The Gift of Love

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

 

“Who do you love?” “Tell me who you love.” These were the words that came out of my mouth as I tried to minister with Mary in her hospital room, as she was crying out in pain in the middle of the night, when nothing else would calm her down.

“Who do you love?”

I was a seminarian, spending the summer as a hospital chaplain in an internship program called Clinical Pastoral Education. And I was terrified. It felt like “ministry training boot camp.” It was one of those situations where we  parachuted into a completely foreign land with no maps and no radios, relying on instinct and prayer and a command to go wherever we were called and to figure out whatever we were supposed to do only after we had already arrived.

On that night early on in the summer, the call came at three in the morning. “We can’t calm her down,” the nurses said when I arrived. Mary—their patient—was writhing in pain, crying out for her children, and just plain hurting. The nurses had other patients to attend. They had given her all the pain medication they could, they had soothed her wounds as best they could, they had done everything they knew how to do. So they called me. And I, of course, was blonde and clueless.

I took her hand. I asked her what had happened. She said she had been in a car accident. That her son had been with her. That he had been hurt but not killed.

And then silence and more cluelessness on my end. More writhing and crying on her end. So I asked her where she hurt, and she told me. And it occurred to me that chaplains are supposed to offer prayer, so I began to pray aloud for each of those places in Mary that hurt. Hoping the prayer would calm her down.

It did not.

Mary still writhed in pain, she still cried out in anger and agony. And I began to panic.

It was then, in my moment of despair, that the words just came out of my mouth. “Who do you love, Mary? Tell me who you love.” And there was no way these were my words because my ability to think had gone out the window. They were God’s words through me. And as I heard them reverberate through my ears I knew they were exactly the right words because they were God’s words. And I said, “tell me who you love, Mary. Tell me who you love.”

Her response was immediate. “I love my children,” she said. And you could tell by the smile that just barely graced her face that she was imagining their faces in her mind’s eye.

“Tell me about your children,” I said, with relief. And Mary spent the next twenty minutes describing their young lives in vivid detail. What they looked like, what they ate, where they would go hiking together in the West Virginia hills. What she wanted to say to them now that they were separated by her accident.

As she talked about the ones she loved her breathing slowed. Her jaw unclenched. Her eyes drooped. And I was relieved. Love had worked when nothing else had. And as I rested her hand back down on the hospital bed and prepared to leave the bedside of a woman who was clearly at peace, she whispered to me, “thank you. I love you, too.”

If salvation has anything to do with healing—which I keep on insisting that it does—you could say the love of God saved Mary in that hour of agony. And if salvation has anything to do with grace in the midst of panic—which I keep on insisting that it does—you could say the love of God saved me, as her fumbling minister. And if salvation has anything to do with a mother wanting desperately to care for her children—which I keep on insisting that it does—you could say the parental love of God that suffers right along with us is imagining every one of our faces in her mind’s eye. What we look like, what we like to eat, what he wants to say to us when he feels so very far removed from us.

If salvation has anything do to with healing and grace and parenting, we can understand why the apostle Paul, himself will insist that while faith, hope, and love are all important, “the greatest of these is love.”

Love is patient, Paul says. Love is kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. It simply wants to heal. It simply wants to love. It simply wants us “to bear witness” to that love.

It is this part of the Madison Square mission statement, “to bear witness, in both word and in deed, to the universal and unconditional love of God as made known through Jesus of Nazareth” that is before us for reflection on this second Sunday in Lent. And it is this part of the Madison Square mission statement that is, in the end, perhaps the most difficult to define. As the old adage goes, you just know it when you see it. You just know it when you experience it. You just know it when you live it. Like in that hospital room with Mary.

Because the truth is that the universal and unconditional love of God is already here, just like it was with Mary and her children. We just have to be reminded of it. We just have to open our hands to receive it . . . and extend it. And I would suggest that we are doing this very thing right now, this morning, as we bear witness to the love of God in the ministry of care and compassion extended by one of our members—Norma Gay—to another one of our members—Nelda Muelker—in the waning years of her life.

Over a decade ago, Nelda was involved in a debilitating accident that left her in a coma for three months. She was eventually transferred to a nursing home, where Norma became her number one visitor and companion these many years. Norma’s witness to the love of God in Nelda’s life became a steady stream of support in a time of suffering and loneliness. To the point that Nelda named Norma as the point of contact for the nursing home upon her death.

Norma has asked that we remember Nelda in our worship today, which I want to do now and also in a few moments in our liturgy for communion. I, of course, did not know Nelda, so I have asked those of you who did know her to share how you remember her. And the smiles on your faces told me all I needed to know. You loved her. And she loved you.

Nelda was truly a beloved child of God. She was a character! She was the church’s “character.” She was a beloved personality who touched your lives in ways you didn’t even realize until she was gone. She took massive notes during worship, and she sat where she wanted to sit, and she didn’t care if it was “your” spot because there are no “reserved” seats in this “open and welcoming” congregation! And she was just plain going to sit where God wanted her to sit! And she loved this church. And you loved her.

And she loved Christmas Eve at this church. And she loved singing “Silent Night” and lighting a candle of hope in the darkness. And she didn’t care one bit when the light shining in the darkness set her scarf on fire, she just kept right on singing “all is calm and all is (most assuredly) bright”! And you loved her. And she loved you. And Norma loved her on your behalf, bearing witness in word and in deed to the universal and unconditional love of God. Until the very end.

And if salvation has anything to do with feasting at the table of grace forevermore—which I keep on insisting that it does—you could say the love of God is saving all of us in this hour as we commune with Nelda Muelker at this table of sustenance, and with all of the saints from ages past and yet to come. And as we invite everyone who is wounded and suffering or just plain lonely to join us for a meal of grace and peace where all are finally loved with the universal and unconditional love of God and where all are finally fed forever with the bread of life and the cup of saving love.

“Who do you love?” God said—through me—to Mary, in that space of deepest pain and suffering. “Who do you love?” God said to Norma, in responding to Nelda lo these many years. “Who do you love?” we may even ask of God. And of course the answer is, “all of you . . . my children.” “And if the Lord puts someone in your path,” Norma says, “You’re derelict if you don’t take care of them.” Which is what our Madison Square mission is all about, in the end.

And we are, every one of us, just parachuting in to this foreign planet we are on. Going wherever we are called to go and help whomever God puts in our path. And the love of God is already there, just waiting to be revealed.

I pray it may be so.

Amen.