Failure of Love

 

Love never fails.  Prophecies will cease; tongues will be silent; knowledge will pass away. 

 

I hope you still have your drawing from yesterday, pull that out, and let’s dive in/dwell with this phrase.  If I only read Paul’s words with my rational brain, my inner defense attorney yells, “Objection!!  Of course, love fails!  Read the headlines, look at the number of marriages that come crashing and crumbling down.  Look at how people bully each other and the violence we cause to one another.  Then, I look at my heart, and wonder if those are not an example of love failing, but our human failing to love.  I know this may feel like I am playing games with words, but for love to be love, there is always freedom to choose to go ways I cannot control.  I cannot stop someone from hardening their hearts.  In the book of Exodus, we read that Pharaoh had a “hard heart” when he enslaved the Israelite people.  Pharaoh feared that the Israelites would become too numerous and overthrow his power.  On January 4^th, we heard how fear caused Herod to commit infanticide in response to the fear of hearing the Wise Ones say there was a new king of Israel.  Love will never force us to do something.  Love will never belittle or bully the belovedness of another.  It isn’t love that is failing; it is humans.  We have free will.  I can choose to show up with words of love or anger; with hope or with trying to score points to put Uncle Gus in his place; with peace or letting my words lash out like a whip; with joy or jolts of sarcasm meant to demean/dehumanize another.  While, yes, some Christians will claim that God told them to be a brash bully, we know that great truth of the hymn, “they will know we are Christians by our love.”  The church is not judged by our attendance numbers, not by our budgets or balance sheets, not by the number of likes this post receives on Facebook.  It isn’t that love fails, but that I fail to love.  That isn’t meant to shame or blame or rain guilt on you.  Because God pours out God’s love lavishly on you every day.  Jesus said that God is like a Gardener who scatters seeds into hearts that have thorns/thistles and dry ground that is harder than a rock (see Matthew 13 ~ Parable of the Sower).  Today, may your heart be open to receive God’s love that is unceasing and unconditional.  Today, may you let that love nourish you.  Today, may you let that love escape from you.  Not because it is popular or profitable, or promotable.  But because love never fails as a pathway for the faithful.  Let this truth be drawn in your heart and lived in your words this day.  Amen.