Where's the Love

 

Church can be problematic.  I once told my wife that I had to stop going to church before I lost all my faith.  Many times, I have found the church to be  a regular insincerity center, where God is supposedly worshiped but worship gets seemingly lost in church promotion, and or self-promotion.  It's a business model for God so to speak.  What  about love?  Where does love fit into this business model? 

I have been to big churches with big performances, and I've been to small churches and everything in between.    In big production churches folks praise and raise hands with their eyes closed like they are having a real experience with the Holy Spirit.  They sing the seven words of a song for the 11th time and the band makes loud music to enhance the full Christian experience. 

But oftentimes when the "high" subsides and the service ends, I have seen these same praise and raise people close ranks and show little interest in any one other than those of their own group.   The music stops and they seem to shut down their Christian experience like someone turned there engine off.  

Where's the caring for the visitor or the people they don't know, or  maybe some marginalized, fringe personalities or perhaps of a different race?  God is love.  Where's the love?  Where is the seeking that one lost lamb of the ninety-nine? Who is looking for the lost coin? Who is waiting to welcome the prodigal home.  Who cares for the lost, broken, bereaved or terribly lonely? 

Have we degraded as Christians to a sterile indifference toward our fellow man?  Where's the love?  God is love.  Shouldn't   our worship experience not just make us feel good but call us higher, turning our focus from ourselves and our experience, toward showing His love to the people God has put in our paths.   Love is where our faith shows up for work.

I have seen the same thing in smaller traditional churches, when real love for the welfare of others takes back seat to the way we have always done it.  People get lost there as well in the ho-hum of the service and the after-service coldness.  Parishioners often seem more excited about the church supper, some other church function or their afternoon nap than they do about welcoming visitors, especially those who are marginalized in some way.  How much personal and spiritual pain leaves these churches unnoticed and unaddressed.   They may come to church looking for the love of God but found only tradition and a silent exclusion.  God is love.  Where's the love?  Where's God in all this?

 We are called to "love our neighbor as ourselves." And yes, that's really hard sometimes.   This is where the rubber meets the road for our faith and our commitment because sometimes our neighbor just  isn't that pretty.  They may look different than us, may not be as well  dressed or even well behaved.  But God loves them just the same - "while we were yet sinners," Jesus died for us.  Jesus died for them too.  "Sounding brass and tinkling cymbal" doesn't dry as many tears as a hand extended in love.  

"Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another." 
I John 4:11

One Sunday I left one of these church concerts, so to speak, and  outside found a young man who had been paralyzed from the waist down with his  wheelchair stuck in the flower bed next to the sidewalk.  Folks were just walking on by without offering help.  When I asked to assist,   I noticed that he was not only stuck in the flowerbed but in a bed of fire ants as well.    He was stuck pretty well and thank goodness one other man came over to help.  We got him out and brushed the fire ants off him as best we could.  I doubt he felt the stings, but it hurt my heart just the same.  His mother drove up and we helped load him in the car and told her what had happened. Is it any wonder we never saw this young man or his mother again?   

How many seeking souls go to church and leave there still stuck in their own hellish fire ant beds? As the church just walks on by satisfied, they have checked the worship box for God.   God is love. Where's the love.                                                                      

Has the church watered down its real power with more promotion than devotion?  Has the church failed to love God by loving our brother? Have I? Have you?

Jesus said, 

Luke 15: 12 - This my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you. He who loveth God love his brother also.

We say we want to work for God:  love God, love others.  We want to worship God? Love God and love others.  It's not complicated:   love God and our neighbors as ourselves. 

Jesus asked Peter "do you love" me" three times and Peter, each times said yes. Jesus followed each time with   "Feed my sheep." You say you love me, Peter?  OK. Then love my children even the ugly ones. And Peter was the founder of the church. What does that say? Church- feed my sheep.

Loving and serving God is much more than an emotional spiritual experience or a "business as usual, or checking the "went to church box" with ho-hum half-hearted worship."  No, following Jesus isn't supposed to be easy or highly entertaining.  Loving and feeding His sheep does not come without cost and commitment. 

Put  love to work. Don't take home the love God has bestowed upon and put it away in the closet with your Sunday clothes.  Really BE the church God intended and love like God.   Love our neighbor as we love ourselves no matter the condition of their lives, the color of his skin, or whatever might make them different, or outside our comfort zone.   Love God, love your neighbor. It's not easy but it's that simple.  So much for ceremony, whether sedate or sensational. c Where's the love Church?   Has it gone to work?

As a believer I am the church as well. So, let the love of God's be formed in me.  Let God's love be formed in all believers that we might be the church Jesus called us to be, witnesses and bearers of God's love to this lost and broken world.  Where's the Love?  May the church say, "Here I am, Lord. Send me." (Isaiah 6:8)