Happy Valentine’s Day. Or it will be on Sunday. And that’s an odd thing, isn’t it? We have to go to church on the day dedicated to human love, romantic love. Isn’t it? I mean, yeah sure we talk about love all the time in church. But everyone knows that there is love and there is ... love. Right? I mean I learned way back in seminary that there are different words for love in Greek, and that we’d better pay attention to which one is being used in order to understand the context. There is the love called “philos” which means the love of a friend, and the love called “agape” which is the love with which Christ loved us, the love that took him to the cross. And there is “storge” which is love of a parent for a child, family love, and there is eros which is romantic love, love of a man and a woman. And it would be helpful if we could keep all these ideas separate in our heads so we don’t get confused when we are asked to love our neighbor as ourselves, or to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. It’s good to keep those things straight.
Except that later biblical scholars have noted that the gospel writers didn’t always keep it straight. And that it seemed like the words are often used interchangeably. Huh. Kinda like English, which is so sloppy it only has the one word. Love. Like somehow they all run together. Like they interweave and that we can’t make the kind of divisions we want to make. Such as when we say, “Jesus said I have to love you, but He didn’t say I had to like you!” How do you do that exactly? How you dislike someone, but love them like Jesus wants us to? Is that even possible? Or that other one, I love you but I hate what you do. Except what if for them what they do is who they are? A slippery slope, I know, that could send us crashing down into the ridiculous (“I’m a murder, it is what I am, not what I do, you have to accept what I am!”) Which is of course nonsense. But where is the line? How do we determine what is worthy of loving, no, sorry, who is worthy of loving and who isn’t?
And what does all this have to do with Lent, for heaven’s sake? Lent is a somber, reflective, internal season designed to make us feel sorry for our sinfulness. It is about our journey with Christ, our wandering in the wilderness for these forty days, as he wandered in the wilderness for forty days. (Although, it is leap year, as was pointed out to me. Which means there is a free pass hidden away in the season, a day when you don’t have to reflect, don’t have to repent, don’t have to feel bad. There’s an extra feast day, to go along with all the other Sundays of the season. A get out of jail free card, a golden ticket to the chocolate factory!) But what does all this somberness, all this being sorry, all this repenting, all this introspection have to do with loving? Everything. Just ... everything.
Psalm 91 You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, 2 will say to the LORD, "My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust." 3 For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence; 4 he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. 5 You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, 6 or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday. 7 A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. 8 You will only look with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked. 9 Because you have made the LORD your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place,
10 no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. 11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. 12 On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. 13 You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot. 14 Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. 15 When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them. 16 With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.
Because we live in love. That is the secret of our existence. We are surrounded by a love that is almost indescribable. We’re wandering in the wilderness, remember? Our Lenten journey. Like His. But remember wilderness for Jesus isn’t the wilderness we think of. We think of green, of trees so thick you can’t see through, of grass and weeds and undergrowth that catches our feet, making it hard to walk. We think of dark and secluded, damp and mossy, bugs that carry us off they’re so big. We think of creeping things and slithering things, things with teeth and claw. Swamps and rotting vegetation, our wilderness, peopled with creatures of our imagination and film history, is different than His. His wilderness was desert. Was rocks and sand, was sun beating down, sapping strength and life, it was dry, parched, sere. Exposed and vulnerable. So, Psalm 91 was a blessing. You who live in the shelter, who abide in the shadow. It was not hiding, it was relief. Relief from the blazing sun.
You who abide in shadow. Ahh, can you feel it? The cloud that covers the sun for a moment, and suddenly you can stand straighter, can run a little further, can open your eyes again and see what surrounds you. Relief. God’s love is a relief. Relief from the dry feeling of isolation and abandonment. Relief from the hearts parched from a lack of love that they can sense or receive. Residing in the cool shadow of acceptance and security. Standing up straighter instead of bent over from the weight of emptiness. My refuge and my fortress; my God in whom I trust.
For what? Trust God for what? There is a thread in this psalm that feels ... dangerous. Angels will bear you up so you won’t dash your foot on a stone? Treading on lions and snakes? No scourge will come near your tent? Dangerous, and conditional: Those who love me I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. What about those who don’t know, because they haven’t been told or haven’t been told in a way that makes sense to them? What about those who don’t know how to love You yet? Are they, are we just on our own if we find ourselves in that category, temporarily or permanently?
And if we do know, if we do love as best we can, then what do we get? A bubble suit? A tireless guardian angel, pulling us back from busy curbs, protecting us from airborne diseases, shielding us from flying projectiles hurled by accident or intent? Are we impervious to hurt? If that is the promise then why do we hurt? Because You aren’t paying attention or because we didn’t love rightly? We didn’t know enough?
We know better. In our heads anyway. Sometimes our guts wonder. We feel abandoned at times. At other times we feel inadequate, like we disappointed God. But we know better. We know that God’s love is constant and unconditional. And Psalm 91 simply says there is nothing that can happen to us to take it away. The last two verses explain the promises.
“When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them.” Verse fifteen says God promises to answer whenever we call. We don’t always hear the answer because we’ve moved out of hearing distance, or because we haven’t learned the language of God well enough, or because we’ve set up a hoop for God to jump through and God hates hoops. But the promise is God will always answer.
The second promise from this verse is that God will be with us. “I will be with them in trouble.” We’d prefer God keep us from trouble, but since a lot of the trouble we’re in is our own fault and God gives us the freedom to wander away, we should celebrate the good news that even our stubbornness, even our bad choices, even our attempting to take God’s place doesn’t keep God from being with us.
But wait, that verse does say rescue! “I will rescue them, and honor them.” So, there you go! Our get out of jail free card!! Except, it doesn’t seem to work that way. God will honor us? By allowing us to make our own choices and then to live with the consequences. That’s honoring us. But we do have that card, in the end. We are rescued. Verse sixteen says “with long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.” What could be longer than eternity? That’s the promise. That’s the rescue. We want something more temporal, usually, but God thinks big picture. And tries to show it to us. Invites us to live it now. Another way of thinking about this protection is to say let’s live like God wants us to and see if our lives aren’t better, more full, more alive. Let’s love like God encourages us to, and see if we aren’t better lovers all around. Let’s see. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Shalom,
Derek
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