‘B’  //   Easter 3   //   4-26-09   //  Celebration of Worship, Northside Presbyterian Church

 

Scriptures    Psalm 4 (canted)   Acts of the Apostles 3:12-19    Luke 24:36b-48

 

A psychologist and counselor by the name of Dr. Gary Chapman has written a book. A very popular book. Popular enough to be #50 among all books this week on Amazon.com. Even though it was first published a full fourteen years ago.

 

The book is titled The Five Love Languages.¹ While focused on the ever-popular – indeed, saturated – field of improving relationships with one’s mate, Chapman’s book, it seems, has identified five very practical loves most humans need. Practical loves, arguably grounding us in something deeper than the three Greek philosophical loves known as agape, philos, and eros – namely, loves that are self-giving, sisterly and brotherly, and desirous of the other.

 

We already know of the “quality time” Jesus spent with his disciples – as if we would call it that! “Quality time”: A modern-day saying borne of hurly-burly individual activity that says, almost as an afterthought, “Oh, yes: You’re important to my life, too. So I’m going to spend a little quality time with you.” Can you imagine our Lord and Savior subscribing to such a self-centered conceit?

 

So let us focus instead on the other four love languages Jesus speaks and incarnates – in his resurrected form among us – in Luke’s gospel narrative today: Gift-Giving … Affirmation … Service … Touch Four intimate love languages expressed by our congregation toward each other as well as toward the world.

 

 

Language of Love #1: The Giving of Gifts. And Easter grace and faith is the gift – our gift from God. The gift encompassing the other three loves. God’s miracle of resurrection in our lives made known in the gospel passage today. More precisely put: God’s miracle of everlasting presence among us.

 

No greater gift could be given to Jesus’ disciples – then and now – than his presence never-ending. The gift of spiritual victory over death that the gathered faithful needed to hear, vexed by martyrdom at the hands of the state religion – translated today: our slow and agonizing death at the hands of entitlement and consumerism. The gift of Christus Victor: that there now stood among them, in the midst of death, the presence of life, and life abundant, and life triumphant!

 

The Giving of Gifts. While Dr. Chapman might have in mind something more tangible among two persons – such as the gifts for SOS Community Services we dedicate today – Jesus’ incarnation of life-amidst-death in and beyond such gifts as these speaks this language of love in its supreme form.

 

 

Language of Love #2: Words of Affirmation. Today’s gospel opens in this way: “While they” – the two who had encountered the resurrected Jesus on the road to Emmaus – “were talking about this (incredible occurrence with the disciples and their companions), Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’”

 

“Peace be with you.” What greater words of affirmation can be found than in this classic four-word utterance. The first words the resurrected Jesus shared among his original disciples, according to Luke as well as to John. Words so important and so grounding for us that we share them with each other every Sunday in that central moment of worship known as the Passing of the Peace.

 

Words of affirmation like none other. Four subversive words, dedicated to the language and the practice of nonviolence – in all things. Words that give because they are words that forgive: our debts, as we forgive our debtors. An affirmation of a graceful state of being, rather than something we feel we have earned by a frenzy of becoming. “Peace be … with you.”

 

 

Language of Love #3: Acts of Service. The two disciples who had originally encountered the resurrected Jesus in the gospel narrative prior to the one today had already served him bread – and, we are told, he was made known to them only when he broke the bread in their presence.

 

Now, our Lord asks for a little something more. “Have you anything to eat?” he asks the many disciples gathered – the original band among them. And, we are told, “They gave him a piece of broiled fish.”

 

Acts of service. Serving Jesus – that the gift of his eternal, resurrected presence among us made be made fully known.

 

“Have you anything to eat?” This year, for the first time in human history, over one billion persons around the globe – one in seven of our neighbors, roughly² – daily ask that question of people like us, living in the most powerful nation in the world. Included among this billion are close to 40  million of our own U.S. neighbors³ – also a figure close to one in seven. Our Bread for the World Offering of Letters this and the next two Sundays rattles the cages of our elected federal lawmakers to demand: “Let us answer them!”

 

Let us answer them – just as we are answering, on a more tangible and direct and concrete scale, the needs of homeless families through our Food Gatherers monthly offering today. Let us answer those who cry out, “Have you anything to eat?” so that Jesus – the promise of life everlasting on earth, as it already is in heaven – may be made known in our midst.

 

 

 

1.     The Giving of Gifts – better put: The Giving of the Gift: Resurrection. Life-amidst-death. God’s presence in Jesus: always, and forevermore.

 

2.     Words of Affirmation: “Peace be with you.” The first words out of resurrection’s mouth. Let it be the same for us – in worship, and out.

 

3.     Acts of Service: “Have you anything to eat?” a hungry Jesus asks. Let us answer him.

 

 

 

Unless you’ve become completely inured to the love our society has made an idol – a false god – of more than any other, then you – and I – cannot possibly forget physical touch.

 

Or perhaps – if the gospel narrative has it correct – it should be Language of Love #3? After all, Jesus instructs his disciples to “Touch me and see” – reach out to my hands and feet, touch and see the wounds in them – before he asks of them, “Have you anything to eat?”

 

Indeed: Physical Touch should be the third love. For somewhere between Jesus’ passing of the peace and his plea for a just food policy lies this powerful and necessary experience. The love known as touch that bridges the expressions of our best and most peaceful intentions – “Peace be with you!” – with our best and most just actions to fulfill those intentions.

 

Sisters and brothers: How I wish to God I could remain with you in your dedicated outreach pilgrimage to touch the very wounded hands and feet of the homeless families in our community! Physically, to touch them: tentatively, at first … warily, at times … vulnerably, all along the way.

 

For who knows what can and will happen when we intimately come to know the marks of crucifixion seared into the flesh of the person who stands at the traffic light off the highway exit ramp? And who knows what can and will happen when she and he and they become a testimony of Christ’s resurrection among us?

 

Who knows what could happen? To them? To us?

 

Whoever has ears to hear – and hands and feet to touch:

Let them hear … and let them feel … and let them hope.

 

 

¹Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate (Northfield, 1995).

 

² Javier Blas, “Number of chronically hungry tops 1bn,” Financial Times, March 27, 2009. Cited by Megan Rowling of Reuters that same day, “World’s hungry exceed 1 billion, U.N. tells Financial Times,” www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/20316/2009/02/27-170057-1.

 

³See Food Research and Action Center, “Hunger and Food Insecurity in the U.S.”, to wit: “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that in 2007, 36.2 million people lived in households considered to be food insecure. Of these 36.2 million, 23.8 million are adults (10.6 percent of all adults) and 12.4 million are children (16.9 percent of all children).” http://www.frac.org/html/hunger_in_the_us/hunger_index.html.