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For Lent, we’re examining our fourth missional priority closely: “We do real relationship, no bullshit, ever.” What exactly do we mean by “bullshit”? How do we recognize it, avoid it, and avoid doing unto others what we don’t want done to ourselves?
Origin story: how we got the fourth missional priority, or millennials and queerness, and the miraculous integration of selves. What does it mean that the church of our past asked us to fragment ourselves, keeping part(s) of ourselves hidden from sight or dressed up? Now that we have new eyes on the tradition and the text – Millennials who are shockingly transparent on social media, queer people who refuse to stay in the closet – we are able to see what was always there: that God desires (and so should we) the wholeness of every human being, the sameness of self from one setting to another. The church is a learning lab for integration or, colloquially, “no bullshit, ever.” Postscript: the no bullshit ethic is best practiced in real relationship – both pieces are required for either to have integrity. John 4:1-42.
“I Love You, But…” Conditional love sucks. The kind of love that requires changes of you before it manifests; the kind of love that evaporates if you don’t fulfill expectations. But what about love that is a priori (independent of experience, maybe even against experience), God’s own decision to have love as God’s primary disposition toward the world? We say it like testimony: “the world God still loves.” Because God has decided to, and God’s love is steadfast. Jesus loves the rich man, Mark says, though the rich man will disappointingly fall short of Jesus’s recommendation for a full life of discipleship. Mark 10:17-31.
“I Love an Idea of You That I Need to Remain Constant for Me to Keep Loving You.” Jesus’s own best friends wanted him to play a certain role, fulfill a certain expectation, for them to remain loyal. They tried repeatedly to talk him out of his life’s calling, imagining that they did it for his own good. We do the same: loving someone who is healthy but forsaking them in sickness (more about this next week), loving someone who is weak and forsaking them when they grow strong (countless women who outgrew their husband’s expectation). Mark 8:27-33.
“Love is Sentimental, Love is Romantic, Love is Sweet.” There is a kind of love that loves the idea of love: romantic, idyllic, sappy, needy – when the beloved object is attractive in a variety of ways. It’s the shallowest kind – and while it can lead to the deeper kind, sometimes we get stuck in the lightness of this sweetness. Think of Louis in Angels in America, leaving Prior to suffer through AIDS, wondering if he is capable of love. (He is not.) Agapé is hard-core. It’s decisional. It calls on all your deepest resources. Love is patient, love is kind, love is hard. 1 Corinthians 13.
“Because I love you, I forgive you…kinda.” Forgiveness is the corollary to the confession we talked about on Ash Wednesday. We are not only sinners; we are also sinned against, guaranteed for anybody who stays in a relationship long enough. The people you love will hurt you. How expensive is your forgiveness? How tightly do you hold a grudge, clutch the offense? Like the older brother in the story Jesus tells: do those brothers ever love each other again? Or are they bickering about what happened that year for decades to come? Does the older brother hold on to the ulteriority of power gained in the younger brother’s serious transgressions? What would it look like if we practiced prodigal (reckless, lavish, bounteous, ridiculous) forgiveness? Luke 15.