For me, it was I-95 North during rush hour as I was driving through Chester heading toward the Blue Route. From seemingly out of nowhere, this wave of “emotion” washed over me, a moment in which I had no doubt I was experiencing God’s love in a way I don’t think I ever had before. I knew right then – driving 70 m.p.h. and listening to a Top-40 radio station – that the Lord loved me simply as I was – because I was His -- and he was inviting me to love others with that same kind of love.
It didn’t last long, at least in terms of the feeling. But wow, what an experience: driving past countless southbound commuters and feeling a love for them that felt pure, authentic, and even mystical. It wasn’t my love, but God’s: and on I-95 twenty-some years ago, we were all one.
My life was never quite the same after that.
In some ways, I can imagine Luke was driving toward the same conclusion as he writes to Theophilus – literally, lover of God – as we hear the start of his Gospel account this Sunday: “I have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down … so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you received.”
Luke was writing down his ultimate love story. His “born-again” moment. For the evangelist, it’s the story of the God-man, Jesus Christ, who changed the world for all eternity, but even more importantly, changed Luke’s life forever. He prayed with, struggled with, re-investigated and studied the One who broke into his very existence, and Luke now shares what his heart knows, too: Jesus Christ is the answer to everything. Most especially, Jesus Christ is the answer to learning how to love.
What we don’t hear in this particular love story is the fact that right before Jesus returned home, he was led into the desert (on our behalf) where he prayed, fasted and was tempted. As evil always tries to do, Satan wanted Jesus to take the easy way out – cheap Messiahship and lazy worship – but Christ fought back. Love, after all, doesn’t cut corners. Rather, Jesus stayed and fought in that desert-space, for he knew that we, too, would have battles against darkness and sin that only grace could win.
Upon that victory the Lord went home, back to his little hidden, unimportant village where he first learned what community was about. He worked, worshipped and played here. These were his best friends as a child; his customers as a young tradesman. These Nazoreans fetched water at the well with his Mom and came to his father, Joseph, for carpentry advice. Jesus loved them, in the same way we all have a love – albeit imperfect – for the hometown that shaped our hearts and lives.
Perhaps a prayer moment in the week ahead: How have the friends and neighbors you grew up with colored your world and your understanding of God?
Imagine, then, the heartbreak of coming home to proclaim your mission of sacrificial love – a love that echoes Isaiah: the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring glad tidings to the poor and heal the brokenhearted – to have that very proclamation rejected, scorned and mocked. How the Heart of God must have broken long before Calvary when the very beloved townspeople he loved most in this world closed their own hearts to his message and promise of salvation.
Jesus comes bringing love that would change lives forever, and that love – had the neighbors and friends had their way – was nearly silenced by being pushed from the brow of a Nazareth hill. With the exception of Mary and a few others, most said “no” to Jesus-love.
Which leads us to ask the question: why? What is so threatening about the love that Christ holds out to us and for us? Why do we place a brick wall around our hearts when we are invited instead to become vulnerable and open to such love?
Ultimately, we don’t want to change. A love like Christ’s is demanding: it asks us to forgive. It asks us to put others first and to sacrifice our own selfish needs. It challenges us to surrender control to a Higher Power than ourselves. It asks us to trust, even when – especially when – the Cross looms large. Perhaps most difficult of all: it requires that we see those around us as brothers and sisters. As Paul reminds us in our second reading: as parts of the same body.
The Trump or Harris voter whom you can’t stomach … the transgender-rights activist demanding bathroom privileges … the migrants at the Southern border … the drunk-driver who killed a family of four returning from the beach … your ex who treated you like garbage for 35 years: they are all still parts of the Body of Christ.
That stinks, quite bluntly. But they are. Jesus Christ loves them, too. He keeps calling them to conversion and wants them to accept His love and mercy; to return to Him for healing and wholeness. It doesn’t mean we have to accept their lies and hurts and hateful ways, but it does mean that we have to allow the grace working within us to spill forth into their broken lives. We have to allow the God-love in us to pray and sacrifice for the ones who need the most healing; the ones who would throw us over the brow of the hill, so to speak, if they were given the opportunity.
What strikes me most poignantly about Paul’s one body in Christ image is the fact that we can never say to another: I don’t need you. We may want to. But cutting off a broken finger or removing a cataract-infected eye makes no sense if healing is actually possible. And we must try, with God’s help. We can’t give up.
Again, to be clear: loving with the Christ-love in us does not mean accepting evil; it does not require us to excuse behaviors in the body that lead to further disease and spiritual death. But it does mean that we “retaliate” as God does: with prayer; with a love that invites conversion; a love that is willing to carry the cross for another.
No wonder very few want to live this kind of love. But we must. We, too, are invited to continue what Christ fulfilled through his life, death and resurrection: to let the oppressed go free, in whichever way we find them … and in the ways in which we find ourselves oppressed, as well.
I think that’s why that I-95 moment from 20-plus years ago impacted me so powerfully. I was given the grace to know God loved me with a love beyond all telling, not because I was sinless – I wasn’t – but simply because I was His. He loved me even in those places in my life in which I was ashamed and broken; He only asked that I surrender them to His mercy and healing. In a word, I allowed God’s love story for me to become my love story, too. I accepted the Love – and my life was forever changed.
My moment was not unique, either. I have no doubt that God keeps reaching out, and He will keep whispering or shouting – whatever it takes – to break through broken and hardened hearts until each member of the Body accepts the invitation to be loved. For once we are loved – and we know it, how can we not love God and others in return? Once we accept Christ’s unconditional love and become another Theophilus, how can we not want others to be God-lovers, too?