Jerusalem Presbyterian Church

I should have known there would be a catch.  The brochures didn’t tell the whole story, of course.  There is always more to the story than the brochures can describe.  I was promised fresh air and beautiful grounds to explore, a comfortable and private room in which to sleep and--spend my days if I wanted to.  I was promised delicious meals prepared for me,  and a complete lack of chores that I would have to do.

The brochures and web site assured me that I would have no pressure to attend meetings or classes, (except at the noon meal each day) and that the retreat program for me would be self-directed.  That a wealth of materials would be provided for me so that I could design my own way to spend my time there in the way that God would desire for me.  There would be peace and quiet—that time away from the constant barrage of media would aid me greatly in spending quality time with God.  And best of all, this wonderful five days would be a gift given to me free of charge.  That’s good news for you all too, since I was away on Study Leave.  Free to me means free to the church budget.

Obviously I read the brochures closely; I scanned the website for the clues as to how to most effectively use this time away.  I thought it over carefully, and then I packed an enormous book bag with books, journals, worship planning materials, and my laptop.

 Shortly after I got there, after all the guests for the week had arrived, our hosts gathered us in the grand entrance to the retreat center and gave us the ground rules.  We were advised to turn our cell phones off, to leave our laptops packed, unless we journaled on them, because no Internet access would be provided to us.  The hosts realized that many of us had brought books with us, but they encouraged us to avail ourselves of the materials in the retreat center library and in our rooms.  I started to get a downright panicky feeling standing in the foyer of that big beautiful house on Lake Nemahbin.  What would I do if I was unable to work on the things I had planned to work on?  What about the weeks of worship planning I had prepared to come home with?  What had I gotten myself into?

After our get- acquainted tour was over, we were dismissed and I went immediately up to my room to begin planning my escape.  No—that’s not quite accurate.  I really began thinking about how I could gracefully make up some kind of excuse to let the hosts know that I was going to leave.  I wasn’t imprisoned, so I didn’t really have to escape.

The next morning, I went down to breakfast, brought up a tray to my room, and thought about it some more.  The more I thought about it, the more I thought about all that waited at home for me if I bugged out early from the retreat: you know, eighteen loads of laundry, a dishwasher load every day, a dog to take care of, a teenager to shuttle around, meals to cook—my normal life.  I like my life, but lets face it, to get away from that once in a while is a blessing.

At the appointed time, I took my place at the dining room table for my first required meeting , and the process of learning about each other began.  And as soon as the other guests began introducing themselves, I began to know  something about what I was there to really do.

Within about fifteen minutes, I was plunged in to a world I had forgotten about—the world I grew up in.  I was hearing language that I hadn’t heard in many years, phrases like, “I was saved at the age of twelve.”  “My son led his father-in-law to the Lord, and now they are all believers in that family.”   “My daughter has won over thirty souls for Christ.”  

When it became my turn to introduce myself, I gave the basic vital statistics, then I told my call story.  I told the whole story, from the stranger who sat down next to me at Youth Triennium, to the part about Jane Lurvey—I even included the colorful anecdote about our being on the Rock Freeway in the car on the way to Iowa when I first told Pete I felt called to seminary.  Everyone listened quietly, then I looked at the faces around the table and I finally saw it: that look of utter confusion.  Nobody asked me polite questions because nobody understood what the heck I was talking about.  For the next five days, I was going to be the other.

The world of the Markan gospel had its own ways of determining who was “the other”.  Social stratification was not so very different than our own.  Persons could fit in—or be left out—in terms of religion, ancestry, race, ethnicity, gender, or economics, and there was a great deal of overlap in these categories.    This new struggling church was trying to find its way, trying to discern how a person was included, or excluded.  Many of them grew up Jewish, and were somewhat familiar with the 613 laws that governed life as a Jew.  That’s 365 prohibitions—one for every day of the year, and 248 positive commands—one for every bone in the body.  But the one command that every Jew—including Jesus—heard every day was The Shema:

Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu Adonai Echad.

Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

V-ahavta et Adonai Elohecha b-chol l'vavcha u-v-chol naf'sh'cha u-v-chol m'odecha.

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

    The Shema, for Jews who later became Christians, is as natural as breathing.  Who doesn’t love God?  It’s not that hard to imagine loving the One who gave us this wonderful world, and everything in it, who protects us, and loves us, and gave us the Savior that we might never die in sin but might live forever.  It’s not rocket science, as they say.   Why, it hardly takes any effort at all.  It’s like loving kittens, or cute babies, or pretty flowers, or a gorgeous sunset.  One just wakes up in the morning, glad to be alive, has some loving feelings towards a far-off deity, and boom. Done.  Checked off for the day: loved God.

Ah, but there’s always a catch, isn’t there?   Christ came not to liberate us completely from those 613 laws, but to be the fulfillment of them.  And the catch is that God became flesh and dwelt among us.  Not only was humanity’s understanding of God changed, but humanity was changed as well.  No longer could we be isolated and fractioned off in little contained segments of the population.  The church is no longer little independent bands of believers, worshipping in remote house-churches, but is the very Body of Christ.  And as so, we can no more hate our fellow members of the body of Christ than we can poke our own eyes out.  

“But what about those people who are hard to love?” we might ask.  “Those people who use strange language, who describe their relationship with God in terms we don’t quite understand.   It’s hard to have loving feelings for someone who thinks about God in terms that make us nervous.”

Well, for us there is good news and there is even better news.  The gospel doesn’t require us to have loving feelings for people who make us nervous, whose church we don’t understand, whose politics irritate us, or whose behavior scandalizes us.  “But preacher, didn’t you just tell us that we re commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves?”

The secret, and the very good news is this: love is a verb.  Love is not a feeling, not a personal liking or a sentimental affection.  If you want to show your spouse or children you love them, you do not sit in a room alone and feel positive feelings for them.  You do something.  You lighten a load, you comfort a hurt, you share your own joys with them.

Our best example of this is God’s love for us.  God does not sit afar off wherever God is and feel positive feelings for us—God acts.  God creates, God sustains, God delivers, God heals, God sends the Son, God gives up God’s own life for us. And so it is commanded between us and neighbor.  Love is an action towards someone you do not necessarily like—or even know.

When I was off on my retreat, and wondering how in the world I was going to get through those days of feeling so out of place, like a fish out of water, a strange thing happened on the third day.  I came down to breakfast to get a tray and go back up to my room—where I had been hiding out now since Sunday evening—and one of the young couples was sitting at the dining room table having breakfast.  “It’s Julie, right?”  said the young man.  ‘Yes, Julie that’s my name.”  “Why don’t you join us here.  I’ve never known a woman pastor before.  I’d like to ask you some question.”

I had to think fast.  Here I had been hiding out in my room, away from the crowd, trying to make myself invisible because I felt to strange and out of my element.  And here was this couple, who saw me in spite of my efforts, trying to reach out to me and get to know me.  They might have been curious about me; they might have seen me as a different species than them, but they were acting.  They were reaching out.  They understood that love is a verb.

And so I took a risk in sitting down, but at that table, my week was changed for the better, and we three were able to set the tone for the rest of the retreat.  Love is a verb. 

Thanks be to God.