Partial Love

Partial Love

Acts 10:34-43   |   1/12/2014

The Church of the Wayfarer

Norm Mowery, Pastor

          There is something God cannot do: God cannot show partiality.

          Parents usually profess to love their children equally, but in her book, The Favorite Child, Ellen Libby says she discovered that many parents privately admit that they have a favorite child. Did you? Do you have a favorite child?

          When I read that I got to thinking about whether God has favorites.

          "Sometimes my dog is my favorite child—not often, but sometimes she is."
So says Jill Smokler, a Chicago mother of three (not counting the dog), who admits she sometimes favors one child over another.

          Jill is at the forefront of a growing parenting trend: not being afraid to admit she sometimes has a favorite child.

          For years, "I love you all equally" has been the instant response of parents, when asked by their children if one of them is the favorite.

          My mother use to say that she had seven children and they were all different. At times some of my siblings may have felt that I was my mother’s favorite.

          Now, some parents are daring to admit they were fibbing all along and are admitting that they did have a favorite child.

          Psychologist Ellen Libby says, "Favoritism doesn't have to be bad."

          Libby believes many parents have inclinations toward favoring one child or another, over time. Being open about this isn't harmful, she teaches, because each child benefits from the extra affirmation at different times.

          In the end, everyone ends up with some positive memories—hopefully!

          What do you think?

          Is this common sense—or psychobabble?

          Peter in our scripture today says, "God shows no partiality," and by that he means there's no favoritism, no preferential treatment in God’s realm.

          No one on this earth gets more love from God than any other person.

          God doesn't just glance at our faces and make a snap judgments, as so many of us do with our neighbors.

          God doesn't stop with the externals.

          God looks deep within.

          Think with me to the last time you were at an airport.

          Remember the sea of faces surging toward you, displaying a variety of expressions, a range of emotions.

          Remember the skin colors, the body types, the clothing, the hair styles, the tattoos.

          The human mind is a remarkable calculating engine.

          It makes judgments we're scarcely aware of.

          Do you pigeonhole  many of those faces at airports, categorizing them as                              foreigner or native-born,

                   rich or poor,

                   lazy or hard-working,

                   dangerous or benign?

          If so, you did what Peter says God never does.

          You made a lot of judgments, based on very little information.

          Many mixed motives affect our love for other people.

          President Lyndon Johnson said, “There are no favorites in my office. I treat them all with the same general inconsideration.”

          Have you ever heard these professions of love?
                   I love you more than a dog loves his bone.
                   I love you more than the Cookie Monster loves cookies.
                   I love you more than a turkey hates Thanksgiving.
                   I love you more than Romeo loves Juliet.
                   I love you more than you will ever know.
                   I love you more than I love myself.

          There are lots of examples of partial, limited love.

          Three of them come to mind:

          Loving the lovable
          Often, the only love we're able to manage is loving the lovable.

          That's a curious word, "lovable."

          Usually, when we say a person is lovable, we mean the person is attractive, pleasing, gifted in some way, so as to win the affection of others.

          By definition, a lovable person is not hard to love. My little Pixie is lovable.

          Does God call us only to love the lovable?

          Of course not!

          When Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as yourself," he doesn't add the codicil, "that is, if your neighbor happens to be lovable."

          What kind of love would that be?

          Pretty shallow!

          No, the sort of love Jesus is encouraging is not about being attracted to another, as a moth is drawn by a porch light.

         
          So, that's one kind of partial love: loving only the lovable.

          Reciprocal love
          Another type of partial love is all about gauging our love according to the possibility of receiving love in return.

          This is reciprocal love: "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."

          Lots of human relationships are like that.

         

          This, too, is only a partial love.

          What happens, for example, if one partner gets sick and is unable for a time to care for the partner's needs?

          Does the love-partnership fall apart at that point?
          Some do.

          Plenty of couples have headed for separation or divorce out of a sense of unfairness, when one partner comes to believe the even exchange is no longer so even.

          The other partner is not holding up his or her end and is not doing enough.

          Any love that keeps score in such a way is only a partial love.

         
          There are times, in some marriages, in some friendships, when one partner ends up carrying more of the weight of the relationship.  

          Sometimes it's just the way it is.

          The simple truth is that, if we're in a reciprocal relationship, there's always the temptation to engage in scorekeeping.

          So that's the second kind of partial love: reciprocal love.

          Controlling love
          The final sort of partial love is controlling love.

          We've all known people like that.

          An element of control often makes its way into human relationships.

          In such relationships, love is offered for a time, free and clear, then abruptly snatched away.

         
          Controlling love falls short of the full measure of love, the biblical ideal.

          By and large, controlling love is not the sort of love we see God exercising in the Bible.

          You'd think it would be just that way, in the uneven power-relationship of an omnipotent God and a frail and flawed people.

          But it's not.

          The track of God's love for Israel had some rocky interludes. Even on their epic journey through the wilderness, the people of Israel sometimes acted foolishly and disobediently. God had to dispatch the prophets, one by one, to call them back to faithfulness.

          Were God's love controlling them, that never would have happened.

          But God's love is never a controlling love.

          God values human freedom.

          The love God offers is truly free—in the sense that we are always free to accept or reject it.

          It's true that if we wander away from the fold,

                   God will go after us,

                             as a shepherd seeks the lost sheep.

          But God never prevents us from leaving.

                   The gate to the sheepfold is always open.

          Complete love
          It's not that there's anything terrible about these three limited types of love—                       loving the lovable,

                   reciprocal love

                   and controlling love.

          They're still examples of love,

                   and love is the one power in the universe that's universally good,

                             even in partial form.

          A love that loves only the lovable can be shallow, but, as far as it goes,

                   it's still love.

          A love that demands to be paid back can still bring much joy,

                   as long as the other partner in the exchange continues to deliver.

          Even a controlling love can yield some benefits, contributing to the loved one's sense of worth.

          So, if these are all partial forms of love, what does complete love look like?

          Jesus gets at this when he teaches, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

          Can there be a more difficult teaching than that?

          Think of a terrorist event like the Boston Marathon Bombers.

          Remember the fear and anger that riveted the nation that day, and in the days of the manhunt that followed.

          Remember the wild speculation in the news media about who had committed this outrage?

          Then, a teenager was discovered cowering under the cover of a boat up on blocks in someone's driveway.

          He was wounded and bleeding.

          He was an American kid.

          He seemed so normal.

          His school friends had no idea.

          By all accounts, he had come under the spell of his troubled, big brother.
          There's little doubt he was guilty of a crime against humanity.

          The law offers little mercy to one such as him.

          Life in prison, with no parole, is the very best he can hope for.

          Does Jesus really expect us to love him?

          Does Jesus really expect us to be anything other than partial in our loving?

          Jesus places the ideal of selfless love out there before us, all the same.

                    He sets the bar high.

          This life of Christian discipleship is a matter of reaching upward after his example,

          trying our best to live as he lives,

          to love as he loves.

          When we allow the love of Jesus to flow outward into our fragile human relationships, we become capable of a deeper and more faithful way of loving.

          In a very real sense, the love we extend to others is not partial at all.

          It is the full love of Christ that comes to us as an unmerited gift and that overflows into the lives of our friends and sometimes even perfect strangers.

          Toward the end of 1 Corinthians 13, that "hymn to love," Paul speaks of love in terms of partiality and completeness:

"For we know only in part,

and we prophesy only in part;

but when the complete comes,

the partial will come to an end."

          That's the model. That's the ideal.
         
          C.S. Lewis said,

          “There is someone I love, even though I don't approve of what he does.   There is someone I accept, though some of his thoughts and actions revolt me.

          There is someone I forgive, though he hurts the people I love the most.

          That person is me!”

          Lots of research shows that love is more effective at bringing us together than keeping us together.

          You may have heard the saying, "Love is easy; relationships are hard."

          That’s so right. We've got our work cut out for us.

         

Prayer

          As we enter into this time of prayer, O God, we ask that you would help us to let go of what is past.

          Release us from anger and resentments and hurts of days gone by;

          free us from bitterness and help us to fill this space with the love of Christ.
          We offer our gratitude for the gift of love.
          We offer our thanks for those people in our lives who love us unconditionally.
          We offer our thanks for those who provide a safe place in the shelter of their unselfish love.
          We offer our praise for those who give expecting nothing in return for the gift.
          We offer our gratitude to those who cause us to rise to our greater selves.
          We offer thanks for those who help us to put the pieces of our lives back together when dreams and hopes are shattered.
          Let us honor the past and look forward to the future with hope so that the fires of hatred might be transformed into flames of love through Christ our Lord whose prayer we pray together saying…...

Children's Sermon

          Put two bags of Goldfish crackers in front of the children -- cheddar and pretzel. Ask them to tell you which one they prefer. Say that most of us prefer one flavor over the other, which means we have a favorite. Then ask if God prefers one kind of person over another: male over female, short over tall, black over white? Shake your head and say that the Bible says that "God shows no partiality.