Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
October 10, 2020
Philippians 1:9-11
So, this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.
During the first couple of weeks of the pandemic, I was voraciously reading books, creatively painting and drawing, and finding the slowing down of life really good for my soul.
Sadly, like many of you, much of that has worn off and more and more, it has become harder to read and be creative during this time.
As I described to Beth on Monday as we attended a virtual Pastor’s Conference covering rather weighty issues in our country – “my mind seemed to be “swimming” with so much that it was hard to focus.”
Later in that same conversation as we were exclaiming how sobering the conversation was and how much it lacked hope, Beth mentioned the missing piece of the conference was a perspective of LOVE.
It seems when things get heavy and complicated – often the first thing to go is love. And if you haven’t noticed love is on the run currently with all that the world is throwing at us.
If you remember, last week in my sermon, I mentioned “letting go,” which I said begins when we start to cling or shift toward something else. In that case I said, “I believe it is God – or what I often simply call, Love.”
I have noticed that for many of us (including myself) instead of clinging to Love – we often take the easy route and let go of Love and then wonder why things have become more difficult.
I sense much of our world right now is focusing on anything and everything but love, and it is really taking a toll.
Then I was reminded of a teaching that was speaking to my condition just a couple of weeks into the pandemic.
Ironically, one of those books I had voraciously read had me asking quite a few queries and challenging my own faith in these interesting times. And I found myself in what we spiritually call a “dark night of the soul.”
Even though it was not the best book I had ever read, it piqued my interest long enough for me to get to the final two pages where like that conference on Monday I was longing for some love.
I might say, those two pages were worth reading the entire book. In those final two pages of “Unbelievable,” Bishop John Shelby Spong, introduced me to a phrase or mantra that has continued to speak to my condition for months. The mantra is,
“Love Wastefully”
Love Wastefully – just sit with that for a moment. Say those words out loud to yourself. Love Wastefully. What do you hear?
When I say those two words…
What springs up inside of you?
How does that phrase make you feel?
What images does it leave in your mind?
Maybe it leaves you with a sense of uneasiness or wonder. Or maybe you do not like the idea of the word “wastefully” being used to describe love.
I will be honest, it stopped me in my tracks. I was winding down to the end, when it had me reading each word individually for the last two pages. It drew me in and now, I did not want the book to end.
Just moments before, it could have ended and I moved on, but then those words leaped off the page – Love Wastefully!
It made me ask, why did he wait until the last two pages of the epilogue to the book to explain this?
Well, when I was exploring the concept more deeply, I ran across Rev. Deshna Shine explaining Spong’s concept in greater detail. She says,
Spong believes that God is the source of all life, the Source of Love, the Ground of Being, and is present in every person and in all of Creation. [Doesn’t that sound rather Quakerly for a Progressive Anglican Bishop?]
For Spong, the only true way to worship God is by living fully, loving wastefully, and having the courage to BE all that we can be in full authenticity. [Let me repeat that.]
“…the only true way to worship God is by living fully, loving wastefully, and having the courage to BE all that we can be in full authenticity.”
By loving wastefully, which [Spong] likens to plugging the old sink in the basement, turning on the tap full force and allowing the water to overflow into every crack and cranny, never stopping to ask does that crack deserve this living water, we can be overflowing with love.
Loving wastefully means you love … and then you love some more.”
Rev. Shine goes on to say,
“We have an infinite well of love within that we can always fill ourselves up with. To love is to feel love and to love wastefully is to love without fear or expectation or need.
When we are tapped in to the Divine within us and to the Divine’s way of loving wastefully, endlessly and infinitely, we are not losing anything, in fact we feel fuller.
Yes, when we are loving wastefully, extravagantly, wildly, our lives our richer and fuller, and more complete!
I sense the reason so many of us are feeling empty, stuck, and even fearful is because we are limiting the experience of that overflowing source of Love in our lives.
Let’s be honest…we are spending way too much time obsessed with politics, watching 24/7 news, worrying about Covid, isolating ourselves from others and also from what brings us life.
Folks, we can be safe as well as loving. Actually, we can have a loving response to all of those mentioned obsessions.
Spong says, “Love is the force that enhances life. If flows through the universe, finding expression in the care that nature, in all its living forms, gives to its young, but love reaches self-consciousness only in human beings”
That means you and I are the source of love. You and I are the source of love – just let that sink in.
That means either we choose to share it, or we contain it.
And this is evident because as Quakers we know – there is that of God in each of us. There is a glimmer of Love in the depths of every person that has the potential for the greater good – if we choose to share it.
This means you and I have the potential to be a force that enhances life.
Just imagine that there’s a faucet that has been turned on somewhere deep inside of us and it is ready to overflow through our life and out into the world around us.
And when it is not used…I sense it begins to weigh us down. We continue to fill like a large balloon not able to react or move freely.
Rev. Shine pointed something out from Dr. Vivek Murphy, in his book, Together, that I think is extremely relevant during the pandemic and unrest in our world. She says,
“…the vast majority of us feel lonely. Often, we feel lonely even if we are around people we love because we are not having deep connections at all of these three vital levels: with the self, in relationships, and in community.
We all seek deeper connections and we desire to receive more love. But we are afraid to give it. We are afraid of getting hurt. We are afraid of being empty, of losing love, we are afraid that in the act of giving love we are actually losing love.
When in fact, when we take time to look within, we find that there is this deep well of love bubbling up within us, an eternal spring of Living Waters. We can discover that the experience of loving fills us up with love just as much, if not more, as the experience of receiving love.
To worship God is to be love in this world and when you are overflowing with it, you are able to love wastefully.
I have a feeling Dr. Murphy is encouraging us to “let out the love” – just like that balloon over-filled with water – as soon as there is an opening…it is rather hard to contain the water that comes out. The same is true for us – the love begins to spew right out of us and on to everyone around us.
Or as Spong said so well, the love that comes out of us is
“the kind of love that never stops to calculate whether the object of its love is worthy to be its recipient.
It is love that never stops to calculate deserving. It is love that loves not because love has been earned.
[And finally, he brings it full circle by saying] It is in the act of loving “wastefully” that I make God visible.”
It is love that sees beyond political parties.
It is love that sees beyond religious affiliation.
It is love that sees beyond social or financial status.
It is love that sees beyond race, ethnicity, sexuality, or gender.
It is love that sees beyond the veneer of our lives and gets to the love within each of us at our core.
Our call to “love wastefully” must work to build and transform the world around us so that every person we come in contact with will have a better opportunity to live fully, love wastefully, and be all that each of them was created to be in the infinite variety of our humanity.
This means, and Spong points out that…
“There can be no outcast;
There can be no one regarded as “unclean.”
There can be no prejudices which are allowed to operate in this vision of Christianity.
The essence of Christianity…is that everyone is to be accepted “just as I am, without one plea.” And that everyone is called into the task of growing into all that each us of can be.
But folks – I sense we and our world are desperately seeking a model or example to live by – one who teaches us to love wastefully.
Where do we look for an example of one who taught and believed this? – we look to Jesus Christ. A person who was so fully alive that we have perceived him as the ultimate Source of Life.
And as one who loved so totally, so wastefully, that we see him as the ultimate Source of Love.
Or as Paul put it in Ephesians 5:1-2:
5 1-2 Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
That folks is what we will call “Love Wastefully!”
Now, let us take a moment to enter a time of waiting worship. I have prepared a few queries for us to ponder this morning.
1. Where instead of embracing love, have I let go of love during these difficult days?
2. Am I feeling lonely and not deeply connected to myself, my relationships, and my community? How might I seek deeper connections?
3. When this week will I take time to explore and observe the Love Christ has for me, and transform it into love for my neighbors?