As if to search for the other side of the pain of loving, the alternative rock band Incubus recently recorded a new song with the title “Love Hurts,” a song featured in the movie, The Illusionist. The refrain of the new Love Hurts says: “Love hurts.....But sometimes it's a good hurt, and it feels like I'm alive. Love sings when it transcends the bad things. Have a heart and try me, 'cause without love I won't survive.”
Both songs portray human experience. We know that loving another person always includes and element of pain. The people who have the greatest capacity to hurt us are the people who love us the most. The people we most easily hurt are those we love. Love and hurt are connected. If we didn’t know it from experience, the definition of one of the words we use for love would make it clear. The second definition of the word passion is “suffering.” The fifth definition of passion is “ardent affection” or “love.” Passion is love so strong that it hurts. Passion is pain so strong that only love makes it bearable.

Jesus knew this kind of passion. Jesus knew that love hurts. On the day we heard about in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. Some Pharisees warned him that Herod wanted to kill him. Acknowledging the danger, Jesus said, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.’” He knew, it is clear, that his time was short. “Yet,” he said with ardent determination, “’today, tomorrow and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’” Such irony in his words. Such bitterness, perhaps. Though not literally true, for prophets did die in places other than Jerusalem, the words were filled with pained awareness of the suffering to come.

Jesus knew that he would suffer and die in Jerusalem. He knew, not because he saw the future, but because he knew the past and was fully aware of the present. He knew that if he continued on the path he had chosen to follow, the people who opposed him would kill him. Jesus was aware of suffering to come. But that suffering was mixed with powerful love. As he approached the city, his heart overflowed with love for the people. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” Jesus longed to take the people of Jerusalem and gather them in his arms. He longed to take the innocent and the suffering, and even those who would cause him suffering, and love them into life. There is such aching in his words, such yearning that is at once love and pain. That is how Jesus was, choosing to go in love even to places that common sense says is foolish or dangerous. Jesus knew suffering love as he approached Jerusalem.

And he knew suffering love again in the last days of his life; as he ate his last meal with his friends, knowing that one of them would betray him and others would deny him. He knew suffering love as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, asking God to give him a way out. During his arrest and mockery of a trial, and during the excruciating torture of crucifixion, Jesus lived a love so strong that it hurt; he lived pain so strong that only love made it bearable. No wonder we call those events the Passion of our Lord. No wonder the first definition of the word passion is “the sufferings of Christ between the night of the Last Supper and his death.” Real love hurts.
Whenever we feel passion, we share in the passion of Christ. Whenever we suffer in our love and love in our suffering, we are one with him. And he is one with us. Christ is there in our passion, and that makes our suffering love holy, filled with the presence of God. Whenever we experience that awful and awesome combination of suffering and love, we are on holy ground. It’s not always the holy ground we expect. We’d rather Jesus take away our pain. But Jesus never promised to do that. He never promised that faith in him would give us a life free from pain, free from hardship, free from hurt. Instead, knowing that we would suffer, no matter how we live our lives, he told us to love in the midst of our suffering. He told us to love even our enemies, even those who cause our suffering. And he told us that, because of the power of love, he would be there with us in the midst of all our pain. He is there to breathe new life into every place of hurt, revealing it to us as an opportunity for love.

Despite such never ending love, we sometimes we reject this intimacy of Christ. We sometimes reject the presence of Christ who wants to love us and take us under her wings. “How often I have longed to gather you,” Jesus said, “but you were not willing.” Sometimes we are not willing. Sometimes we don’t allow ourselves to fall into those arms because we’re afraid, or because we don’t believe, or because we hold onto the pretence that we are in control of our lives. Sometimes we don’t fall into those loving arms because we can’t figure out how to find arms that aren’t physical. Yet Christ, in the fullness of suffering love, continues to reach out for us.

Christ continues to love us, no matter what. There comes a time for most parents when their children will not allow them to hug or hold them anymore. There comes a time when parents experience the rejection of their nurture and protection by children who are learning to be independent and to make their own way in the world. Although that rebellion hurts, healthy parents more often than not don’t abandon their children because of the hurt. Love remains, often the kind of longing, aching love Jesus felt over Jerusalem. If that is true for us, that we love those who rebel against or reject or ignore us, how much more it is true for Christ.

Christ loves us even long beyond the point where the most loving mother would stop. Christ keeps waiting with arms wide open, waiting for us to come and be sheltered under those motherly wings. Christ waits with arms wide open, with the arms of love that he stretched out on the hard wood of the cross so that everyone could come within the reach of his saving embrace. Christ loves us with love so strong that it hurts.

Yes, love hurts. But “love sings when it transcends the bad things. . . without love I won’t survive.”

Without love, we won’t survive. Thanks be to God for the wonder of love, for the power of Christ’s love in our world and in our lives. Amen.

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Genesis 15:1-12,17-18

The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir." But the word of the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.

Then he said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess." But he said, "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates."

Psalm 27 or 27:10-18 Page 617, BCP

Dominus illuminatio

1

The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom then shall I fear? *
the LORD is the strength of my life;
of whom then shall I be afraid?

 

2

When evildoers came upon me to eat up my flesh, *
it was they, my foes and my adversaries, who

stumbled and fell.

 

3

Though an army should encamp against me, *
yet my heart shall not be afraid;

 

4

And though war should rise up against me, *
yet will I put my trust in him.

 

5

One thing have I asked of the LORD;
one thing I seek; *
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days

of my life;

 

6

To behold the fair beauty of the LORD *
and to seek him in his temple.

 

7

For in the day of trouble he shall keep me safe

in his shelter; *
he shall hide me in the secrecy of his dwelling
and set me high upon a rock.

 

8

Even now he lifts up my head *
above my enemies round about me.

 

9

Therefore I will offer in his dwelling an oblation
with sounds of great gladness; *
I will sing and make music to the LORD.

 

10

Hearken to my voice, O LORD, when I call; *
have mercy on me and answer me.

 

11

You speak in my heart and say, "Seek my face." *
Your face, LORD, will I seek.

 

12

Hide not your face from me, *
nor turn away your servant in displeasure.

 

13

You have been my helper;
cast me not away; *
do not forsake me, O God of my salvation.

 

14

Though my father and my mother forsake me, *
the LORD will sustain me.

 

15

Show me your way, O LORD; *
lead me on a level path, because of my enemies.

 

16

Deliver me not into the hand of my adversaries, *
for false witnesses have risen up against me,
and also those who speak malice.

 

17

What if I had not believed
that I should see the goodness of the LORD *
in the land of the living!

 

18

O tarry and await the LORD'S pleasure;
be strong, and he shall comfort your heart; *
wait patiently for the LORD.

Philippians 3:17-4:1

Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

Luke 13:(22-30)31-35

[Jesus went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, "Lord, will only a few be saved?" He said to them, "Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. When once the owner of the house has got up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, open to us,' then in reply he will say to you, 'I do not know where you come from.' Then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.' But he will say, 'I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!' There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out. Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God. Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last."]

Some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." He said to them, "Go and tell that fox for me, 'Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.' Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.'"