Sunday Sermon

Normally I'm not one to publish a sermon online (or anywhere else) after preaching it in a particular setting.  I believe the words written do not have the same meaning when not spoken.  It's hard to embody a sermon electronically.  However, since I got a huge assist on this one from my Facebook friends, I thought I'd share for folks to see what our online conversation produced.  Thanks again for everyone that helped answer my question about love.  Enjoy!

Arlington Community Church, January 27, 2012

Perhaps, like many of you, I feel I have a special relationship with chapter 13 of First Corinthians.  When Kelse and I were married almost five years ago, verses four through eight were the only scripture we had read in our ceremony.  When I was in Phoenix later that year, exploring a mall near the hotel I was staying at, I found a large heart shaped wall hanging with those words inscribed in the middle, surrounded by flowers and vines.  So often I hear those words echo within my soul, starting so simply, telling me that love is patient.  And love is kind.  And it is not envious.  And on and on.  It’s a wonderful meditation on love that I fully embrace.  But there is more to this chapter, and it starts by telling us that if we do not have love, we have nothing.  Naturally, not wanting to be nothing, I asked myself: what is love?  What do I need to have, or, more importantly, what do I need to do so that I can be more than a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal?

So over the last week, I’ve been on a quest to discover the meaning of the word “love.” As Christians we talk about love all the time, but do we really fully understand what it is?  I’m not sure that I do.  So I began researching love so that I might better know.  First, I consulted the scripture.  In this chapter we hear so many different things here of what love is and what love is not.  Love is patient and kind.  It is not envious or prideful.  It rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things.  It believes, it hopes, and it endures, without end.  In this scripture, love is one thing and many things, and it is all over the place.  In fact, in chapter 13 of First Corinthians, the word love appears in my translation nine different times.  There are another five times in which it is referred to with a pronoun.  Put another way, a full five percent of this scripture is simply one word: love.  That’s a lot of love.  But I always argue for more love, and I wish Paul had given us a little more to go on here because these words he gives us are not definitions but instead personifications of love.  They are abstractions, not descriptions.  I cannot touch kind.  I cannot hear patience.  I cannot put love in a cookie jar and place it on my coffee table and say, “See, there it is!  I have love!  Would you like to have some?  I made it just for you!”  These abstractions in this didn’t give me enough to go on, so I realized I had to go somewhere else.  Where else do you go when you want to understand the meaning of something?  I consulted a dictionary. 

I found fourteen different definitions for the word “love” when used as a noun, including “a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person” or “a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend” or “affectionate concern for the well-being of others” or even “the benevolent affection of God for His creatures, or the reverent affection due from them to God.”  Then I found six more definitions of how to use love as a verb, including “to have a profoundly tender, passionate affection for” and “to need or require; benefit greatly from.”  After reading the dictionary, I felt closer to understanding love, but there was still much left to decipher.  Which of these definitions of love should I settle on?  I needed to do some more research.

Next, I consulted popular music, for where have some of our modern conceptions of love been told to us but through music?  I discovered that all you need is love, that I can’t get enough of your love, that love will keep us alive, that your love keeps lifting me higher, and that I would do anything for love.  I also learned that love hurts, that only love can break your heart, that love is a battlefield, and that there are fifty ways to leave your lover.  (pause) Confused yet?  I certainly was.  I was almost back to square one.  So I tried something new again, and I consulted my friends.

Rather than asking a few folks face to face, this was a question I crowdsourced.  By that, I mean I took to the internet and asked the nearly 400 people I am connected to on Facebook to fill in the following sentence: love is (blank).  Very quickly I received a number of responses, some growing off of others.  Here’s some of what I got:  Love is where we want to be.  Love is the best chance that we’ve got.  Love is ferocious.  It is a verb, something that you do.  It is intense, it is hard to catch, it is the great revealer.  It is a choice, it is elusive, it is rough, and it is messy and disruptive.  Love is underrated, it is justice and mercy, and it is family and friends.  Perhaps the most abstract response was that love is blue.  Perhaps my favorite was almost as abstract: love is not bound by geography…and frequently smelly.  In retrospect, I enjoyed hearing from my friends on this subject, but as I thought about it more I realized this exercise didn’t give me insight into what love is so much as it gave me insight into the current emotional state of my friends.  It was time again to look somewhere else.

As part of this process, I even consulted our President.  I listened intently to hear what President Obama had to say in his inaugural address on Monday.  I was inspired by his words as he named the struggle for equality this country has seen, from women, to African-Americans, to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.  Beyond that, I heard him say that if “we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”  (pause) Ah.  Now I feel like I’m getting closer to the truth.  Out of all of this research I’ve learned that love is many, many things, but here  I find that the love we give one another must be as equal as we are to one another.  Put another way, love is a communal effort given individually.

                Armed with this mindset, I went back to the scripture and discovered more that I was missing.  As I said earlier, the thirteenth chapter is more than just verses four through eight.  In the end of the chapter, we hear that prophecies and tongues and knowledge, these spiritual gifts that Paul has been addressing and we have been discussing over the past few weeks, they all come to an end.  But what about love?  Love never ends.  Love is with us from the moment we are conceived, grows with us as we age, and remains as we continue on into what comes after this life.  Some might think of this as the love we carry with us into the Great Beyond, but I think of it as the love we leave behind as we travel onward.  It’s the love that is poured into us, grows, and comes bursting forth with every new person that we meet.

                This is why I was so inspired by our President’s speech: the more love we give to each other, the more we understand it and know it for ourselves.  That’s the nature of equal love: we get just as much as we give.  That’s what kept tugging at me all week as I explored my own understanding of what love is.  Love is a feeling that can’t be quantified.  Love has layers upon layers of meaning, meaning that is found with each new connection of love that we make, from one individual to another.

                That concept of new and growing love echoed true for me last week as we baptized Jay Sunday afternoon.  After we spoke some traditional phrases and gathered around the baptismal font while Jay had water and oil sprinkled on his tiny forehead, there was a moment in which the entire community was given a charge in caring for Jay.  Pastor Jim Mitulski spoke of the love gathered in that place, connected to Jay through the touch we surrounded him with.  And then Jim said something I will never forget: he turned to look directly at our six week old baby and said, “Jay, there is nothing, nothing, nothing that you can ever do that will break this love for you.”  (pause) Love endures, for there is nothing, nothing, nothing we can do to break it.  (pause) Now, if Paul had written that, and that was all that Paul had ever written, it would have sufficed for me.  But even then, it still does not tell me what love is, or tell me how I should love.  After a baptism, a Presidential speech, some scriptural and cultural research, and asking some friends, I’m still back to the beginning again: what is love?

                I went back to the scripture in my bible one more time to see if reading this passage again and again might bring new light to this subject.  That’s when I saw it: a note I hadn’t followed up on before.  It told me to relate this scripture to First Corinthians, chapter eight, verse one.  Here, in this one verse, my quest came to an end, for is says in that verse, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”  Love builds up.  So there it is.  After all my searching, three little words that tell me all I need to know.  Love builds up.  Shall we try some of chapter 13 again with that in mind?

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love build up, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love build up, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love build up, I gain nothing.”

It makes sense to me now.  If love is that which builds up, then that is what I must do, and what we must do.  That’s what I heard last weekend when we baptized Jay.  That’s what I heard from the President on Monday morning.  That’s what I heard when I asked my friends.  When we love, we are building up each other, equally.  As I think of the charge I was given to love Jay, I think of how, over his lifetime, I have the honor of building him up to be the best Jay Basil Hills he can be, whatever that may mean.  In the process, I get to build up myself, and my wife, and my family, and my friends, and my neighbors, and the folks at church, and the strangers walking by on the street, and the person halfway across the world that I have yet to meet.  I get to build them up just as they get to build me up.  That’s the love we share for one another, and that’s the love that I give to you.  Take this moment, and every moment, to love those around you.  Remember the community of love you are an important part of, and share with them as equally as we are created equally.  Build them up as they would want you to build them up.  With patience.  And kindness.  Without envy or pride.  By rejoicing in truth.  By bearing, and believing, and hoping, and enduring.  Without end.  Amen.

Baby Name Madness (Part 5)

The time is nearly at hand.  Our advent is almost over.  We went to the hospital this morning in anticipation of an impending birth.  Now, while the hospital staff agreed that Kelse's labor had started, they also noted we had a ways to go before we were ready.  So now we're back home, waiting for the next development.

With such a development, it's now time for our final installment of Baby Name Madness.  This cut gets us down to the final four names, two first and two middle names.  Only four combinations, so your guessing odds are all the up to a one in four chance of randomly getting it right?  What are your final guesses today?  Stay tuned to Facebook in the coming days for your introduction to the newest member of the Hills family!

Baby Name Madness (part 4)

The week of the due date is upon is.  If you're curious of a specific date, you might look at December 7th.  But, as we all know, babies do what they will do when it comes to being born, so it really could be any moment now.  Thus it's time for another round of cuts as we find ourselves in the final eight names, four first names and four last names. That means there are only sixteen name combinations.  There are a few favorites and a few underdogs left.  Which of these sixteen is your favorite?  Which of these sixteen do you think is our selection?

Baby Name Madness (part 3)

We're getting so much closer now, with the baby due next week.  The doctor said last Friday that the baby isn't coming anytime soon, but I ask, what does soon mean?  The next few hours?  The next few days?  The next week?  The next two weeks?  It's all relative.  So, perhaps any minute now.  Or perhaps in two weeks. In any case, we're on with the countdown.  Eliminating another half of the names leaves us with our sweet sixteen.  Eight first names and eight middle names left.  What happened to your choice?  Are you still holding strong, have you lost half of your bracket, or are you out of the running?  What's your new guess?  We're looking forward to hearing what you think!

Baby Name Madness (part 2)

Now that we've all had a chance to make our guesses and fill out our brackets, it's time to make some progress toward revealing the name.  After all, the due date approaches, and we don't want to be caught falling behind if baby comes early.  So, welcome to the first round of cuts!

Remember, the names on the left will lead to the first name, and the names on the right will lead to the middle name.  Some notable upsets: for first names, Robin over Logan, Tristan over Oliver, and Hobbes over David.  For the middle names, Harvey over Trevor, Basil over Anthony, and Elijah over Hector.

Round three will be out soon, but let us know what you're thinking now!  What are you sad to see go?  What do you like from what remains?  What's your latest guess at his name?

Baby Name Madness (part 1)

Welcome to the tournament of a lifetime!  From this list of sixty-four names will come a reveal of the final name we have picked for our soon-to-come baby boy.  On the left, thirty-two names that will be narrowed down to a first name.  On the right, thirty-two names that will be narrowed down to a middle name.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be whittling down to the final selections.  In the meantime, let us know your favorite parings!  Argue for one name to win over another!  Feeling adventurous?  Fill out a complete bracket if you like and send it in: prize for the winner!

Come with us on the journey as we take our final steps into parenthood.

And Now For Something Completely Different

When I started seminary, I thought of how I spent my college years.  Really, I didn't have any frame of reference of what graduate school was going to be like, especially considering the expedited manner in which I chose to head back to school, applied, was accepted, and moved in (all that happened in about a month an a half, with much of it happening in the last week) before starting school again.  So all I could count on was a recollection of my four years at Doane, what I did while I was there, and how I spent my time.

My first resolution was to be better in my classes.  I didn't apply myself in college as much as I could have, and my grades reflected it.  I wanted to be better in seminary, and as I finally thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life, it might be easier (or at least make more sense) to apply myself.  With that came more of a time commitment to my classes and homework, and less time commitment to fun stuff.

The first two semesters of the process were hard.  I mean it was adjusting to being back in school full time after a six year absence, and settling in to a new place, and meeting new people, and learning new things.  And then time for my relationship, which was somewhat long-distance-like for the first month or two.  And then time for myself.  As part of the process of all these changes, I wanted to keep track of myself, and so I started this blog.  For a while, it was good.  I was keeping up with my classes well enough and taking care of what I needed to take care of, and keeping up with writing here.  I felt like I could handle what I was doing, but I also felt like adding more would lead to overload.

Then second year started.  And all that I thought I couldn't be busier led me to see how much free time I had in my first year.  Classes, still, but now harder, and add internship hours, and home church responsibilities, and denominational requirements, and what I could be involved with at school.  Then second semester started, and I added more responsibilities for myself without taking others away.  Essentially, combined with my somewhat lengthy process of studying or writing, it leaves little time for the things I really enjoy.  So the blog went to the side for a bit, explaining my lack of posts for a while.

But then there are things that need to be said, things that need to be done.  I've been distracted over the last week by a number of different things coming together at once, all in the middle of Holy Week.  I spoke about new beginnings during the Easter Sunrise Service because that is what was weighing on my mind so much.  In the midst of the end of Jesus' life, the end of The End, I thought only of new life.

That's because in the middle of last week, we learned that Kelse is pregnant.

Just as the three women at the tomb were terrified and amazed into silence after knowing the Resurrection, I was terrified and amazed of this new chapter of our lives, and didn't want to speak of it.  Are we sure the tests are right?  What do we need to do?  What do we need to plan for?  Who do we tell?  Who do we ask for help?  When is everything happening?  How do we need to change what we eat, or how we sleep, or what we buy?  Sure, plenty of experts exist on the subject, including in my family, but every pregnancy is different, as every child and every family is different.

From the start, I didn't want to talk to people about it.  I didn't want to talk to people about even the idea that we might have something like that happen in the future, or that we might be trying.  I think part of that is the fear of something going wrong, and then having to relive that pain every time someone asks about it.  And I think part of it is that very superstitious part of me (multiple baseball reference alert!): as soon as you start talking about the no-hitter, it disappears.  As soon as you start talking about the hitting streak, it goes away.  As soon as you acknowledge that which is good, it leaves you.  I didn't want to talk about it and then not have anything happen, and then have to keep talking about it.  You can't talk your way out of a slump, but you can make it worse.

But here we are now, new life growing.  I have no idea what to expect of the future.  At least when I started school again, I had a frame of reference from college to fall back on.  This is some whole other universe.  There are still so many questions, and I don't know what to do.  But I suppose I am not unique in that feeling in a situation like this.  What parent knows all the right answers from the get go?  So each day is a new day, each step is a new step, and each moment is something new to learn.  We've had one appointment at the doctor, and another coming up on Friday, and then more will come after that.  We'll most assuredly get help along the way, and people will recommend things, and we'll make our own decisions on what to do.  And we'll be busy.  After all, the classes don't stop.  The work responsibilities don't stop.  The bills don't stop coming in.  The need to care for each other and care for ourselves never stops.

And I guess that's the super long story on why my blog posts might be sporadic for a while still.