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         As some of you may remember, last year we heard a strong and challenging Earth Day sermon about the serious threat of global warming and the moral imperative to do something about it. A year later, we have even more scientific evidence that the earth’s climate is changing—in dangerous and disturbing ways that demand political, corporate and personal action to protect the earth and future generations.

         Yet I have had a hard time figuring out what I could say that would be new, that would challenge such an environmentally friendly congregation.

         But then . . . then I read an article in the New York Times Endnote 1 about a young family whose commitment to going green puts us all to shame. In trying to live for one year with no lasting impact on the environment, they have given up shopping (except for food), paper, carbon-fueled transportation (including the elevator to their 9^th-floor apartment), television, the microwave, and producing trash (except compost). This means, among other things, that they are going a year without toilet paper.

         Now that is inconvenient!

         So, I hope I’m not disappointing you too much when I say that ultimately I decided not to preach a toilet paper—I mean, Earth Day—sermon.  

         No, the fact is that although I care enough about the earth to live in a wind-powered house, use a person-powered lawn mower, and write an earth-friendly liturgy, when it came time to write my last sermon as a parish intern here at CCC, the Spirit just was not whispering “Earth Day.” And when I heard Jim describe this as my “farewell sermon,” I knew I had to follow the Spirit’s lead and the lectionary’s guide.

         So, as I stand before you on the eve of my graduation from Wesley Seminary, nine days before I go before the Church & Ministry Committee for my ordination “exam,”. . . As my head spins from how much my life has changed in three years and my heart trembles from how little I know about what comes next . . .    As I look out on the people I have come to love and care for so much over the past two years, I ask your indulgence.

         I ask you to bear with me and ponder with me the connection between life, ministry, community, and what our scriptures tell us this morning about who God is and how we should live. I ask you to come before the still-speaking God with hearts wide open, with ears eager to hear what Jesus means when he tells us to love one another as he loves us. I ask you to celebrate and embrace the sometimes inconvenient but always liberating truth that Jesus’ new commandment, the love commandment, requires all of us to let our lives be shaped by the God who is love.

         You see, the sometimes inconvenient but always Spirit-empowered truth is that loving as Jesus loves means loving as God loves. The sometimes inconvenient but always redeeming truth is that loving as “God so loved the world” means giving our lives away for the sake of one another and the world. The sometimes inconvenient but always transforming truth is that Jesus’ way of love is not one of self-denial but of living faithfully and loving fully—with all our heart, mind, soul and strength—no matter what the consequences. The sometimes inconvenient but always grace-filled truth is that loving as Jesus loves does not mean believing in certain doctrines but ‘beloving’ one another and the world—and, yes, even the earth—with the ever-merciful, healing, reconciling, steadfast love of God as expressed in Jesus. [Endnote 2]

         The past three years of my life have been amazing—full of new experiences, great challenges, deep learning, joy and pain, excitement and fear, and new, dear friends. Three or four years ago I would not have imagined myself standing here today; I could not have imagined myself doing many of the things I’ve done. Three years ago I was working hard at a prestigious, high-paying job, a job I had worked hard to get and to hold, and yet . . . something else, someone else, had a hold on me.

         And so I left my 22-year career in journalism; I left the high-profile, fast-track life of chasing after senators, truth-squading the president, and getting the truth onto the front page . . . for the no-profile, slow-lane life of listening to lectures, praying for hospital patients and, at the advanced age of forty-something, becoming an intern.

        Both the magnitude and mania of what I had done came home to me one morning about halfway through my first semester in seminary. I had stayed up most of the night studying for a midterm, and after writing the three-hour exam I met my study partner in the hall. I confessed to her that, not only had I crammed into the wee hours but I had continued to go over my notes as I drove to school. Well, she one-upped me, confessing that she had also been reading her notes in the car—until she almost hit somebody! I quickly assessed the situation—Here were two reasonably accomplished women: a former Los Angeles Times reporter and editor, and a Ph.D sociologist, studying while driving—and concluded that either this was of God, or we were absolutely crazy.

         Since then I have had many other opportunities to stop and think, “Never in a million years could I have planned this or designed this or imagined myself in this situation. This has to be God. This has to be love.”

         *Every November 1^st, for example, I and many others have walked up and down the steep hill from Wesley Seminary to Massachusetts Avenue, putting sand in paper bags and candles in the sand, and then lighting the candles. Each All Saints’ Day luminary has represented the life of an American soldier or Marine killed in Iraq, and each vigil has honored them and all Iraqis and others killed in the Iraq war. The first year we made 1,300 luminaries; the second year it was 2,013; and last November it was 2,813. Every year I looked at the hill of light and cried, praying that we wouldn’t need to do it the next year, and knowing that only Love—God’s love working in and through us—could prevent it.

         *Then there was the morning last summer at Sibley Hospital when I got a call from a nurse in Labor & Delivery. A little while later, I walked through a door with a paper butterfly on it, to comfort and pray for the parents of a so-called “fetal demise.” I heard their cries and their questions; I listened to the sobbing father ask what he had done wrong; and then I blessed and baptized their baby girl as she slowly turned blue in her mother’s arms.

      And I knew: Only Love—the love of God working in them and through their family and friends—would get them through their grief and heal them and enable them to hope again.

         *Fortunately for me, God is big on comic relief. One afternoon, as I made my usual, sometimes heart-wrenching, rounds on Sibley’s oncology unit, I encountered a new patient sitting out in the hall. In my most pastoral, non-anxious voice, I introduced myself as the chaplain. “What?” he said. I realized he couldn’t hear very well, so I said it again, louder this time: “I’m the chaplain.” “The WHAT?” he asked. So, I kept saying “chaplain,” louder and louder until finally he looked up at me, and with a confused expression on his face said, “You’re a shoplifter?”

      And I knew: As I watched a nearby nurse almost fall on the floor laughing and felt my own grief dissolve: This God who is Love also brings joy and laughter, as Sarah said when God told her she would bear a child in her old age.

         *And if I ever needed anything to pull me back from the brain-hurting abstractions of systematic theology to the real-life stuff of faith, I had only to recall the patient’s wife who rushed down the hall to tell me, “It worked! Your prayer worked!”   

         Because in that moment I knew: As important as medicine and surgery and science are, when we are scared and hurting and struggling, nothing beats knowing and feeling that God, who is love, is with us—often in the prayers and caring of others.

         *Here at CCC, I’ve seen and experienced the love of God in so many ways. I’ll never forget telling the children about South Africa, explaining that country’s remarkable history in terms of skin color, when one little girl asked, “What color was Jesus?”  

       And I knew: God’s ways are not my ways; God’s thoughts are higher than mine; God’s radical, barrier-breaking love can work through anyone, anytime, anywhere.

         *And then there are those hours I’ve spent driving around the Beltway trying to visit hospital patients. Janice Dennie? “Oh, she was just discharged.” Jean Caswell? “She seems to have left.” Mable Elliott? “They just took her down for tests.”

         And, . . .  after using my driving time to reflect a bit, I knew: It’s not about me; it’s about love. As long as they know God’s loving care, that’s all that matters.

         *If I tried, I couldn’t begin to list all the many times and ways I have found God’s love here at CCC. But I can tell you that whenever seminary classes were exacting their share of blood, sweat and tears, or the rigors of the ordination process were trying my spirit and testing my faith, it was the people here at CCC, the reality of the Spirit of God moving in this church, the work of this church in the world, that kept me going, reminded me what it was all for, and showed me God’s love.

         Sometimes it was the ready smile and firm handshake of Bill Neal as I came through the door; at other times it was the ever-faithful presence of Oscar Reed. Many times I found God’s love in the prayers and laughter of my Covenant Discipleship Group; in the wisdom and support of my Learning Partners; in the righteous advocacy of Gordon Forbes, the prayerful leadership of Ruth Prindle, the utter dependability of Cory Gray and Bud Dennie, the humble servanthood of Glenda Neal and Sue Dollins and Stevan Fisher, the dignified passion of Delilah Marrow and Jim Henkelman-Bahn, the tender care of Susan Gray and Nancy Kosinski—and if I named everyone here who has demonstrated God’s love to me, we’d be here until next Earth Day.

         But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention God’s primary emissary to me here: Jim, my wise, loving and invaluable mentor, who has taught me—among many more important things—how to preach and cry at the same time.

         The point is this: As I graduate from seminary, as I end my internship with this wonderful community, I want to share with you what I have learned. And it has nothing to do with systematic theology or church history or pastoral counseling or even biblical interpretation—though those things have their place. It may even seem rather obvious. But here it is: The greatest, truest, most important—and most inconvenient—thing I have learned about this ministry to which I am called—and about the life with God and one another to which all of us are called—is that it really is not about what we know, or even what we believe or what we do. It is about love. It is about knowing, through Jesus, the God who is love, and sharing that love with one another and the world.

         “I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you,” he says—after turning social convention upside-down by washing their feet—“you also should love one another.”

         So, how are we doing? Do you see the love of God working in your life? Do you know the God who is love, do you experience the love of God when you walk through these doors? Do you allow God’s love to work through you? 

         Even more important than whether we know God’s love here in this place, among each other, is this:   Does the world see love when it sees us—as individuals and as a community of faith? Do we, as individuals and a community, live and love in such a way that the world can see it—the broken, hurting, warring, racist, impoverished, divisive, hate-filled, sexist, fear-mongering, judgmental, oppressive, unreconciled, and overheated world? Do we so embody the love of God that the people of this world that God so loves—people with hurting hearts, broken families, stressful lives, meaningless lives, lives divided along lines of race, religion, nationality, sexuality, misperceptions and fear—that these people see and are drawn to the God who is love?

         I’ve gone to seminary for three years to learn how to pastor a church, but what I’ve learned is that ministry—that is, a life lived for God, in service to God and God’s people—is not  the church business. It’s not the religion business, the saving-souls or hellfire-and-brimstone business. It’s not even the peace and justice business. It is the love business.

         In other words, to paraphrase what is possibly the single most spiritualized and de-contextualized scripture passage we know:

         If I feed the hungry and am committed to stop the genocide in Darfur, but have not love . . . I will be prone to despair.

         If I work for racial and economic justice, if I struggle to bring peace to Iraq and the entire Middle East, end the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and secure equal rights and respect for all people, but have not love . . . I am certain to fail.

         If I grow the church and serve on boards and increase my pledge, but have not love . . . I am simply a generous volunteer.

         If I give away all my possessions and volunteer for Habitat and help Katrina victims and drink Fair Trade coffee and drive a hybrid car, but have not love . . .  I am not following Jesus.

         “By this everyone will know you,” Jesus says, “if you have love for one another.”

         Last Monday, as I was getting ready to go to Wesley to take my last exam and hand in my last paper, my cell phone rang. I answered, and before I could say a word, some unnamed woman started telling me about a hearing she wanted me to cover and how she’d had a hard time reaching me, and on and on. I realized she thought I still worked for the L.A. Times. I realized that I had just received a call from my former life.

         And I knew: Inconvenient and joyful truth that it was, that that was no longer my life.  “I’m not in the news business any more,” I thought to myself. “I am in the love business.”

         Jesus calls all of us to the business of loving. Just as he has loved us, we also should love one another, for God is love.

         Amen.

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