How do we know how to receive?
How do we know what it is to receive love?
These are the questions that have been haunting me this week as I have prepared for this sermon.
Do we really know how to receive love?
How do we learn to do this?
The scripture readings this morning are about the Holy Spirit, God’s abiding presence in the Church…and the Church’s responsibility to share that Spirit with the entire world. It is the Feast of Penecost. The scriptures are very clear that God gives Love. God pours out God’s Holy Spirit upon all gathered. They suddenly understand one another’s languages. They suddenly speak languages that they had never known. It’s a miracle!
When I read this passage, however, I am struck with the ease with which the followers of Jesus receive the Holy Spirit. There is almost an involuntary quality to how they receive God. It’s like they are possessed. But what we are witnessing here is not possession. The Holy Spirit does not possess us. We receive the Holy Spirit. It arrives, and we have to receive it. We receive God’s Love.
Who were these men and women who received the Holy Spirit? And what did they know that I don’t know about receiving it? Because sometimes I think I just don’t know how to receive love.
The Holy Spirit is God’s Love, a Comforter, Advocate and Guide…a wind…the breath of God with a mother’s voice saying, “I love you. Be made new.”
Perhaps the hardest thing about love is learning to receive it.
True love, divine love, is a free gift…no strings attached. You cannot buy it. You cannot earn it. It is simply Given. All you can do is receive it. And though it sounds so very simple, it is the hardest thing about Love…even God’s Love.
Sometimes I get greedy with love. I want to be the only one to receive a certain kind of love. As a young boy I may have said that my mother’s love is only for me. It is not for my little brother. I would invent ways to be her favorite. I would compete with my brother for my mother’s affection.
We still do this as adults. I sometimes might find myself competing with the cast of one of Trish’s shows for her attention. It’s entirely unnecessary, but in a fit of insecurity I might just get greedy.
We also compete for accolades and acknowledgements. We strive to outdo one another in greatness. We compete, plain and simple. And the winner receives love. The loser…well…Have you heard about the lonesome looser?
Somehow we think that we can earn love. We can purchase it with deeds and smarts. It’s social Darwinism. Those who evolve (succeed, produce, etc) are the ones rewarded. Love does not work this way. God’s love does not judge in this way. God’s love sees us all as equal. God pours out love upon all.
Pride, too, can be a barrier to receiving love.
I am a pastor! What do I need with love? I give! I do not receive. I am ordained! I received One Big Infusion of Love. Ah well…with pride…
We can shut ourselves off somehow…thinking we don’t need love…or the Holy Spirit, or in the end even God. We look at our lives and our accomplishments and believe we have it all. Or our giving becomes a form of control and it’s not love at all. We can give to keep people at a distance. We give so that we do not have to receive. It is a form of judgment. “Those poor people out there. They are not like me. I should give to them.”
Often this is because we are hiding some wound of our own. We don’t want people to come too close to see where we are broken. So we toughen up and give to distract from our own brokenness.
Maybe it feels safer somehow to give than receive. It is certainly less vulnerable. But in then end…this kind of giving is not even about love. It’s about ego…and a need for self-importance. Jesus always ranted against pride…Religious pride, economic pride. Jesus said that we are measured by our weakness. Blessed are the meek, the lowly…but woe to those who think they have it all.
Another barrier to receiving love is shame. We think of ourselves as unworthy to receive Love. We are not beautiful enough. We are not tall enough. We are not talented enough. We are not smart enough. The list can go on, and on, and on. Somehow we can think that we simply are not enough…something in us is deficient.
This shame can be institutionalized as well. It becomes our various “-ism’s.” Racism. Sexism. Social Darwinism. That one goes both ways, doesn’t it?
We can be abused and shamed by one another. We can be told we are 3/5ths a person, or no person at all for so long that we come to believe it. So we lock ourselves up, shut ourselves off from everyone. We harden our hearts. We define ourselves by shame. And we cannot receive love. We shame one another. We injure one another so horribly sometimes that Love becomes impossible.
We create leper colonies. We create entire social structures where people are permanently outcast. Jesus, he moved among the outcasts, he slaves, the women. He gave God’s love freely to all…no such judgment existed for him…no such shame.
Receiving love can be so very difficult. Seeing beyond competition, pride and shame so that we can receive something freely given is harder than it looks.
The congregation in Corinth struggled through this. Paul is writing to them because it seems that they have lost a little perspective. They have forgotten some basics about the nature of God and how God gives. They have, it seems, begun to rank the gifts of the Spirit. And it shows that they may very well have forgotten what it means to receive...to receive something freely given.
“Oh! Bob has the gift of teaching. He’s so much cooler than Frank. Frank is just a prophet.”The Spirit, says Paul, is poured out upon each person equally. There may be different gifts, but no one gift holds primacy over another. To rank them is a trap. It’s competition, pride and shame institutionalized...and an ecclesiology founded on pride, shame and greed is no ecclesiology at all. It’s simply not the Church.
“Well, I heard that Agnes speaks in tongues!”
“No way! Well, she has Bob and Frank beat hands down.”
“Yeah, those guys should learn their place.”
In so doing, they make it harder and harder to receive. They make it impossible to Love.
Paul says that the nature of the Holy Spirit, the nature of God, is to give and love equally and freely.
How is this so? How is this possible?
It’s a matter of focus. The focus of Love is The Giver. God is the Giver of Love. Christ is the Bearer of Love. The Holy Spirit is Love Breathed Out Upon All. We, strangely, are not the focus of Love. That love is not meant to build up any one of us more than another. The love is for the Common Good. Love, the Holy Spirit, the gifts that God offers are for the building up of all. There are no pedestals. There is only God’s unity and God’s peace.
Pentecost is often called the Birthday of the Church. This might be a nice excuse for a party. But I think that focusing on this might be a bit of a mistake. To focus upon the Church is not the point of Pentecost. The point of Pentecost is to focus on how all the world is receiving the Love of God all the time…and may not even know it.
There are people out there who cannot receive love. Systems and relationships pin them down. Pride and competition rule their lives and they cannot receive Love. The Holy Spirit and the gifts that come with it are for the building up of the entire world…for the common Good. We, we are to be witnesses to God’s Love poured out equally. To receive Love is to recognize this truth…to uphold the weak, the weary, the burdened, and the oppressed…the poor.
Learning to receive love is learning that Love is for all…
Receive now the Love of God. Amen.
I like where you have taken this, especially the ending....good food for thought.
Posted by: RevDrKate at May 10, 2008 08:21 PMJust made me think of Nouwen:
There are two sides to forgiveness: giving and receiving. Although at first sight giving seems to be harder, it often appears that we are not able to offer forgiveness to others because we have not been able fully to receive it. Only as people who have accepted forgiveness can we find the inner freedom to give it. Why is receiving forgiveness so difficult? It is very hard to say, “Without your forgiveness I am still bound to what happened between us. Only you can set me free.” That requires not only a confession that we have hurt somebody but also the humility to acknowledge our dependency on others. Only when we can receive forgiveness can we give it.