After college I lived in and helped run a house for homeless men in addiction recovery in Washington DC. I was called an “Innkeeper.”
We had strict rules and to break them was to choose to leave.
We had a strict curfew. To get home late was to be greeted by a locked door that would not be opened unto you.
Those were the worst nights. Locking men out, yelling and banging at the door, until they ran off into the night chased by their demons and darkness.
We called it, “The most loving thing.”
The most loving thing.
There it is. I still struggle with that.
What is love?
I spent this week listening to love songs.
My favorite is Al Green’s rendition of “Love is a Beautiful Thing.” I can listen to it all day.
But I keep thinking of the most loving thing as homeless addicts run into the night chased by the shadows.
First Corinthians chapter13. Some people call it The Apostle Paul’s hymn or ode to love. We hear it read at weddings. We make it pretty and sweet. Romantic.
Except it isn’t a song. It isn’t sweet. It isn’t romantic.
He was writing about the most loving thing.
He was writing about being set free to a church that was shackled by self indulgence.
He was writing about the ways we chain each other down.
He was writing about setting each other free from the darkness that chasses us.
Love is not a feeling.
It is a choice. It is to choose to build each other up, to help one another become free enough to choose the most loving thing.
And isn’t about making me feel good by giving someone what they want.
That isn’t love.
It means closing the door so that we both face the darkness that haunts us.
The most loving thing was for me to lock the door so that the men would face their addictions and poor choices and be personally responsible.
The most loving thing was for me to face my urge to make people happy even when it is bad for them. The darkness chased us both on either side of that locked door.
What is the most loving thing? That is the question with which we, children of the God who is love, always live.
As a community and as individuals, our choices are defined by that question.
Do we choose love? To lift up, to set free, to build up even when it is hard, even when we are in the those dark places.
Love is cross shaped, cruciform. God is cruciform. The cruciform embrace of love.
Love is the grace and gift that sets us free to choose love.
And we are only truly free when we choose love. Anything else is darkness chasing us in the night.
Nothing else lasts, it all turns to dust.
But love lasts.
Only what we do in love lasts.
Love has risen from the grave, vanquishing slavery.
Only the most loving thing rises, only the most loving thing is eternal.
Everything else that we do, say or accomplish, our sin, our virtue, our addictions, our preoccupations, and avocations, when they are without love, they are nothing but dust and food for worms.
Only love lasts.
The most loving thing is a beautiful thing.
Patient. Kind.
Not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
Not insistent on its own way, not irritable or resentful.
It does not rejoice in wrongdoing.
It rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
The way that is love, the way of God, has risen into this world, into our lives.
The choice that is love sets the captives free.
And that love is changing us, slowly, we grow into it, until we become cruciform ourselves.
The most loving thing is a beautiful thing.