Concoction of Complexity

 

o, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

 

Paul is seeking to help us realize and recognize that God’s love fuels and feeds our lives.  Part of Paul’s point is that human beings, left to our own scheming and dreaming, will fail to enact and embody God’s love ethic alone.  This isn’t just a lack of knowledge, as Paul says.  It isn’t about increasing our faith like some commodities we control.  Paul is encouraging us to trust that God’s love has us, always.  Right now and every day this year.  Not that we won’t still be in the wilderness and wildness of life.  Not that we won’t be lured by other idols rather than the unconditional love of God. The passage this week asks us to reflect on life, what is beneath, why we do what we do.  The truth is, our brains are adept and agile enough to convince us we have altruistic motivation when we are just trying to earn the affection or attention of another.  To be sure, we are all a complex, complicated, contradictory, messy mixture.  We are all the baking soda and vinegar of the elementary science fair volcano, or a shaken soda bottle that could explode at any second now.  Did you catch what Paul says?   It doesn’t matter what you believe or do…that isn’t the point of faith, religion, or meaning in life.  Wait, what??  That statement can shake the foundations of much of what is found on churches' websites and preaching.  What does Paul mean, it doesn’t matter what I say/believe/do?  Paul is challenging our notion of what the means and ends of our life are.  Paul is challenging the direction and destination we are traveling.  If our means is to prove and earn God’s unconditional love and grace, we are still missing the point.  But if we let God’s unconditional and unceasing love be the jet fuel that propels our souls, we begin the wayless way of faith.  I invite you to sit with how counter-cultural this is.  I know for me, when I go chasing after what the world markets as a “good life”, I am often left empty or bankrupt.  When I strive for my own success rather than for the goodness and God-ness in life, my soul feels like it has a bad case of indigestion.  When I create litmus tests that another person must pass to be acceptable and earn my affection, the world shutters, and God sighs.  Hold this hard, holy truth as a light for your life and my life, and our life together in the world right now.  Amen.