Thursday, February 8, 2024

Genuine love

The Rev. Aaron B. Jenkyn

Full text of the homily given at Thursday's Healing Eucharist:

Once, at a community program I worked at, I encountered an unhoused man, who, as it turned out, had a particularly hard week after his wallet had been stolen. I didn’t have a chance to talk with him myself, but others did what they could to help him and sent him on his way. But then, later that week I ran into him again as I walked through town and he sat on a street corner begging for money.

I hadn’t planned to run into him with my lunch in hand. I hadn’t planned to run into him on my work break. I hadn’t planned for God to put me in that place at that time. But there I was, carrying my five dollar coffee and my twelve dollar lunch, standing there talking to this man who had nothing, uneasy with the space between us. He was about the same age as me, which somehow made it all the harder to engage with him. He reminded me of the many young men, boys really, that I went to high school with, the ones who in the days after September 11th enlisted in the army and had their lives forever changed. It was something about the way he carried his gear that told me he had been in the service, that told me that there in his pack he carried the burdens of our country, that he fought for our freedom and lost part of his in the process.

I could feel the ache growing in my heart - do you know the one I mean? That sort of heart ache that lives on the edge of sacred and profane, sorted to one side or the other only by the choice you make to engage or not. That blurry feeling between disdain and empathy, the one we never want to admit we have.

The urge to walk by was real, but the nudge from God was stronger still, and and so I stopped. As I stood shoulder to shoulder with this man he was playing his part, and I was playing mine. I was ready to do the charitable thing, to help him in the way that I knew how, to offer the prescribed gift card and to move on with my day feeling good about having helped. I asked him his name, without even a thought of telling him mine, and then he gave me a story, the same story I am sure he said to everyone else that walked by that morning, it too felt predictable and prescribed. After a few minutes I was about to hand him the gift card that I had tucked away in my pocket, when the space between us shifted. He looked at me, stopped talking and took a deep breath, he looked away, and then looked up to the sky and swallowed in that way one does when they are trying not to cry, and after what felt like an eternity, he asked, “can I have a hug?”

“Can I have a hug?” were the last words I expected him to say, and yet somehow they were the exact words I needed to hear that day. It was as if in this simple request he had said “here I am, and there you are, and we need each other.” They were the exact words that I needed to call me back from the edge of the profane, that place of distance and prescribed charitable formulas and predetermined roles, of loved doled out in socially acceptable doses. His words called me into a sacred space, a place that is beautiful and messy and holy, a place where love is abundant and genuine, good and mutual and full of hope.

And so there we stood on the street corner, two strangers, no longer shoulder to shoulder, but heart to heart. No longer pretending, no longer playing parts, but fully present to each other. As we embraced, in what felt like a radical act of hospitality, he asked me what my name was, and I mumbled a response, embarrassed that I hadn’t thought to tell him before.

We talked for a long time that morning. He told me his story. He was in fact a veteran and had served many tours in Iraq, Afghanistan & Kuwait. He told me about the love and loss in his life. Of the ways drugs had taken so many from him. He talked about how hard it is to live on the streets. How he ended up there in the first place. How he never saw it coming. We sat together, in righteous anger. And when it was time for me to go, I got up and walked away, and forgot to give him the gift card. I came back later, to give it to him, because I had it to give, but it’s value held nothing on what we had shared. It’s value held nothing on what he had given me.

Each week at our Thursday service we remember that Jesus said that all the law and the prophets hang on two commandments: love God and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40). We hear these words, we speak these words, we know these words and yet it is so hard to abide by these commandments.

Paul understood this. In his letter to the Romans that we heard this morning, Paul is writing with the assumption that his audience knows that they are supposed to love one another. Just as we know that we are supposed to love one another. But he exhorts them to make their love for each other genuine and real.

His language and the images he leaves us with are powerful: let your love be heartfelt; be eager to show each other honor; be set on fire by the Spirit; be devoted to prayer; contribute to the needs of the saints, and pursue hospitality always, he says.

There is clearly a material element to the work of love. To “contribute” or “participate in” the needs of the saints, in the needs of others, is to give of your own resources to help those in need- resources like money, food, clothing, and shelter. But genuine love, the kind of love that Jesus commands us to do, to be, is so much more than that. Genuine love requires us to live alongside and engage with others in a full-bodied, full-hearted, full spirited, kind of way. It requires us to show up, to be present, to listen, and learn and share something of ourselves with the other. It requires us to love even (perhaps especially) when it’s inconvenient. This is not a love that we speak or feel, but a love we live and do and are. It is love in action.

It is so easy to say the right words, we can even set our hearts to auto pilot and do the right thing, but to be genuine in love in the way Paul describes, in the way Jesus commands us, takes a different kind of presence, a different kind of effort. Which is why we come here each week, we need each other, and we need God. We read the scripture, we say the prayers, we bless the bread and the wine, we listen and share and support each other and we receive the unconditional, unending, love that is our God, not just through the bread and wine, but in the outstretched arms of the one sitting next to you, longing for a hug. It is only because we are loved that we can love. Here in this place, we are given an incredible gift, and it is not ours to hoard. We must go out and put that love into action, in the ways we love and serve others, and in the ways we care for each other and the world around us. May all those we encounter know what it is to be loved, and may our hearts be open to experience the genuine love of others, even (especially) when it is unexpected, and not at all convenient!

Amen.