?”   

 

You know what, ministers are human too believe it or not.  Come rain, hail or storm it is our calling to appear behind the pulpit on Sunday mornings and share a message from the Bible.  Sometimes we might not be feeling very loving when we sit down to write our reflections, or stand up to preach at the lecturn.  I have sometimes prayed, God I need someone to preach to me tomorrow instead!”  That is the reality for me and probably for every minister standing behind a pulpit on Sunday mornings.  But every time God responds by reminding me of the life that eats and breathes and struggles in our community, on our streets and in our own homes.  Look around you Fei, what do you see.  Does not your life provide you with the words that you need to fulfil my great commandment? 

 

Love is one of the most difficult and challenging emotions, Love makes us vulnerability.  You’ve heard the saying, better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.  I believe everyone in this church this morning has a love story to share, perhaps even a pain too often difficult to express in words when we remember our families in other parts of this world or partners, husbands and wives, children who have passed on before us.  I know that at times it’s almost like Jesus prayer in the garden of Gethsemane “please take this cup of suffering away from me” … 

 

I believe that one of the main tasks of adult living is to grow into wholeness, to explore and embrace and integrate all the parts of who we are, mind and body and heart and soul.  It is only when all of who we are is honoured and balanced that we find the courage and skill and the creative spirit to work well and to love well.  Loving God and self and neighbour with all of who we are is the purpose of life.  And central to this calling towards wholeness is the value of integrity.   

 

The word integrity comes from the Latin integer, which means whole, entire, and complete.  Integrity suggests the order of the mind in love with the commitment of the heart.  Rev. Susan Andrews of the Presbyterian Church of the USA wrote: “The discipline of the body is engaged with the serendipity (or the destiny) of the heart.  The ecstasy of joy is in deep communion with the sadness of sorrow.  This life journey toward wholeness, toward integration of heart and mind and body and soul is not easy.  Integrity forces us to rely on a power greater than ourselves, the Spirit of God who weaves together and holds together the competing parts of who we are.   

 

Eric Erikson wrote “The Eight stages of Life” I know that many of you will be familiar with his work.  In a nutshell he says that as human beings we can choose to grow toward health or grow toward dysfunction.  The choice is between integrity and despair – between acknowledging and embracing and affirming the way our life has really been or grieving and complaining about what could have been.  If only I had been given a different body, if only I had been smarter or prettier or wealthier.  In stage eight there is the choice between (1) celebrating a life well lived – imperfections and all and offering it as a completed gift to God or (2) clinging to a fantasy of what could have been better – a refusal to accept and a refusal to let go.   

 

Do we acknowledge our weaknesses our vulnerabilities?  Or is it something that we don’t want other people to know about in case they see it as a weakness?  Remember Felix Donelly’s book Big Boys Don’t Cry.  There was a time when this was true look at the documentary on the boys who were abused at Dilworth School.  They didn’t cry, publically that is.  They cried themselves to sleep they cried on the inside.  Mental illness, mental wellbeing used to be a shunned topic of conversation a time when the mentally unwell were locked in psychiatric hospital and hid from the public eye.  Today it is almost becoming ok to talk about your mental wellbeing, it is almost becoming ok to talk about being in therapy.  But you know at the end of the day, it really depends who you are talking to.  Save your vulnerable stories for someone who also knows what its like to vulnerable otherwise I hate to say it, it will feel like tossing pearls before swine.   

 

Is it important for us to be seen to be competent and coping all the time or is it o.k. for us to have struggling days and not feel that we are being judged as incompetent people or unfaithful believers?  When we understand ourselves, when we acknowledge what is the weak part of ourselves, when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable in order to grow in balance and wholeness – it is then that we become healthier, mature and more completely the person that we were born to be.  

 

 

If, we are to preach about loving neighbour we must also preach about loving ourselves.  “Loving self does not mean we love others less; it means, we learn how to love them more.   

 

Can we be in a right relationship with God without loving neighbour?  Can we love God and neighbour without loving ourselves?   

 

Where do you feel the need to grow in love of God, neighbour, and self? How can you give your heart, spirit, mind, and strength to grow in love? How do you seek God’s help in that? 

Sometimes love may even mean abandoning the law in some situations,  

as Jesus did when he healed people on the Sabbath.  Obedience to an authority  

or tradition in itself can become very distorted  

and actually work against what it was originally intended for,  

so, we do have a responsibility,  

when faithfully following our traditions to the letter  

that we are observing them  

and tempering them through love of God and neighbour and self.  

Otherwise, our traditions and ways of doing things  

can gradually cut us off from those we are trying to love.  

Our laws and traditions need to be open doors,  

not locked gates,  

to which we have the only keys of how things are to be done.  

If we understand the theology behind why we do things,  

we can begin  

to put that together with when it is important to put people first,  

before the traditions and rules  

and feel OK about doing that.  

In my experience people get self-love mixed up with a fear of selfishness.  

They are very different!  

Self-love is a respect for your own life,  

an acceptance of who you are  

and a valuing of yourself,  

in a way that cares for your needs.  

People who hold these qualities  

can more easily offer the very same things to others.  

If we keep putting ourselves aside without balance,  

or acknowledgement,  

we can become estranged from ourselves,  

and, ironically, that makes it really hard to love others,  

without “us” getting in the way.  

Also, ironically, people who we think appear selfish  

often have very little self-love  

or self-acceptance  

and are trying to fill that in the wrong way.  

Mother Teresa called lack of self-esteem  

“the poverty of the West”  

As far as she could see love is about balance and discernment.  

We are called to love God, self and others  

in relationship with each other,  

so if we follow the law of only ever serving others  

and abandoning and disliking self  

we become out of kilter with what we are being called to do.  

I know this is very hard  

for those of us who were taught to put others first all the time.  

But if we are really honest  

we know the fruit that bears is loneliness,  

sometimes resentment, sadness and estrangement.  

The truth is we love others more effectively when we love and accept  

and respect ourselves  

and then we don’t create a residue of  

“What about me?”  

Ultimately, if we can shift our focus from blind obedience  

to loving discernment,  

loving God first,  

with our whole being  

and dealing with our neighbours and ourselves, in love,  

we can begin to choose love  

for everyone who is involved.  

This kind of love has the power to transform lives  

and push the boundaries of what is possible  

and what is known.   To break down the walls that divide people  

and build bridges to accept all people.   

 

 Loving self does not mean we love others less; it means, we learn how to love them more.   

 

Can we be in a right relationship with God without loving neighbour?  Can we love God and neighbour without loving ourselves?   

We are challenged to love one another as we have been loved and to love our neighbour as ourselves.  Go then and do likewise.  Amen. 

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