"Love, Love, Love... And Bring A Casserole"
Madelyn Downer
Delivered Sunday, December 30, 2012
North Branford Congregational Church, UCC
Why are we
here? I don’t mean, “What is our greater purpose in the world?” I mean,
literally, why are we here, in this room, this morning? What got you up, out of
bed? What moved you to get in the car, to drive the five minutes or the hour to
this building? To walk into this sanctuary? To sit down in that pew? Why are we
here?
Perhaps you
are here because this is the church your parents went to, it’s the church
you’ve grown up in, and so, of course, why wouldn’t you be here? Maybe you are
here because your children are growing up in this church and church is
important to them so you make the time on Sunday mornings to come out. Maybe
some of you are here because you’ve received no less than five emails from my
mother telling you that I’d be preaching this morning. And still, perhaps you
were driving down Route 80 and you thought to yourself, “Hey, that church has
managed to remain standing amidst the construction. It deserves a shot.” I
don’t know what brought you to this sanctuary, but I know why I got out of bed
at 7 AM, badgered my family to get out the door, and come here, to this church,
for our 10 AM worship service. And it has nothing to do with the fact that I’m
the one preaching.
Our church’s
covenant tells us a lot about why we come here to this place, what our communal
goals are, and what our hopes are for the life of the church:
By the grace of God we have been
called into this community of faith to be God’s people. Through our faith, belief, and trust in the
love and wisdom of God, we covenant to walk in love as Christ loved us and gave
himself for us; to love our God with all our heart, mind and soul; and to love
our neighbors as ourselves. As disciples
of Jesus Christ, we give ourselves to this covenant of grace and accept all the
costs and joys of discipleship. Guided
by the Holy Spirit, we covenant to live all our days according to the Word of
God as it is revealed in Scripture, in the lives of others, and within
ourselves.
Let me tell
you what I hear in our covenant:
Love.
But what
does it mean for us to love? The apostle Paul, in his letter to the church at
Corinth, describes the kind of love that the church is called to:
Love is patient, love is kind. It
does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others,
it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of
wrongs. Love does not delight in evil
but rejoices with the truth. It always
protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. … And
now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is
love.
Now, imagine
this church at Corinth: it’s a mess. There are factions in the church and
no one can agree on worship practices or the responsibilities of their members.
They can’t decide whether it is right and good to sing the Gloria Patri before
or after they say the Lord’s prayer; one group thinks that the task of
organizing the Christmas fair falls to a few and another thinks the Christmas
fair should be a responsibility of the collective congregation.
And, to this
jumbled up church, Paul says, “I’ve got the answer: love.” Now the love Paul is
talking about is not the saccharine sort of love, the
“I-loooove-your-shoes,” kind of love.
As
Christians, as a congregation, we are called to a radical sort of love. And
this kind of love – kind, trusting, not boastful – it’s not an easy task we’re
given.
We are
called to a big, heavy, important kind of love – a love that asks us to work
for each other, instead of for ourselves. Is this a challenge that we are up
to? Perhaps that kind of love is too much to ask for. Maybe there’s too much
hurt, maybe the rift is too wide, for that love to exist.
But a good
metaphor for love, I find, is spray foam insulation. It doesn’t matter how big
the crack is, the foam will expand to fill it.
Sometimes
the crack won’t be big enough, and the foam will seep out through the seams,
there’s just so much of it.
And love is
like that, if there is a rift, a deep chasm of hurt, love will fill it. Love
needs a bit more attention than spray foam insulation, but if the love is
attentive, it can do the job; it can mend the crack.
Paul calls
for the spray-foam kind of love. Love that listens during heated committee
meetings, when one side wants a traditional Christmas pageant and one side
wants an out-of-the-box pageant. Love that reaches out with a hand on a
shoulder, despite whether or not the person next to us shares the hope that,
one day, our congregation would become an open and affirming place to worship.
It is love that continues to embrace members of our church family, even if, at
the moment, for whatever reason, they’re not here to return that embrace.
Are we up to
that challenge?
This kind of
love is something that this congregation has historically been good at. When
people ask me to describe my home church, I often say that our covenant could
better be summed up in seven words: Love. Love. Love. And bring a casserole.
I can
remember times when I’d walk into my house and I’d smell something delicious
cooking in the crock-pot. I’d get excited that dinner was going to be awesome,
only to have my mom pack up that dinner and drive it to a church member’s
house. “They’re going through a hard time. This will help.” And my mom would
head off into the night, leaving me, my sister, and my brother to chicken
tenders and tater tots. When church meetings or events – like our annual Holly
Fair – are approaching, you’ll often find my mother in the kitchen, trying to
figure out what, exactly, the recipe means by “julienne” and whether or not
using her immersion blender to mix eggs and flour will result in the same dough
consistency. Yeah, I poke a lot of fun at my mom, here, but, after the
laughter, what I’m hoping you’ll understand is, she’s taught me what this kind
of love means.
It’s the
kind of love that goes out of its way when a member of our church family,
another part of our very own body, as Paul would say, is hurting. It’s the kind
of love that puts aside the fact that, normally, we’d never be found baking in
the kitchen when American Idol was on.
The kind of
love Paul describes, the kind of love we are called to live, is a
self-sacrificing kind of love. A love that asks for our time, our patience, our
humility, our whole selves.
It’s not always
going to be easy. Sometimes loving our congregation is going to require much
more of ourselves than a casserole dish. Sometimes, when we’re in the same
state as the church at Corinth, even greeting someone on Sunday morning is
going to be hard.
When I was a
deacon, there would be nights I’d get home and, I swore, I would not speak to
such and such a person on Sunday morning. They’d shot down my idea, they’d
disagreed. But, let’s face it, Sunday morning would come and, whether or not
the youth group has been allowed to have a worship service complete with
pyrotechnics, that other church member would still be here. And, well, I’ve
never been great at holding grudges anyway.
What I’m saying is – this love that Jesus exemplified, that we strive to
embody – is a love that transcends our self.
Paul
compares the members of a church to the parts of a body. The nose cannot smell
all by itself. Well, sure it can, but the smell can’t be perceived without the
brain. And what good is the brain if it’s just a brain and there’s no heart or
lungs to keep it going. What good are any of our internal organs without a rib
cage to keep them in or skin to protect them?
So let’s put
it this way: Our body, the church, has a use for every part, for every member
of the congregation. The ear and the foot may not work toward the same task,
but they are, nonetheless, both necessary.
Dear ones,
we are called to a radical kind of love – one that asks us to look beyond our
selves, to see that we are one part of a larger body, with a bigger purpose.
Love is the cornerstone of this church. Love is the gritty work to which we are
committed. I’ve seen our congregation do it before; so let us rise to answer
Love’s call once again – Love. Love. Love. And bring a casserole.
