"Love Quantified?"
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Sunday of Christ the King -- 23 November 2008
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[text: Mt. 25:31-46]

The last few months have given us a lot to think about and much of what we’ve heard and seen has to do with quantification, with measurement. Every day we wait and listen to hear how the stock market has done. One day it’s down four hundred points and the next day it’s back up those four hundred points, plus a few more. We hear about “perceived wealth” and how do we quantify that? If the maxim “perception is reality” is really true – well, then the perception of my wealth is a great deal less than it was (and God knows, it wasn’t that much at the outset!). I think that what we’re going through – which a number of economists and economic historians have said doesn’t hold a candle to the Great Depression of the 1930s – can serve to teach us an important lesson on how we should go about measuring, quantifying what is of real value to us. So I suppose we could ask the question – can love be quantified?

First, let me share an old saying with you: "What goes around, comes around." It's been used in a number of contexts, but most often in saying of people, "they'll get what they deserve -- just you wait." Still, I prefer to think of that phrase in a much more positive light. To me the phrase simply means that God can take all of the stuff of existence and, sooner or later, bring it around into God’s self. The Gospel lesson today seems to indicate that and serves to recapitulate the major themes which occupy us during the Pentecost season, the season of the church and its ministry. So we are led to think about mission, responsibility, Christian action, and eschatology. The first three focus us on how life is lived in the here-and-now. The last one leads us to think about how everything is going to turn out and, ultimately, how we go about quantifying love.

This lesson from Matthew not only puts the cap on a season, but on the whole church year. The church, or liturgical year, serves to help us focus on the various great events of God's love for us. Thus, today, as it comes to a close, we are reminded that we live and hope for the coming of Jesus to be Sovereign and Lord and. So we celebrate the Sunday of Christ the King.

As we expect and meditate on the second coming we become better able to look at the first coming -- a future event assisting us in understanding an historical and present event. Next week we go into the season of Advent; a time of longing and expecting the birth of the Messiah, which then leads us to the celebration of that birth at Christmas. Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and the times which follow each, lead us through the unfolding revelation of God's love and care. And then the cycle will begin again. . .what goes around, comes around and shows us how God goes about quantifying love – God doesn’t. God simply loves us.

It's easy to see from where Jesus drew his imagery, especially in the parable of the sheep and the goats. He lived in a 'pastoral culture,' sheep and goats were all around him, so he understood how sheep and goats were pastured together during the day and then separated at night. Shepherd imagery was natural to him, but here the intensity is moved up a notch.

What goes around, comes around -- and we're again in the presence of the Shepherd and of his emissary, the Son of Man, through whom he has sought to "seek and save the lost." We are also once again in the presence of those who have nothing to commend them but the misery of their condition: the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, and the imprisoned. Now, however, the Shepherd also acts as king -- and as judge. The Shepherd-king is seeking to discover whether those who are his subjects, his own, have acted as he has desired and demonstrated their citizenship in the kingdom through the way they have quantified love.

This parable of the sheep and goats appears only in Matthew's gospel. It is very likely there because the Jewish-Christian community for which it was written was asking the question: "What will be the fate of non-Jews and non-believers when the Son of Man returns? Will they be saved?" The question is not incongruous with the vision the later prophets, like Ezekiel and Isaiah, had for Israel. Israel's salvation, its status as "the chosen people," was to serve as the gateway for the rest of the world into God's kingdom. So the answer the parable seems to give, quite graphically, is that those who have acted with justice and kindness toward their sisters and brothers will be welcomed. Those who haven't won't be. "What you have done to the least of my brothers, you've done to me." For Christian believers the message is also graphic -- and plain -- make your life consistent with your profession of faith, show that you know the proper quantification of love by not quantifying it, by not measuring it.

I think no one reflects on this more than Julian of Norwich. She may have lived in the fourteenth century, but her vision was cosmic. She writes:

I saw that he is to us everything which is good and comforting for our help. He is our clothing, for he is that love which wraps and enfolds us, embraces us and guides us, surrounds us for his love, which is so tender that he may never desert us. And so in this sight I saw truly that he is everything which is good, as I understand.
And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and I perceived that it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought: What can this be? And I was given this general answer: It is everything which is made. I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that it was so little that it could suddenly fall into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it' and thus everything has being through the love of God.1

Moreover, after this she observes over and over, "All will be well." Why? Because the love of God is present and powerful and it is the Good God who will "make all manner of things well."

Where that reign of love, which makes well begins to be present is in the lives of believers and especially in the midst of God's gathered people, the church. One of the chief tenets of the Congregational way is Jesus is the head of the church. The Savoy Declaration of Faith (later adopted and inserted intoby both the Boston Platform and Saybrook Articles) says:

By the appointment of the Father all power for the calling, institution, order, or government of the church , is invested in a supreme and sovereign manner in the Lord Jesus Christ, as king and head thereof.
In the execution of this power wherewith he is so entrusted, the Lord Jesus calleth out of the world unto communion with himself, those that are given unto him by his Father, that they may walk before him in all the ways of obedience, which he prescribeth to them in his Word.2

Communion, oneness, under the headship of Christ means that we are all one in the love which has drawn us. There is an equality here and a responsibility, because we all share in the priesthood of Jesus. Each of us is called upon to be a 'pontifex' (the Latin word for priest), a bridge-builder between God, ourselves, and everyone we meet; just as Jesus is for us. God didn ’t ask how much building relationship with us, redeeming us, renewing us, drawing us into union would cost. God didn’t quantify love – God simply loved and that becomes the quantification of love.

Let me explain. A very wise and holy man, Francis of Sales, once said, “The measure of love is to love without measure.” I think you’ve heard me say this before – indeed, there are some folks who think that I talk about love too much, but it’s what I see in the Scripture. Francis, who was the Roman Catholic bishop of Geneva during the Reformation modeled love without measure because, as his biographies all say, even the Calvinists loved him. Why did they love him? He lived the love of God – love without quantification, love without measure, which showed in every aspect of his life. And there’s the point, the measure of love is to love without measure, we are not to dole out love in little dollops here and there as we see fit, we’re supposed to spread it around and allow it to make a difference. After all, that is what God did, isn’t that what we see in Scripture?

The two pieces Francis of Sales is remembered for are The Introduction to the Devout Life and The Treatise on Divine Love. Listen to what he wrote about submitting to love in the latter piece:

Let us love then, Theotimus, and adore in humility of spirit this depth of God's judgments, which, as S. Augustine says, the holy Apostle discovers not, but admires, when he cries out: O the depth of God's, judgments! “Who can count the sands of the sea, and the drops of rain, or measure the depths of the abyss," says that excellent understanding S. Gregory Nazianzen:{Orat. xiv.: On Love of the Poor}. "and who can sound the depth of the Divine Wisdom by which it has created all things, and governs them as it pleases and judges fit. For indeed it suffices that, after the example of the Apostle, we admire it without stopping at the difficulty and obscurity of it. O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counsellor? Theotimus, the reasons of God's will cannot be penetrated by our intelligence till we see the face of him who reacheth from end to end mightily and ordereth all things sweetly; doing all that he doth in measure, and number, and weight; and to whom the Psalmist says, “Lord, thou hast made all things in wisdom." . . .
Let us cry out then, Theotimus, on all occurrences, but let it be with an entirely amorous heart towards the most wise, most prudent, and most sweet providence of our eternal Father: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! O Saviour Jesus, Theotimus, how excessive are the riches of the Divine goodness! His love towards us is an incomprehensible abyss, whence he has provided for us a rich sufficiency, or rather a rich abundance of means proper for our salvation; and sweetly to apply them he makes use of a sovereign wisdom, having by his infinite knowledge foreseen and known all that was requisite to that effect. Ah! what can we fear, nay rather, what ought not we to hope for, being the children of a Father so rich in goodness to love and to will to save us; who knows so well how to prepare the means suitable for this and is so wise to apply them; so good to will, so clear-sighted to ordain, and so prudent to execute? [Chapter 8 THE TREATISE ON DIVINE LOVE]

God’s love for us is abundant, without measure and that love is what is to sustain us and motivate us to live what we pray for daily: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

While the task of bringing the kingdom to come "on earth as it is in heaven" may seem daunting, we mustn't be overwhelmed. I like what Mother Teresa of Calcutta has said:

I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time. Just one, one, one. You get closer to Christ by coming closer to each other. As Jesus said, "Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me." So you begin . . . I begin. I picked up one person. Maybe if I didn't pick up the one person, I wouldn't have picked up 42,000. The whole work is only a drop in the ocean. But if I didn't put the drop in, the ocean would be one drop less. Same thing for you. Same thing for your family, same thing in the church where you go. Just begin . . . one, one, one.

When we consider Mother Theresa and her work in the light of the recent revelation of her own spiritual “dark night,” (which lasted for forty years) it makes the point about quantifying love all the more meaningful. The love she had within her kept her going, even though there was no affective sense of God during her prayer. She felt nothing. Nevertheless, she continued to pray and she continued to do the work that she believed God had called her to do – all for the sake of love.

The kingship of Christ implies that his believers will make his rule present. The freedom we're given by participation in Christ is not a freedom from, but a freedom to: to be shepherds, to be the means by which the Good Shepherd continues to seek the lost, heal the broken, nurture the strong and to be the witness of God's sustaining love. Living our freedom in Christ's kingdom begins with loving one person at a time, not quantifying that love, but loving freely and without measure.. What goes around comes around -- and all will be well for the measure of love is to love without measure.

1-Julian of Norwich Showings ed. and trans. E. Colledge, OSA and J. Walsh, SJ in 'Classics of Western Spirituality' (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), p.130.

2-The Savoy Declaration, "the platform of polity," in Williston Walker, Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism (Philadelphia: Pilgre Press, 1969), p. 403.