The Selfless Pace of Love

By Traci Hubbard

Have you ever been in the car with someone who drives like you have extra lives?  Let’s start with the obvious: Everyone loves the idea of love. We put it on mugs. We send heart emojis in our texts. We quote it at weddings. But actually, loving like Jesus? This is where things get… complicated.

Because Jesus doesn’t say, “Love people who agree with you, who are polite, emotionally healthy, and return your texts.” Nope. The map of Jesus’ ways has directions like “blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are the merciful.” Jesus was an edge walker, connecting with those on the margins who felt invisible. His ways of being, his ways of teaching through story telling often ended with cliff hangers inviting people to learn how to spiritually belay through life with the ropes of loving ways.

Friends, the Divine is LOVE. The Divine is not just loving. John puts it as plainly as possible so we cannot say, “I don’t understand.” John writes, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

Jesus’s Map to where to find him is not like a Where’s Waldo Map. We are not to look for LOVE – the presence of the Holy out there, we are to look inside of us where LOVE abides. Because Jesus never said, “Love people who agree with you, who are easy, and who don’t test your patience when it’s obvious your pants have become tight.” Instead, He gave us the Beatitudes—an upside-down vision of love that looks suspiciously impractical.

No pressure.

Let me tell you about a spiritual moment I experienced in a grocery store parking lot. I was in a hurry. I had three bags to fill. And I had been circling for a parking spot like a shark on steroids. Just as a spot opened, and it was clearly my spot—another car swooped in from the other side and took it. I felt something rise in me like I was turning into one of my grandson’s Transformers and it was not the energy of Jesus. I had my Sicilian hooded eye of death squint all ready to go…you know what I am talking about…that look you give your child while you are sitting in the chancel choir and they are in the congregation blowing a bubble with their bubble gum…that look that communicates “I am disappointed in your life choice and I brought you into this world which means I can take you out look.”

And then, clear as an Okanagan summer day, I remembered the Beatitude: “Blessed are the meek.” Not weak—meek. Meekness means controlled strength. We are free to choose restraint. It is a kind of love that doesn’t need to have the last word during Christmas Dinner.

I took a breath. I waved to the man in his F-150 like Forest Gump waved when he saw Captain Dan walking at his wedding. Looking back on this, it was a very dramatic wave, perhaps not as meek as the Spirit would have preferred. That small moment didn’t change the world.

But it changed me. I refused to allow the selfish choice of another have power over my energy. I chose being a Gump instead of a Dump Truck of anger. That’s how love works—quietly, inconveniently, and right where we live.

The map of Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” This means when we love others, our love requires us to admit when we don’t have it all together.

“Blessed are those who mourn.”  Love is interdependence and it is self-aware and socially aware. This means love sits with others who are experiencing pain, it does not try to fix their pain.

“Blessed are the merciful.”  Walking a selfless pace in the love of Jesus means we forgive, understanding our need for forgiveness. This beatitude alone could keep us busy for the rest of our lives.

As I said last Sunday, choosing to walk in hope, peace, joy, and love…these are not personality traits. These are choices, inner destinations, and descriptions of what love looks like on a Tuesday afternoon in a grocery store parking lot.

We all know at least one “difficult” person. Can I get a witness? Want to show us their picture? Just kidding. Maybe some of you are thinking, “I don’t know anyone like that.” Seriously? When was the last time you looked in a mirror?  

“Oh, there you are! Easy going Traci, never offended and never judgy of others…there you are! Isn’t it sad that not everyone understands how much like Jesus you are!” Don’t miss the judgmental sarcasm there. The blame/shame game…so easy.

One of my ministry colleagues shared about someone in her congregation who constantly criticized how things were done - how short or long her sermons were, the music she chose, the length of her fingernails, and the time she decided to paint them red, ANATHAMA! Every conversation this person initiated with her came with a list. She shared, “I became an artful dodger, trying to avoid this person every chance I could, and I told myself I was simply loving them from a safe distance. After a year of my dodger dancing, the person had hip surgery and instead of feeling like I HAD to go visit them in the hospital, I found myself drawn to go visit. When I arrived, she was sleeping, so I sat in a chair beside her bed and prayed for her. Thirty minutes passed and she stirred – waking to see me. I had no idea how she would react, but I had decided that no matter what she said, I would simply listen. I would give her presence. I would be love.

What happened next was a total surprise. She smiled at me and patted the side of her bed. I got up and sat beside her on her bed and then her story began to pour out of her along with buried tears. Thirty-two years ago, her six-year-old daughter was abducted and murdered. It took four months for the police to discover her remains, and three more years to find and arrest her killer. During those horrific years without any closure, her marriage dissolved, and her parents died. An only child, she was alone in the world having pushed her friends away with her anguish and anger. After she laid her daughter’s remains to rest, she moved across the country where no one knew her, and she could begin a new life. What she found was loneliness born from feeling invisible and that she didn’t matter to anyone. She felt abandoned by God.”

My colleague went on to say, “Silence engulfed the room after the woman finished sharing. And suddenly all I could see was Jesus crying out from the cross, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ And I stepped into the response of Jesus, ‘Forgive them – they don’t understand what they are doing.’ That’s when I chose to be the attitude of mercy.”

“Mercy did not wipe out her mean and critical behavior, but it explained why it existed, why it controlled her and my heart broke open to her. No more walls, no artful dodger moves like I was Travis Kelce running toward the goal line looking up in the air for a pass from Patrick Mahomes. Score! She didn’t tackle me with any kind of critical behavior. I realized my artful dodging had reinforced her feeling of being invisible, of not mattering. Six months later, she became the chair of Outreach and Pastoral Care on our Church Council. I’m telling you that woman had casseroles leaving our church faster than the chocolates on Lucy and Ethel’s conveyer belt.”

John says, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us.” When we open our hearts to becoming love to another person, Sacred Mystery becomes visible, not through preaching, but through patient and kind presence.

Loving like Jesus doesn’t mean being endlessly nice. It means being deeply connected to and with the Spirit. Loving like the Spirit of Christ loves us never manifests by doing more, climbing one more mountain, or losing who we are by dissolving into meeting the needs of others. The love of the Divine comes from recognizing and spending time with the presence of the Divine in us.

And yes, sometimes we love clumsily. Sometimes we love with a deep sigh. And sometimes we trip over our dodging, get tackled by our selfishness, miss the goal line, fumble the moment…you know what I mean. But the good news is we can get back up and reconnect to our source of love and begin again.

Folks, as this last week showed us, our world does not need any of us to make sure we get the parking spot we want or believe we deserve. And yes, it has not escaped me that I have my own parking spot in our lot with a sign that says, “Clergy” on it. Hey! I didn’t ask for that sign or spot, that sign was there long before I arrived, so all of that is on you. Phew! I feel better! LOL. If we want a packed parking lot, we need to be beatitude people who are living out glimpses of the Friend who lives within us, always sees us, and never dodges us.

So may we love like Jesus in parking lots, in hard conversations, when our child’s bubble-gum bubble is about to interrupt communion, and with difficult people, beginning with ourselves. The world says existing is just not enough. This is the heart of all conflict. Humans trying to prove they are worthy of love. My friends...we were created in love, by LOVE, meaning every human was enough before birth. Why? Because our souls, our essence, is love, created in the essence of LOVE. As we leave this place today, remember who you are...you are LOVE. Live and have your being, your pace, your moving in our world as the LOVE you are.

Now, if you asked me about the most beautiful part of my life, I wouldn’t point to a certain place or a specific moment in time. I would look at these people on my homemade Christmas Tree that I get to love and say, “Right here, this is it.” And I would point to all of you, and say, “Right here, this is it.” I meet Jesus in all of you, and because I love you, I have been changed for good.” Namaste.