One of my biggest inspirations as a Christian disciple is the Rev. Becca Stevens, the Episcopal priest who started Magdalene House more than 20 years ago as part of her ministry to women who were on the streets of Nashville, trapped in lives of prostitution and often addiction—women whom society often deemed as without value, as irreparably damaged, as criminals, as throw-away people.
Becca was inspired to found Magdalene House as a program that offered women a chance to join a community which proclaimed that “Love Heals.” As part of their recovery and as a way to fund the mission, she also founded a social enterprise known as Thistle Farms, which makes and sells lotions, candles, and beauty products, as well as partnering with women’s collectives in developing countries around the world to empower women economically.
The motto “Love Heals” is a promise, and it is also a defiant pushback against the cynicism of our time. We live in a time of a throw-away culture. If something is broken, don’t waste money fixing it—throw it out, or give it away, and get a new one. This is unhealthy enough when applied to things. It’s downright cruel when it applied to people. And the application of irredeemable brokenness upon huge categories of people in our society right now is at epidemic, overwhelming proportions. That declaration of brokenness is invoked often against some of the most defenseless people in the world, and is then used to justify inhumane treatment of “them,” dehumanization of “them,” and the depiction of “them” as the enemy of “us.”
I was walking around a gathering place in my hometown a while back, wearing my “Love Heals” T-shirt. This lady walked past me and simply said, “Yes, it does,’ to me and just kept walking—I will confess it took me a couple of seconds to realize what she meant. I had to look down at my own chest, and then call out my agreement to her back as she walked away.
Our epistle today from the letter to the Ephesians starts with a magnificent description of God as the one who calls us and chooses us as the embodiment of love: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.”
It’s such a magnificent promise that it’s hard to accept it fully—both for the Ephesians, and for us. William Sloane Coffin remarked nearly forty years ago, “The tragedy of our country today is that most of us do not believe that we are loved by God—not really. If we do think so, we don’t think so emotionally. Consequently our much-vaunted individualism is selfish instead of selfless. Rather than accepting our value as a gift, we think we have to prove it.”
Because we do not have faith in our own worth in the eyes of God, we feel like we have to prove our worth to each other—and often, the easiest way to do that is by seeking advantage over others. We set ourselves against each other in a mad dash of competition. We buy into a gospel of scarcity that says there is never enough of anything, and we need to grab all we can before someone else gets it first.
Sometimes, this fear of accepting the boundlessness of God’s mercy and love is rooted in old wounds that have yet to heal. For others of us, the language of family used to describe our relationship with God and each other brings to mind memories of times when the love we expected of family or friends failed us. Some of us have been shattered by being told that our love is not enough. These kinds of wounds are inflicted by those who themselves have been wounded by fear. But fear begets fear. Fear poisons the growth of hope and the ability to trust in promises.
Our reading from Ephesians reminds us that this is a problem that affects everyone, not just the Ephesians in the first century of the Christian era, but all of us. We live too often ruled by fear that we are not good enough—for each other, much less for God. The eyes of the world are often harsh and judgmental, and yet we spend most of our lives chasing after approval by what we do and what we have and what we look like. I would take that one step further. The problem is not JUST that we have a hard time believing God loves us. We start with being unable to believe that God loves others, especially those some of us think of as “lesser-than” us—those accused of wrongdoing, those who follow other religions, those of other ethnicities, those who live in other countries or are from other countries, those whose sexuality of gender is different from ours, those who are poor and marginalized.
We have strayed from the fundamental understanding of the gospel—that love heals. Love heals us of the fears and insecurities that drive us. Love heals—because it pulls us out of our solipsistic concerns and re-awakens us to our obligation to each other as beloved children of God, no matter what sins we may or may not have committed or laws we may or may not have broken. No matter where we come from our what we look like or whom we love.
We cannot truly accept the promise of God’s love for us unless we also accept the promise of God’s love for all of creation—even a creation that includes people who have been deeply wounded, either through their own choices or the choices of others. Because we have a hard time believing in God’s love of us, we start wanting to draw boundaries or limits around it. In the epistle today, we are reminded that we are made by God to love and be loved by God. We are children of God—and as such, are fully integrated into God’s love. We are beloved children of God—and Christ is our brother, as well as our Lord, Companion, and Savior. God loved us so much that God’s son was sent to us to show us more fully who God is. God is our Father. God is our Mother. God is the one who loves us beyond understanding.
One of the most horrifying things I heard preached from a pulpit when I was growing up was the claim that some people are beyond the boundaries of God’s love.
No.
Such an idea is a human one, and it exists to assuage our lack of love for each other. Our passage from Ephesians reminds us that there is no division in God’s love. God seeks “to gather ALL things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” God’s love is a call to transformation and renewal—to live into our authentic selves as children of love and light. Like a child emerging from a fever, when we trust in the healing power of love, we can awaken from our fevered dreams to realize that God is alongside us, tenderly watching over us and tending to us when we are at our weakest and most vulnerable.
“Love heals” is not just a promise—it is a fact. Yes, love does heal. Can we allow ourselves to believe we are worthy of love, and to trust that promise? If we believe that, then perhaps we could also love each other, just as Christ loves us and gives himself for us, every day.
Amen.
Readings:
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Psalm 24
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29
Preached at 10 am at Calvary Episcopal Church, Louisiana MO, and at 2 pm at St. John's Episcopal Church, Eolia, MO, on July 15, 2018.
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