Love and Change

            I believe that we can change the world. 

In small ways and in large ways we human creatures are capable of changing the world we live in.

            Our food pantry, here at St. Paul’s Church, in some small way serves to change hungry bellies into bellies filled with food. 

            Our parish’s remarkably generous support of Heifer International is a decent sized effort at changing the ancient patterns of poverty that have mercilessly gripped our third world neighbors for centuries.

            Our outreach committee is planning a spring mission trip to New Orleans and our goal will be to assist in disrupting the damage that the tides of stormy disaster have wreaked on our brothers and sisters all along the gulf coast.  There has been and continues to be an enormous amount of suffering in the hurricane affected areas; that needs to change and we can help.

            The two presidential candidates in our country are now making their way down the homestretch. As they gallop towards the November 4 finish line, both campaigns are laying claim to the title of change agent.

            One says he can offer change we can believe in, and the other says if we elect him then change is coming.  Each believes that he can change the country.

            One of my favorite songs is by a rock musician named Ben Harper.  The song is called ‘With my own two Hands’, the essence of the song is the beautiful and hopeful notion that an individual can change the world with her own two hands.

            We have a record with a children’s version of the song on it at my house, and we are teaching Gracie to sing along with it because it seems a good, and maybe even a holy thing, to teach a child that she can make a difference in the world, perhaps even effect change in the world, with her own two hands.

            Among my hopes for the two little ones that       we are going to baptize this morning      is that they grow up to realize that they can change the world with their own hands.

            I believe we human creatures can change the world. 

However, I do not believe that changing the world is our call as Christians.

            Christians are not called to change the world. 

You may disagree. 

But I have searched through the gospels, and I cannot find a command from Jesus to the disciples to go out to change the world.

            It is not hard to find the commissioning passages where Jesus sends the disciples out to teach, and to heal, and to baptize, and to spread the good news of the kingdom of God, and even to raise the dead, but I can find nowhere where Jesus says, “Go, change the world,” which leads me to believe that our job is not to change the world.  Rather, I think the gospels would have us believe that our job is to love the world.

            Christians don’t change the world.  We love the world.

            I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking that it’s the same thing.  You think I am splitting hairs. 

            Loving the world, changing the world – same thing. 

I don’t know though.

            If I set out to change something I am     apt to try to change it to be more like me, to look like me, to talk like me, to act like me, to vote like me, to pray like me, to be like me.  If I set out to change something I am apt to try to make it over in my image.

            If we set out to change something, to change the world, will we try to make it more Episcopalian, more American, more southern, more like us? 

But if we set out to love someone or some group of people, if we set out to love the world, I mean, if the very essence of our motivation is to love, then change is not a part of the game plan.

            We love or don’t love people and things as they are. 

The most striking example in the gospels of what I am trying to say is in the Sermon on the Mount which is what today’s beatitude passage is taken from.

            Jesus says, “Love your enemies.”  He doesn’t say change your enemies into good people.  He doesn’t say change your enemies into lovable people.  He says, “Love your enemies.  And pray for those who persecute you.” 

            It is not necessarily a Christian thing to change the world. 

It is most certainly a Christian thing to love the world. 

            So, is it a bad thing to want to work for change in the world?  Absolutely not!  However, I think a Christian might do well to understand that he or she is called by Christ first and foremost to love the world.

            Now, it is a perfectly Christian hope that God might change the world through the power of our love.  It is a perfectly Christian thing to pray that God might change us into more loving creatures, and through our love actions that God might change the world.

            We love the world.  God changes the world.

            I worry sometimes about men and countries who set out to change the world because across history, they have tended to start wars as they have sought after change.

            Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not laying judgment on those among us who set out to change the world, I am simply suggesting that that is not necessarily a Christian aim.

            Politicians and religious zealots seek to change the world. 

Politicians and religious zealots seek to change  the world.

We are not politicians or religious zealots.

We are Christians. We love.

We love deeply so that we cannot stand the presence of hunger in our community, and so we start a food pantry.

            We are filled up to overflowing with      the love of Jesus Christ in our lives, so we are going to go to New Orleans to spend our love on the people down there.

            We love with great fervor and we feel loved by God and we want to pass that feeling on so we teach our children that if they will love the world, then God might use their own little hands to change the world into a more loving place.

            We are Christians.  We love.

            So, I have a prayer for the baptismal candidates this morning, for Bowen and for Denney, and my prayer is not that they will grow up into men who can change the world with their wisdom and their strength.

            My prayer is not that they will be the most successful, the strongest, the richest, the best looking, or the smartest among us. 

I don’t care if they go to law school, become doctors, great business leaders or get elected president.

Rather, my hope and my prayer is that these two will grow up into the most loving of God’s creatures.  Because that will mean that they have sought after the very essence of what it means to be Christian.

            If these two grow to be loving, grow to love the world, grow to even love their enemies, then, maybe God will use them to change the world, maybe even change the world with their own two hands.  Amen.

Today is All Saints Sunday, which is a day, layered over with meaning.  This morning, we focus on the bookends of life – birth and death.  See, today we celebrate the lives of our dead, and we baptize our newest Christians.  We believe that both our babies and those who have gone on before us remain locked in the love of God.  To our dead we say and we sing, “May you remain in the love of God in heaven!”  And to our babies, our baptismal candidates, we say and sing, “May you also sink with us, and with all the saints who have gone before us, into the deep, enveloping love of God.”  Indeed, for all of us this is a day to remember that whether we live or die we belong to God, are loved by God and are meant to be continually reborn and changed by God into loving creatures.