Kyle, Author at Kyle Matthew Oliver

Moses says: Learn by (re)living

August 31, 2015March 6, 2019 Kyle

(Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9; Psalm 15; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23)

Preached at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in the Bronx on August 30, 2105.

Audio | Text:

It’s Friday evening at about 6:10 pm. We’ve reached the play’s penultimate scene, which apparently not all of the cast has seen.

“Fr. Kyle, is that a llama?” a girl of six or seven asks me.

“Well, Zury, I think it’s supposed to be the golden calf, but it looks like a llama to me.”

If I’m also looking a little shaggy and haggard to you this morning, it’s because I’ve been in the desert all week, just like that golden calf. I’ve been helping with a Vacation Bible School aka VBS, and our story was, as you might have figured, the life of Moses.

My wife is the new curate at St. Peter’s in Port Chester, and taking the lead on el Campamento Biblico de Verano was one of her first big projects. And as it happens, my day job is at a seminary teaching and learning resource center, and one of our specialties is supporting VBS planning for congregations all over the country.

So my boss gave me permission to go on what I started calling a “VBS ridealong,” a chance to help out, observe, and take a few craft and game ideas through “play testing” in a real congregation.

To be honest, I was a little nervous at first about our theme. We had a very wide range of ages, as well as wide variation in the language skills and preferences of both participants and volunteers.

I didn’t relish the thought of describing some of the more grisly Plagues of Egypt to a six-year-old, or trying to do so in my still laughably basic Spanish. One prominent VBS leader says that the theme of any such program is “I love you and God loves you and that’s the way it should be.”

So I figured we’d have some explaining to do regarding, in order of appearance, Hebrew infants thrown in the Nile, the plague of the the firstborn, and dead Egyptians on the Red Sea shore. This story has a lot of unlovely details.

But it’s safe to say that I was very wrong. Yes, there are ways to tell the story with integrity to a child of any age, and, yes, our tendency to over-sanitize the Bible does more harm than good. But to understand what really brought me around on teaching Moses at VBS, we should have a listen once again to Moses’ words for us on this, the 14th Sunday after Pentecost.

In the opening chapters of the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses is reminding his fellow Hebrews how far they have made it: from slaves in Egypt to fugitives on the run, from wanderers in the desert to receivers of the law to—almost immediately—transgressors of that law. And did he mention wanderers in the desert?

And now, finally, forty years later, they are preparing to become inheritors of God’s promised gift to Abraham: the land of Canaan, a place to build houses and plant crops and live a settled life with countless offspring. Indeed, part of the reason for this Deutero-nomion, this second book of law, is that the people would now need guidelines that governed an entirely different lifestyle and pattern of relationship with God, self, neighbor, and the environment.

But notice that Moses isn’t here obsessing over new rules or old ones. Sure, he’s reminding the people to follow those rules, but he’s more concerned with the story of how his people received them and what they mean:

You must observe them diligently, [he says,] for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’ For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him?

Here the law is a sign of God’s covenant with the people, of God’s closeness to them. This is Torah: God’s direction, God’s instruction. And not primarily because punishment will be doled out to transgressors but because these teachings are designed to foster justice and mercy and most importantly the giving and receiving of love.

Now here’s the really cool part. Moses continues,

take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children.

He says don’t forget the things that your eyes have seen. Not: don’t forget what you’ve been told.

So in his final pep talk, Moses is saying “Take particular care to remember what we’ve been through.” He knows that that will be Israel’s best hope: not to be mere keepers of the law but to be stewards of the story, the story they lived together as a people.

If you’ve been fortunate enough to attend a Passover Seder, you’ll recognize this principle immediately.

Why do we eat the Matzah? participants ask. Why do we eat the bitter herbs? Because our people left Egypt in a hurry, before their bread could rise. Because the lives of our people were made bitter at the hands of Pharaoh.

The experience of eating and drinking and praying and singing along with the story is an attempt to capture it in its fullness years later, to tie its contours to sensations and circumstances that are accessible to us today.

And that’s what experiences like Vacation Bible School or camping ministries are so good at. They immerse us in the story in ways we will never forget. Moses knows how important that immersion is, so it seems fitting to borrow his teaching style to tell his story.

This week we touched the desert sand and sang “Go Down, Moses” and pretended to be the frogs of the second plague and raced to make bricks for Pharaoh’s building projects and, because we couldn’t resist, brought marshmallow hailstones down on those same buildings with homemade catapults. (That’s plague #7 if you’re keeping score in your pews.)

On Friday I even realized that our portable water slide and ice cream day were basically the promised land.

To borrow the well-known phrase from today’s Epistle lesson, this kind of teaching and learning made the people of that St. Peter’s “doers of the word, and not merely hearers.”

Now, I haven’t had the pleasure of spending an intensive week getting to know this St. Peter’s. But just a glance at your website shows me that you practice many hands-on ministries that help teach members and neighbors of any age that “you love them and that God loves them and that that’s the way it should be.”

We can say it until we’re blue in the face, but it’s ministries like your Love Ktichen, Love Closet, Love Pantry, and Cephas Arts Program that make this love incarnate, that help us see and serve the Christ in one another.

So here’s my challenge for you … and for me as well. In the so-called “program year” ahead, let’s be on the lookout for even more chances to bring to life the captivating story that is the love of Jesus Christ set loose in the world.

Maybe that means more hands-on, active learning in our Christian formation gatherings and experiences. Maybe that means volunteering in an outreach program if it’s been a while for you, or seeking out a new way to serve. Maybe that means telling someone a part of your faith story, and showing them how that story is shaping your life in concrete ways.

As Franciscan Richard Rohr put it in his email meditation this week, quoting Pope Paul VI, “The world will no longer believe teachers unless they are first of all witnesses.” I think that’s basically what Moses is telling us today.

“Take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children,” and, I hasten to add, to everyone one you meet.

How & Why: Big questions in the spiritual life

August 16, 2015March 6, 2019 Kyle

Proper 15, Year B

(Proverbs 9:1-6; Psalm 34:9-14; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58)

Audio | Text:

I’m an engineer by training, which means I’m fascinated by how things work. HOW can be a big question, a noble question. HOW can set us at fascinating tasks, send us on great quests.

It can also really mess up a pleasant afternoon. If you’ve ever walked into a room in horror to find that your child, significant other, or coworker has taken something intricate apart—something you probably needed—you may have had an encounter with the implacable pull of HOW.

We are fascinated, many of us, with interconnections, mechanisms, lines of reasoning. The world is held together by these pieces and processes, and our God-given curiosity tells us there’s an underlying structure to it all and that to know that reason is, perhaps, in a small way, to know the mind of its Creator and Sustainer.

Of course, HOW can be a dangerous question. I’m a fan of science fiction and fantasy, and in these genres HOW is a tightrope. On the one hand, many of us are drawn to these stories because we want to know how these worlds work. The HBO series Game of Thrones and especially the books on which it’s based keep many of us riveted because they let us examine how the webs of influence in Westeros respond when one link in the political machine is strained, or cut, or removed altogether.

On the other hand, HOW can also be a distraction, or even a travesty. If you’re looking forward to the next round of Star Wars movies, you’re probably hoping for a little less HOW than in the much-maligned prequel of the early 2000s. I’m thinking in particular of the film’s relationship with “the Force,” the mystical energy that binds the Star Wars universe together and gives the Skywalkers their power.

I won’t bore you with the details if you don’t know them already, but the prequels reduced the power to control “the Force” to a simple blood test. The boy who would become Luke’s father had a count of little Force bacteria that was off the chart, apparently. And so to be selected as a Jedi Knight became not a matter of mystical discernment but basically a box that might be checked by the technician at the interstellar Lab Corps.

The point is, Star Wars fans’ questions about the Force are not HOW questions. They’re WHY questions: Why did Luke’s father turn from good to evil? Why does the Force seem to desire a kind of balance between light and darkness, good and evil? And, perhaps, why does the Force exist at all?

Jesus is a master of turning us toward the WHY. Many of the moments when he brings his opponents up short—or brings us up short—come from his keen insight about the WHY of a given situation. He knows that the person asking HOW is usually trying to justify himself, or trap Jesus in an intenable position, or turn a complex issue simple, or a simple one complex.

We see a typical example of this phenomenon when Jesus encounters the learned religious leaders in today’s passage. He’s claiming to be “the living bread that came down from heaven,” and they understandably want to know: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

After all, it’s an audacious claim: eternal life bestowed, and the indwelling of one spirit in another. It’s also a truly strange one. It doesn’t add up for these anxious onlookers. They don’t see how it would work, or why they’d want it to, this eating of Jesus’ body. Which is fair enough, but also not the point.

Rather than even engage with their HOW-oriented thinking, Jesus keeps right on going with his teaching about WHY: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.” It’s like he’s saying “don’t ask how, just *think* of it, for a moment, what I’m offering.

As we’ve been exploring in the gospel readings these past few weeks, Jesus’ discourses on the Bread of Life are about who he is, who God is, how we depend on God, what God wants for us. They’re about the gift of grace, and the means of human flourishing. They’re not a HOW-to manual. They’re parables of WHY.

Why eat? Why follow? Why serve? Why love? These are the questions that animate our lives, and Jesus knows what we seldom admit to ourselves: that we get so bogged down in *how* to do these things that we lose touch with the reasons why we even embarked on the journey.

Or maybe we use our anxiety about how as an excuse not to ask why in the first place. Perhaps in a work meeting, or even a vestry meeting, you’ve seen a skeptical colleague shoot down an important idea with this often toxic question: “But how would that actually work?”

The worst is when it’s not even a question. The phrase “I don’t see how that would work” has an air of finality, especially when it comes from someone in power. Which is why it’s all the more remarkable that Jesus stood up so often and so successfully to the HOWs of the authorities.

Now, they’d revoke my engineer’s card if I stood up here and told you HOW wasn’t important. And I hope also my priest card as well.

Practicalities, matter. Jesus was a man of action as much as of reflection. God wants us not only to think big thoughts and dream big dreams but, as we prayed today in our collect, “to follow daily in the blessed steps of [Christ’s] most holy life.” We have to walk the walk, and that means knowing and taking the steps we need.

All this has led me to believe that WHY and HOW are inextricably linked in the life of the Spirit. Perhaps Jesus is always asking us WHY because it’s easier for us to see God there. But God is just as present in the HOW.

A marriage is a leap of faith where we trust that the importance of the WHY will provide the HOW when we need it, that this love we have been given will abide amid the inevitable challenges and setbacks and it will be enough. The same goes for the choice of a field of study. Or a move to a new job or a new home.

A good friend of mine recently reminded me of the full extent of the connection between WHY and HOW in what feels, in my life at the moment, like a final frontier. That, of course, would be having kids.

I see so many friends whose lives seem to have been totally undone by the challenges of children: sleepless nights, cancelled vacations, trips to the emergency room. My knee-jerk annoyance at every potential nice dinner out that needs to be changed to a picnic lunch with rotating playground duty confronts me with an overwhelming sense of my own selfishness. I wonder HOW I will ever be up to this sacred duty.

Without my even asking the question, during a recent visit my friend Becky, one of those new parents, answered it:

I just didn’t know it was possible to have SO. MUCH. LOVE.

HOW turned out to have the same answer as WHY.

Perhaps the way of wisdom is little more than integrating these two questions, coming to trust our experiences of a savior who calls us to be with him (there’s the why) and then nourishes us throughout the journey (that’s the how).

So the next time Jesus throws the pharisees, or you, a curveball made of WHY, or you’re tempted to shoot down someone’s big idea with a hostile HOW, remember that in the issues that matter, the answers to these questions converge in a synthesis only God could orchestrate.

When a task seems too daunting, or a truth too strange or even too wonderful, like the flesh of a savior offering eternal life, remember this simple Q & A.

How? By the gift of grace. Why? Always, ultimately, for love.

Image credit: “How and Why” by Roadsidepictures via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Sunday school students should be making things

July 23, 2015August 5, 2016 Kyle

The pro position of today’s Key Resources Point/Counterpoint gets to the core of my concerns about traditional Sunday school models:

My own education prioritized hands-on, project-based, interdisciplinary, student-empowered learning.

I wrote jingles and parodies as a participant in Odyssey of the Mind and Destination Imagination, months-long creative problem-solving competitions. I built towers and trebuchets out of nothing but ropes and poles as a Boy Scout.

I performed music and theater and produced big events as a member of garage bands and pit orchestras and student play festival teams. And I helped create monthly newspapers and a yearly literary magazine as a well-mentored student journalist.

At the same time all that was happening, and especially in the later years of it, my church was encouraging me to learn like this: by sitting in a room and talking.

Read the whole thing here.

Image credit: “Godly Play Resurrected” by Claire via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Phineas and Ferb and other fictional creators

July 15, 2015August 5, 2016 Kyle

I’m still only a few episodes in, but I’m finding Luke Harrington’s observations about Phineas and Ferb to be right on the money. The show really does get at the jubilant and often frenetic spirit of creating things:

It’s not uncommon for the end of conflict to spell the end of a show’s appeal. (How many TV series have been killed dead when their central will-they-or-won’t-they couple finally got together?) But the opposite proved true with Phineas and Ferb: the more innocent and wide-eyed the show became, the more I found myself yearning to return to the Flynn-Fletchers’ backyard.

(Read more on Christ & Pop Culture. Hat tip to Wendy Barrie and Charlotte Greeson for the link.)

It’s ultimately kind of audacious to want to make things, especially on your own or on a small team. You have to have a little wide-eyed innocence, I think.

Are there other characters that capture for you something essential about the nature of the creative process?

Many of the characters in Sports Night come to mind for me, and I particular love William H. Macy’s pivotal “glass tubes” speech about being a role-player.

I also think this question is what animates some of the best scenes in music biopics, even if they’re probably more fiction than fact. (The scene in Ray, where Charles supposedly writes “What’d I Say?” on the spot is a great example.)

What fictional creators/creations inspire you?

Potential for biblical digital humanities with high school, college coders?

July 8, 2015August 5, 2016 Kyle

When I left a graduate program in applied computation and went away to seminary, I remember having this vision of a custom LaTeX template for sermons. It would format my sermon for pulpit manuscripts, printing, the Web, etc. And it would include a tagging system that would help me better understand my preaching ticks, habits, biases, patterns, etc.

It sounds kind of laughable now. But I remembered this project, and a couple others like it that I’ve imagined over the years, when I read this New Yorker piece on the growing prevalence and accessibility of digital humanities research (hat tip to the Hack Manhattan listserv):

During the previous months, I’d been learning a coding language while trying to develop a project about the aesthetics of classical Arabic poetry. My interests were similar to Henry’s: What could we learn about an author’s oeuvre by studying his or her tics and favorite clichés? What made a certain poem identifiably the product of a person, place, or time, from the perspective of syntax and vocabulary? After class one day, I asked Henry whether he would be interested in collaborating, though I felt sure that he had more interesting things to do with his time. Amazingly, he agreed.

We spent the rest of the semester developing an algorithm that could detect different types of rhetorical figures in a large corpus of poetry. It flew through thousands of lines of verse like a drone over a wildlife habitat, snapping pictures of similes, allusions, and metatheses. The program, like the Pliny text generator, produced both epiphanies and duds.

I’m thinking it would be fun to sic some of the simpler natural language processing tools on the text of the Bible in an informal session with some high school or college students who knew enough Python (and enough Bible) to make that fun.

I didn’t take me too long this morning to get the Natural Language Toolkit set up to do some basic concordance work on the Book of Genesis (and the script of Monty Python and the Holy Grail). And that only scratches the surface.

If you know some disciples who might enjoy an activity like this, let me know! I think I can help point you in some fruitful directions.

Image credit: “Digital Humanities Blog Carnival, Presidents Day edition” by Phillipp Barron via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

Churches as maker spaces?

June 15, 2015August 5, 2016 Kyle

This past weekend was the National Maker Faire in Washington. (Of course it happened one week after I moved to New York.) As many as 20,000 visitors were expected for the two-day event.

There were tie-in festivals and announcements throughout the week. One that came across my desk was a blog post from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Here’s what caught my eye:

And because hands-on learning and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education are critical to building a nation of makers, we are dedicated to providing students at every level with the high-quality education they need to excel in STEM fields.

That’s why more than 100 school leaders of K-12 districts and schools, representing more than 3 million students, are committing to the creation of dedicated maker spaces in their schools and offering professional development opportunities for teachers. And why more than 50 leaders in higher education representing more than 900,000 students – including Ivy League universities, community colleges, HBCUs, major public universities and small private colleges – are deepening their efforts to expand making opportunities on their campuses. (emphasis added)

Maker spaces seem to be becoming more than just a geeky hangout space for the Wired and Popular Mechanics crowd. Kids will be getting used to making at school as a part of regular project-based learning. That’s if they aren’t used to it already.

What if we encouraged them to bring that same energy to church? Can we create simple maker spaces … maybe mobile ones? I think so. And we should.

Need inspiration for making in faith communities? Here are some innovators already pondering these things.

Are you nurturing makers at church? Let me know!

Image credit: “Halifax Mini Maker Faire 2015” by Gareth Halfacree via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Have a peek at our new apartment

June 14, 2015June 14, 2015 Kyle 1 Comment

If you follow me online … pretty much anywhere, you might have noticed I’ve had little to say this past week. That’s because immediately after the CMT’s fantastic e-Formation Conference at VTS (a joyful, grueling marathon), Kristin and I moved to New York City. It has been quite a week.

Today she begins her new job as associate priest at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Port Chester, about a thirty minute ride on the Metro North from Fordham Heights, our new neighborhood in the Bronx. More on the neighborhood soon.

We’ve had some requests to see our place, so here are a few photos. Aside from needing new art (believe it or not, it’s bigger than our last apartment), we’re pretty much set up. We’re so grateful from the many couches we’ve crashed on in the city the past six years. So come stay with us next time you’re in New York!

Entrance

Luis (our super, helping us install our A/C): Son ustedes profesores?

Kristin: No, sacerdotes … pastores.

(We’re just a couple blocks from Fordham University, and he assumed we were professors because of our muchos libros.)

Living Room

For the first time since some apartment in Madison, I get to have the keyboard set up all the time. Here’s hoping I can get some chops back.

Main bedroom

(Sorry for the lighting fails on quite a few of these.)

Kitchen

Definitely the biggest improvement from our last place: more cabinets, more counters, room to breathe.

Office / guest bedroom

(Where I’m writing this, and where I’ll be working from in my continuing role as digital missioner and instructor for the Center for the Ministry of Teaching.)

(Where you should come and stay. It’s a full size futon with decent mattress, the same model Kristin slept on for a year at her Claremont apartment.)

OK, I’m off to church at our local parish, St. James in Fordham. Happy Sunday! More soon.

Let’s get plugged in to connected learning

May 16, 2015August 5, 2016 Kyle

Writing for the Key Resources blog, I make the case for churches plugging into the connected learning movement:

We know lots of churches are already involved in formal and informal learning communities in their neighborhoods. Here are just some of the ways Christians have been involved in the connected learning movement before it was called that:

• hosting and providing volunteers for after-school tutoring,

• training young musicians through choir school programs,

• sponsoring scouting troops,

• contributing to mentoring and wellness programs for at-risk youth, and

• (you knew it was coming) providing safe summer space and teaching the values of faith through summer camps and VBS.

We hope as this movement gains momentum, these experienced partner-ers will help teach the rest of us best practices for getting connected. We know that most faith groups need to do a better job of translating their missions to secular audiences and finding common cause with others who work for justice and the betterment of our communities.

Read more about connected learning here.

Photo credit: “Pick Your Play: Digital or Analog?” by Eugene Kim via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Tech fluency and Christian formation

May 15, 2015August 5, 2016 Kyle

Writing for the e-Formation blog, Lisa Brown explains how she and Kyle got inspired by the maker movement at Context 2015 in Pittsburgh:

As an incredible example of the intersection of humanities and science, we learned about one of the “Arts & Bots” projects in which students created motorized shoebox dioramas based on poetry.

In choosing which poetic image to represent, and by carefully constructing the diorama out of traditional craft materials brought to life by robotic components for motion, sound, and light, the students were encouraged to “go deeper” into the meaning of the poems they were studying.

They were forced to consider the writer’s intention and context, as they reread and interpreted the words as a visual, animated image. In their personal response, they were forced to ask “I wonder?” questions.

Wait a minute. That creative exegesis and questioning sounds a lot like Godly Play.

Read more of Lisa’s Christian formation reflections here.

Loving “on command”

May 10, 2015March 6, 2019 Kyle

Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B

(Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17)

Audio (or via Dropbox) | Text:

In chapter 14 of John’s gospel, Jesus says these familiar words: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” That’s a pretty tall order, no? Kind of a lot of pressure?

It gets even more incredible when we arrive at today’s elaboration on what those commandments actually are. Here in this morning’s passage, Jesus gets to the point: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

Oh is that all?

Actually no. Jesus continues, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Those are some seriously high expectations. If Jesus is the example we’re shooting for, we seem doomed to fail. And yet that is his commandment to us.

How can we think differently about texts that can seem so unrealistic? How can we make sense of the idea of loving “on command”?

Those of you who came to the rector’s forum on Anglican thought a few weeks ago know I have a fondness for Richard Hooker, arguably the first great Anglican theologian. Hooker has a helpful perspective here, because he sees law and commandment as an especially suitable metaphor for God.

The created order is held in being according to law, says Hooker. Here’s the line from his masterwork that interprets everything that follows: “[t]he being of God is a kinde of lawe to his working: for that perfection which God is, geveth perfection to that he doth” (Lawes I.2.1). Boy is that an Elizabethan mouthful. Here’s the gist:

Hooker says that what God is, who God is, is reflected throughout the great chain of being: angels, humans, animals, plants, rocks, seas, everything. God’s law connects God’s works one to the other and carries God’s perfection to them. God is a sort of wellspring of order, structure, right relationship.

So we do not so much comply with the law or obey the commandment to love one another. Notice that in the language of our gospel reading we keep the commandments, we abide in God’s love.

This is language of reception: love is a gift. It comes to us and to all creation from our Creator.

This is language of participation: to love is simply to get swept up by God’s love, be pulled along by it, become woven into its very fabric—and it into ours.

Here the familiar words of the King James Version serve us poorly, hiding the meaning John seems to be getting at. “If ye love me, keep my commandments” is not supposed to be a threat or a guilt trip or even a challenge.

It’s a promise: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments, it will just sort of follow.” That’s better but still imperfect.

What’s the alternative? Well, I don’t know, and I think that’s why these writings of John’s community (the gospel and the letters) are so circular and repetitive. There’s always more to say. We can never quite capture it.

For my part, I’d want to put it this way: Loving Christ and keeping his commandments are the same thing.

Loving one another as God has loved us is less a matter of imitation or even grateful response than it is of recognizing God, assenting to Christ’s presence in us. I appreciate Henri Nouwen’s point that God’s love is the first love and we share and return our own. But I think it’s better to say that there is only one love. It is of God and is God. We do best to notice it with gratitude and let it do its work in us.

We are included in a community of love, of obedience to this commandment in the fullest and deepest sense, when we receive the gift of the Spirit and become one with the Savior who is law and love already for us and in us.

OK, we need to bring this conversation with scripture out of the stratosphere. Let’s make it a bit more concrete by considering, I presume, an all too familiar example.

Let’s think about our overbearing coworker, or our unpleasant relative, or someone who simply gets our goat on a regular basis.

Knowing that love for such people is, shall we say, elusive, we tend to focus on “loving actions.” We can do our best to relate well, putting our frustrations aside and focusing on the task at hand in those times we need to be together. We can go out of our way to practice kindness, smiling, doing favors, remaining open, and essentially pretending we love this person until it sort of becomes a habit and sticks.

I’m a huge proponent of this approach. But there are certain folks for whom we just can’t get it off the ground, people with whom we’re so defensive or uncomfortable or outright hostile that the very thought of “fake it ‘til you make it” love seems almost laughable.

This is when I try to take my shortcoming to God in prayer, abandoning “loving action” to grasp at “loving response”: “Oh God, you have showered me with so many blessings, forgiven me so many evils, loved me so totally and completely. Help me to extend just a fraction of that generosity toward this insufferable human being …”

You probably see where I’m going here. If the love depends on us, there are always going to be people with whom we come up short. No amount of meditation on the sufferings of Christ or the unshakable faithfulness of the God of our ancestors seems to get us over the hump.

Sometimes, the best thing we can do to love someone is admit to God that we can’t. Sometimes, maybe more often than we think, our prayer should be something like this:

“God, I do not know how to love John in accounting, or cousin Sally, or that neighbor whose dog always poops in my yard. It is beyond me. But I know it is not beyond you. I know you already have a love for this person that is vast, complete, and unconditional. When it is time, please share it with me.”

For my money, that’s the only prayer that has a chance with the people who drive us nuts, to say nothing of those who have hurt or abused us.

Jesus’s commandment that we love one another only makes sense when we accept that the love of God and neighbor is a gift of grace. It is already present in and through the created order, in which we are all interconnected. It is already present by the Word of God, Christ who is all and in all. It is already present by the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ’s own first gift for those who believe.

The love of God is already in us. We keep the commandment of Christ by giving ourselves over to it as best we can, as often as we can.

Image credit: “if ye love me” by Tom Woodward via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)