Love Alone is Worth the Fight
I'm trying to find where my place is
I'm looking for my own oasis
So close I can taste this
The fear that love alone erases
So I'm back to the basics
I figure it's time I face this
Time to take my own advice
Love alone is worth the fight
Love alone is worth the fight
And I never thought it'd come to this
But it seems like I'm finally feeling numb to this
The funny thing about a name is
You forget what the reason you were playing the game is
And it's all an illusion
A 21st century institution
So I'm headed down the open road unknown
And we find what we're made of
Through the open door
Is it fear you're afraid of?
What are you waiting for?
Love alone is worth the fight
Love alone is worth the fight
We're only here for a season
I'm looking for the rhyme and reason
Why you're born, why you're leaving
What you fear and what you believe in
Why you're living and breathing
Why you're fighting it and getting it even
Let's go headed down the open road unknown
And we find what we're made of
Through the open door
Is it fear you're afraid of?
What are you waiting for?
Love alone is worth the fight
Love alone is worth the fight
Here we are, here we go
Where the road is our own
Hear it calling you home
Here we are, here we go!
Love alone is worth the fight
We start with these lyrics for a couple reasons. The first being that they work alongside the letter to the angel of the church of Ephesus found in Revelation, which we are going to spend some time in today. It also goes along with the secondary topic of this blog, Mr. Fred Phelps. But, let us backtrack a bit first.
As I wrote yesterday, I began a sermon series on the Book of Revelation last Sunday. This Sunday I truncated the letters to the seven churches in Asia found in chapter 2 and 3. I aim for a sermon somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes depending on the content. I am not very concerned where the sermon actually falls in that range, as long as I feel that the topic is adequately covered. Because of that I took a bite-sized truth from each of the letters and crafted one sermon.
Over the next seven days, or eight if I once again do not write on Sunday, I will be taking each letter and expounding more than I did in sermon. I do this because a) it gives me a schedule of what is coming next for this blog, b) it allows me to speak a little more about each topic, and c) it will allow me to bring in some bonus material that might speak to this audience that would not necessarily speak to my sermons original audience [for instance, I doubt that there are more than 3 people in my church who know who Switchfoot is, if that].
The letter to the angel of Ephesus is found in Revelation 2:1-7, and in the passage Jesus speaks about the good and bad of the church. He talks about how they despise wickedness, how they are hard workers, and how they have persevered through hardships, even those that have been because of Jesus. Then he goes on to say that they have lost the love that they once had. This love that they have lost could be simply a love of Jesus, but it could just as easily be a love of each other or even a love they once had for humanity at large. Whatever the case they do not love like they used to.
Which brings us to Fred Phelps. For those of you who may not know the name [few and lucky you are] Mr. Phelps has been the leader of Westboro Baptist Church, whose main claim to fame has been the picketing of the funerals of homosexuals, the military, and others. If you have been following the news or social media the last few days you will have heard that he is supposedly near death.
There has been a lot of rage directed at Mr. Phelps [one could argue rightly so] over the past few days. When a friend of mine posted a status on Facebook about Phelps I was at first tempted to right something cruel. Instead, after about an hour of thought, I wrote the following, "I have thought about this for a little bit and I believe that the harshest judgement for Mr Phelps would be arriving in heaven to a long line of people hugging him and welcoming him one after another. At the end of the line would be Jesus, who says 'Fred how do you feel about all these people whose funerals you picketed now?'"
Now, what does Ephesus and Fred have to do with each other? Well, in a way it all goes back to Switchfoot. Sunday morning I focused on the phrase, "He who has ears to hear let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches." For each letter I pulled out the one thing, above all others, I believed that the Spirit was attempting to get through. For Ephesus I said that A CHURCH WITHOUT LOVE IS NOT A CHURCH.
You see, what Jon Foreman and the rest of Switchfoot understand is that the only thing that is worth the blood, sweat and tears is love. Fred Phelps forgot that somewhere along the road, or he never learned it in the first place. The church at Ephesus clearly forgot it. A pure love of Jesus takes away our need to hurt, hinder, and hate the world around us. A pure love of the people within the pews that surround us takes away our need to be better than them or to be fake around them. A pure love of the world around us allows us to love them as they are, not as we might like them to be, and certainly not to treat them as if they are less than.
Perhaps another song lyric, Andrew Peterson, begins his song Come, Lord Jesus this way.
Tonight in the line of the merchandise store
While they were packing up my bags
I saw the pictures of the prophets of the picket signs
Screaming, "God hates fags"
And it feels like the church isn't anything more
Then the second coming of the Pharisees
Scrubbing each other 'til their tombs are white
They chisel epitaphs of piety
Oh, there's a burning down inside of me
'Cause the battle seems so lost
And it's raging on so silently
We forget it's being fought
I pray that we will learn the lesson that Jesus is attempting to teach us. The lesson that Ephesus and Fred forgot. If we want to be the church, if we want to be the bride, if we want to be the body, we need to be about love. We need to speak love loudly. We need to love in our actions. We need to love, love, love and let God sort everything else out.
Peace and Love,
Pastor K
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