Sunday, October 23, 2005
Sermon: “The Power of Love”Scripture:
Matthew 22: 34-46
Reverend Larry Gerber 

The Institute for Research into Unlimited Love is studying why people help others. Indeed, why should we?

Simply, it feels good to do good.

There’s no doubt about it, according to Stephanie Hagyard.

Stephanie’s a young woman who, every Monday night, after a long day at an insurance brokerage in Boston, serves dinner at a drop-in center for people with AIDS. Although she works hard in the kitchen, she leaves this volunteer gig feeling refreshed. “I feel better if I’m doing something good,” she says. Although feeling better is not the main reason she volunteers, it’s definitely a satisfying side effect.

“Helper’s high” — that’s what some people call this feeling of euphoria. Maybe you’ve experienced it yourself after an act of sacrificial service. Although very little scientific work has been done to uncover the biology of good deeds, some researchers are now suggesting that positive social contacts release feel-good hormones called endorphins.

“Love your neighbor,” said Jesus to the Pharisees in our text for today (Matthew 22:39). He might have added, “It will give you a ‘helper’s high.’”Many of our congregation volunteer at UMOM on Mondays, others on Thursdays, others go to Wesley Community Center on Wednesdays, and still others volunteer at the hospital, Neighbors Who Care, and on the reservation; the strive program through Rotary, and the list goes on. Have you ever asked yourself: “why do I volunteer to do the things I do”?

To fill the gap between the ancient love commandment and modern scientific understanding, an institute has been established to examine the source and impact of unselfish, altruistic love. Located in Cleveland, it’s called IRUL – the Institute for Research into Unlimited Love. It’s directed by Stephen Post, a bioethicist, and its board of directors includes do-gooders such as Millard Fuller of Habitat for Humanity, former First Lady Rosalyn Carter, and Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of St. Christopher’s Hospice in London. Since 2001, IRUL has doled out a cool $2.5 million to 33 researchers in a variety of scientific fields.

IRUL. The only thing annoying about it is the name itself, pronounced “I Rule.” Shouldn’t it be called something less selfish? Maybe “You Rule” ... or “Love Rules”?

Whatever it’s called, the institute has an important mission: to make a scientific investigation of the value of love and selflessness. Its researchers are looking at why some people become remarkably kind and generous — not only to family members, but also to strangers. IRUL is probing whether a belief in divine love translates into positive action. And it’s studying how good deeds affect the doer — in other words, what types of joy, richness and “helper’s highs” can emerge from acts of altruistic love.

It’s about time that this research was undertaken. Over the past 40 years, there’ve been about 100,000 scientific studies on depression, and only seven on happiness.

The value of IRUL is that it gives us some guidance on how we are to obey the great commandment of our text, “You shall love the Lord your God .... You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (22: 37-39). As much as we might want to follow this commandment of Jesus, we need a map that shows us where this love of God and neighbor will take us. The problem is that this rule is clear in its sense of moral obligation, but it’s somewhat unfocused on its day-to-day implementation.

We need some clarity about charity, some muscle and skin on the bones of this law of love. This isn’t a matter of sentimentality or sweet emotion — what we’re talking about here is steadfast love, a love that’s all about commitment and action. What this institute can provide is a clear picture of what this love looks like, and what shape its benefits take.

A picture of love and its benefits. Full color. High definition.

Let’s look at three stories, courtesy of Stephen Post, the director of the Institute for Research into Unlimited Love.

We start with the Anglins, a family of mother, father and 15 children — seven of whom are biological, and eight of whom are adopted. All of the adopted kids have special needs, ranging from cognitive deficits to the absence of limbs. They describe their family as “a sort of mini-United Nations, with children from a myriad of ethnic and racial backgrounds.” Patty Anglin, the mother, grew up in the missionary fields of Africa, and she and her husband now live on a farm in Wisconsin called “Acres of Hope.” Their mission is to spread God’s love, one child at a time.

This picture of the Anglin family reminds us that love of God and love of neighbor can be done right here at home, in our own community, in our own corner of the world and in our own way.

It shows us that the power of love is seen most clearly when average people do small things — caring for a child, visiting the sick, helping a neighbor, or offering to step in for a caregiver, such as our “Stephen Ministry Program.” These small things, done in the spirit of love, are precisely the acts that add up and cause real change in the world.

There’s also the story of Christina Noble, a poor and abused Irish girl from the slums of Dublin. She had a dream, one that took her all the way to Vietnam — a vision that inspired her to work with the street children of this poor, disease-ridden country. “You might laugh at that,” she writes in her book Bridge Across My Sorrows. “You might say it was nothing but a dream and that only someone who was Irish would act on a dream as if it were a message from God. And you could be right.”

But she acted on that dream, and moved to Vietnam as a middle-aged woman with no education, no money and no real idea of what she was going to do.

In Ho Chi Minh City, she saw two little girls dressed in rags, playing in the dirt across the street. She thought they were playing, but found out that they were actually “grubbing for ants” and eating them.

One of the little girls reached out to her, wanting the touch of another human being, and when Christina embraced her she realized that she was making a life-changing connection. She discovered that God was calling her to work with children who lived in poverty, children who were suffering as she did when she lived in the slums of Dublin. “This poor and crippled country would be the place of my salvation,” Christina realized, “the place where I would regain hope and rebuild my life.”

By discovering exactly what God wanted her to do, Christina gained the confidence she needed to create a center for the care of street children, one that is both a hospital and a social center. At any given time, about 75 children receive inpatient residential care, and another 1,000 are treated each month on an outpatient basis. Christina is making a real difference in Vietnam, because she acted on a dream that she believed was a message from God.

Love of God and love of neighbor — the two come together when we discover what God is challenging us to be and to do. None of us can do everything, but all of us can do something. As we look into the future of the outreach ministry of this church, where are you in answering God’s call to “be the church?” What are you doing that will make a difference in even one persons life?

The last story of the power of love comes from history, and is about an 18th-century American Quaker named John Woolman, one of the most courageous and effective practitioners of tough love who ever lived.

After discovering that he could not bear to assist his employer in the sale of a slave, Woolman traveled to Quaker meetings all across the colonies, and talked with people one by one about the evils of slavery. “My heart was tender and often contrite,” he wrote, “and universal love to my fellow creatures increased in me.”

This was not an easy sales job, especially since many Quakers in the colonies were slave owners in the mid-1700s. But Woolman succeeded through quiet one-on-one conversations, visiting his fellow Quakers individually, on farm after farm, for most of the two decades of his adult life.

He didn’t criticize people or anger them, but was clear and consistent in his message, and by the year 1770 — almost a century before the Civil War — there was not a single Quaker in the colonies who owned a slave.

You might say that the American anti-slavery movement began when John Woolman discovered, and started to practice, the commandment of Jesus to “love your neighbor as yourself” (22:39). And if there had been a John Woolman in every religious denomination, the institution of slavery could possibly have been eliminated without the Civil War.

Says Stephen Post of IRUL, “A single visionary individual, committed to change under the power of unlimited love, can make a difference in the world.”

There is a power of love in this church. We are reaching out to the people in Mexico, through the Aqua Prieta Methodist Church, we service people in UMOM, Wesley, The Reservation, School of Theology in Claremont, kits and money to victims of Katrina, Rita, earthquake victims in Pakistan, world missions, and scholarships to help youth go to summer camps. All of these acts are outpouring of our gifts and talents.

But, there’s a problem. If all of these good deeds are done simply to get a helper’s high, then it’s still all about us, and not about God.

Jesus is clear: Love God, and love your neighbor. Love which reaches our neighbors may be altruistic love, but not necessarily agape love.

The person who loves with agape love is not looking for a helper’s high, but is looking for help from on high. That person, when he/she loves his/her neighbor, is loving God.

She/he works and volunteers not to feel good, but to touch God.

This is the thrust of Jesus’ comments here to the assembled onlookers. Love God. Confused about how to do that? Love your neighbor.

The law of love is a powerful force. When it’s embraced, and put into practice, personal relationships are affected and entire societies are transformed. It doesn’t really matter whether the love’s being expressed in a large family in Wisconsin, among the street children of Ho Chi Minh City, on Quaker farms in colonial times, or in this congregation today. In every time and place and situation, the practice of love of God and love of neighbor is going to have an impact on the world.

So let’s get a helper’s high. Nothing wrong with that.
But understand that this is about the nature of God and how deserving God is of our love.

What better way to reach up and touch God than to reach down and touch the fallen, or to reach over and pull the alienated to ourselves, or to reach around and embrace someone who’s alone in the world.

By loving God, we can make a powerful difference in our world. And, there’s nothing wrong with feeling good while we’re doing good.  Check your status one more time. In what way are you loving your God, your neighbor, and yourself? Are you on a helpers high? Are you touched by God? And in return are you touching God in all that you do and say? Here I am Lord, I hear you calling in the night. I will go Lord, if you lead me.  Let’s stand and sing. If you feel called to a new commitment, come on down, fall on your knees and pray for God to lead you……..

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Sources:

Goldberg, Carey. “For good health, it is better to give, science suggests,” The Boston Globe, November 28, 2003.

Post, Stephen. “Unlimited love and ultimate reality,” Metanexus Institute Web Site, metanexus.net. Retrieved April 5, 2005.