GAZA – Creating space for the God of love

Here is a sobering thought:  love cannot coexist or be contained in the same heart that is filled with fear, suspicion and hatred.  We cannot have Christ and not have unconditional love.  It is as simple as that.  If you hate Hamas, the space for a God of love is occupied.

LOVE is the central theme of scripture – not judgment.  `For God so loved… that He gave…`  God exclaims His love for us in the Bible 310 times in 280 verses. The word ‘love’ is discovered 131 times in the Old Testament and 179 times in the New Testament in the KJV.  How many times does Jesus say ‘love’ in the Bible? The word ‘love’ actually appears 57 times in the Gospel of John, more often than any of the other gospels combined. Plus, it also appears another 46 times in the letter of 1st John.

It would therefore be safe to assume that whenever and wherever we, as followers of the God of Love, encounter the lost, the vulnerable, the marginalised and the suffering, we not only have the mandate to LOVE but the power and the opportunity to do so as well.  After all, who can love his enemy better than those who follow the example of a forgiving Christ?

If we struggle to love those we deem to be unredeemable, we have not yet been transformed into the consciousness of Christ and need to build capacity in this regard.  Here are four kinds of love that we are seldom taught:

• A Kenosis love
• A Glasnost love
• A Sine qua non love
• An Empath’s love

A KENOSIS LOVE

Kenosis, as a Christian definition, is the act of emptying oneself of one’s own will and becoming entirely receptive to God’s divine will.  It is embodied in Christ Emmanuel by the renunciation of His divine nature and becoming incarnated into the world. In Christian theology, and what it means to every believer, kenosis is the principle described in Philippians 2:7 where we read that Jesus “made himself nothing”.

Kenosis love, or self-emptying love, is also revealed magnificently in the Trinity.  God the Father, who is Love, completely empties Himself into the Son; the Son empties into the Spirit; and the Spirit empties into the Father. Incarnation flows from this kenosis that is inherent to God’s nature.  It is a self-emptying love that exists for the benefit of others.  This is, as Cynthia Breault writes, “the way of kenosis, the revolutionary path that Jesus introduced into the consciousness of the West.”

Cynthia explains: “For the vast majority of the world’s spiritual seekers, the way to God is “up.” Deeply embedded in our religious and spiritual traditions—and most likely in the human collective unconscious itself—is a kind of compass that tells us that the spiritual journey is an ascent, not a descent.  And yet Jesus had only one “operational mode”. . . “down”  In whatever life circumstance, Jesus always responded with the same motion of self-emptying—or to put it another way, the same motion of descent: going lower, taking the lower place, not the higher.”

Jesus’ entire life demonstrates how God loves with an unconditional and selfless kenosis love. For God so loved… that He gave (John 3:16); a self-emptying love.  Why hasn’t Western Christianity emphasized what seems so obvious and clear?  If we truly seek to build capacity and to contain more of Christ, the route is “down”.  Not getting fuller with love but emptier of ourselves.

This KENOSIS LOVE was always the subject of Jesus’ teachings and is why He focused on self-denial and not self-enrichment:

• Mark 9:35  Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” 
• Mark 8:34  Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

The irony in Jesus’ teaching, as Richard Rohr puts it, is that: “when I’m nothing, I’m everything. When I’m empty, I’m full. This is why so few people truly seek an authentic spiritual life. Who wants to be nothing? We’ve been told the whole point was to be somebody.  The ego is naturally attracted to heroic language, and so we focused on the heroic instead of transformation.  Jesus’ teaching was more about becoming a loving, humble, and servant-like person than a hero by any of our normal standards.”

John of the Cross expressed it this way[1]:

To come to the pleasure you have not, you must go by a way in which you enjoy not. To come to the knowledge you have not, you must go by a way in which you know not. To come to the possession you have not, you must go by a way in which you possess not. To come to be what you are not, you must go by a way in which you are not.

But Kenosis love must be revealed as Glasnost love

A GLASNOST LOVE

During the days of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (reformation), when the USSR started the arduous process of opening up its borders to the “outside world” and many mission organizations from the West shifted their attention to this new field of ministry, the Orthodox Church in Russia realized the dangers of foreign theologies and became suspicious of any stranger attending a service.

One of my colleagues, visiting Leningrad (St Petersburg) during this time attended a Russian Orthodox Church on a Sunday morning with a desire to celebrate communion with local brothers and sisters.  When the priest approached my friend, there was an immediate hesitation and the priest refused to offer the bread and wine to this suspicious looking stranger.  Deeply saddened my friend got up and left the Church, heartbroken that after many years of service in this nation he loved so much, he was unable to celebrate the bread and wine with people he loved and respected.

After walking for a few blocks, he suddenly realized that he was being followed by the brother that sat next to him in Church.  The man ran after him with his cup and piece of bread in his hand and asked if he could serve my friend and offer him communion in the street.  My friend was overwhelmed by this gesture of solidarity.  He looked at the man and asked the obvious question,  “Why are you doing this when your priest refused to serve me?”  The answer was clear: “My brother, sometimes you need to love people more than your Church allows you to.”

These words, and this principle, have stuck with me for the past 40 years of ministry; to have a Glasnost love, an open love that passes all understanding, all borders and defies all reasoning.  To have an openness to love more than is allowed, to risk more than is required, to encourage more than is deserved, to sacrifice more than is expected, to be kinder than is anticipated, to trust more than is reasonable, to work harder than is demanded, to give more than is necessary and an openness to bless more than is anticipated.

Capacity building will not be determined IF we love, but HOW we love.  The following was found written on the wall in Mother Teresa’s home for children in Calcutta:

• People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centred.  Forgive them anyway.
• If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.
• If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.
• If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.
• What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.
• If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.
• The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.
• Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.
• In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.

Oh, may God have mercy on us when we watch the news, and like Jonah of old, determine in our own minds who could be loved, who should be loved and who is undeserving of our love.  May God have mercy on us when we judge those who are racially different, culturally strange or theologically odd.  May we find grace to have a “Glasnost” in our hearts with an openness to love more than our community allows us to.

A SINE QUA NON LOVE

Sine qua non implies something that is absolutely indispensable or essential, a non-negotiable and a prerequisite.  In the same sense that believing in Christ is a sine qua non for being saved, so loving our enemy and forgiving those who mean harm to us is a sine qua non for every follower of Christ.

The challenge however is that many things that Christians feel are sine qua nons or “non-negotiables” today are at major variance with what Jesus actually taught and emphasized. How can we read the eight Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount, for example, and not know that Jesus clearly taught love, peace, forgiveness, reconciliation, charity, nonviolence and simplicity of life?  It is impossible.  But what often happens is that we read these Scriptures, that deeply contradict our attitudes and our lifestyles, with lenses that disallow them to penetrate our hearts.  When God’s “non-negotiables” challenge our lifestyles, we tend to create new non-negotiables and dilute the essence and prerequisites of what the Gospel is all about.

We have slowly fallen away from the core of the teaching of Jesus and created, as Richard Rohr calls it, “a new set of non-negotiables as an evacuation plan for the next world”.  The non-negotiables based on the teachings of Jesus according to Rohr include:

• Peace-making
• Love of Enemy
• Forgiveness
• Justice and Generosity to the poor
• A community based on inclusion of all not exclusion — (this is a real challenge — think about it.)

Fr. Rohr concludes by saying that “You could say that Jesus was crucified because of who he ate with”.

A week after the bomb blasts at two churches in Egypt that killed nearly 50 people we had the privilege to meet Pastor Sameh, the head of one of the largest Evangelical Churches in the Middle East.  His words made us realise that the essence of the Gospel that we have lost in the west was still securely practised by the persecuted Church.  Pastor Sameh spoke about a new-found, non-negotiable love for their “enemies”:  “First the Lord had to teach us two lessons.” He said, referring to those who seek to destroy the Church,  “The first thing the Lord did: He gave us a heart of compassion for our enemy. He melted our hearts. Secondly, He taught us how to serve our enemies, how to love them by serving them.”

These words were echoed by Pastor Ramah, a leader from Homs in Syria who endured countless attacks and who survived thousands of mortars that hit their community:  “We worked day and night amongst the refugees and continually asked the Lord what we should do.  The answer was always the same:  LOVE THEM.”

In order to return to the non-negotiables of Scripture we need to enlarge our emotional capacity of love, peace, reconciliation and charity.  This is not a quote by the author of this book but a quote from the Author of life.

AN EMPATH’S LOVE

If 2 Corinthian 1:3-4[2] is understood correctly, Christ is described as what modern phycologists would call an EMPATH.  This term describes a person with high levels of care, great compassion, a born comforter who is generally very understanding of others and their positions.  It is a person who often times will ask questions rather than make snap judgments, or intuitively seems to “know” there is more to a story than meets the eye.  Empaths are people who don’t “read” the future, they “read” people.  They are able to make special connections with the people around them and can sense when they are needed.

Being an empath is not about having the ability to feel SYMPATHY for people but having the ability to feel EMPATHY with people. Sympathy is when we feel a sense of care and concern for other people.  When we sympathize with someone, it means we feel compassion for them and hope that their situation improves.  Empathy is the ability to feel the needs of others as if it were us. When someone is an empath, it means they have an especially deep understanding and connection to the feelings of people around them.  Empaths can feel other people’s feelings almost as if they were their own.

This sounds exactly like Jesus when He stood at the grave of Lazarus and wept (John 11:35), knowing well that He would raise him from the dead.  Or in Luke 19:41  when He saw the city and He wept.  We read about the compassion of Jesus the empath in Luke 7:13 when He saw the dead son of a widow and He had compassion, in Matthew 9:36  when He saw the crowds and He was moved with kindness and also in Matthew 14:14 when He saw the multitude and He was moved with empathy.  His words reflect someone who deeply notices the needs in others even before He recognises His own.  In Matthew 15: 32, when He saw the hungry He said to His disciples, “I have compassion on them.”  In Matthew 20:34 He saw the blind man and He had compassion, as He did with the leper in Mark 1:41 and those who were like sheep without a shepherd in Mark 6:34.

Wow, what a Saviour.  Not like the one who demands submission at all times but the empath, the One who is known by one word: LOVE.

Richard Rohr refers to the beatitude in Matthew 5:4 — Blessed are those who mourn — as a reference by the Lord that “until you have cried you don’t know God.”

He explains as follows:

‘The Syrian Fathers Ephrem and Simeon weren’t as familiar in Western Christianity as the Greek and Latin Fathers after the early centuries of the Church. The Greek and Latin Fathers tended to filter the Gospel through the head; the Syrian Fathers’ theology was much more localized in the body. They actually proposed that tears be a sacrament in the Church. Saint Ephrem went so far as to say until you have cried you don’t know God.

‘Tears seem ridiculous in a culture like ours which is so focused on diversions and entertainment, and are especially a stumbling block to men. Crying will make us look vulnerable. We must teach all young people how to cry. Now, in my later years, I finally understand why Saints Francis and Clare cried so much, and why the saints spoke of “the gift of tears”.’

But, ultimately, in one way or another, the character traits of an empath should be evident in the life of anyone who dares to follow Christ, the Father of compassion.  The challenge in an age of anger, suspicion and self-fulfilment is how to enlarge this capacity and develop this character trait.

So how do we enlarge our emotional capacity to love and care more?

According to Higher Perspectives[3] empaths are very special people and if you have one in your life you can consider yourself lucky. Here are ten ways to spot an empath but also ten guidelines to how you can develop the capacity to become one…

1. Empaths experience the emotions of other people almost as strongly as they experience their own emotions and feel the pain of others intensely, as described in Hebrews 13:3  Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.
2. Empaths don’t want to be a burden, so they hide their own emotions. They have the ability to feel happy when those around them are happy and down when those around them are down.  Empaths are so emotionally connected to others that they experience the emotions of others almost as if they were their own, as described in 1 Corinthians 12:26  If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
3. Since empaths are constantly in touch with the emotions of the people they are with, they may avoid contact in order to take a break. Spending some time alone means the empath can have some time to recover from feeling emotionally drained, as described in Luke 6:12  when Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.
4. Empaths have a special ability to see through other people. One of the ways this manifests itself is in an empath’s ability to detect lies. An empath can easily detect lies because they are able to read a person’s emotions and true intentions, as described in Matthew 26:23  when Jesus looked at Judas and said, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me.” 
5. Empaths spend a lot of time and energy tending to other people’s needs. Empaths feel a deep need to help others, as described in Mark 6:34 when Jesus saw a large crowd and He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
6. Empaths have the ability to love deeply. As with all of the emotions they experience, an empath will feel love very deeply.  This love extends from their spouse or partner to their family and to all of the people in their lives. Empaths make the people in their lives feel extremely loved and cared for, as described in Matthew 20:34,  Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes. Immediately they received their sight and followed him. 
7. Empaths also have a strong appreciation for society in general as described in Matthew15:32  when Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way..”
8. Empaths will always look out for the underdog: Anyone who is suffering, in emotional pain or being bullied draws an empath’s attention and compassion, as described in Mark 6:35 when He fed the multitudes.
9. Empaths always strive for the truth, as Jesus described Himself in John 14:6  “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” 

• Empaths are excellent listeners. An empath won’t talk about themselves much unless it’s to someone they really trust. They love to learn and know about others and genuinely care as described in Matthew 20:32  when Jesus stopped on His journey and called the blind men with these words: “What do you want me to do for you?”

If you have an empath in your life, count yourself lucky.  If you know someone who needs an empath in their life, enlarge your capacity and be one.

Amazingly, once we start building our emotional capacity we will soon discover the need to build our intentional capacity.

From the book: Capacity by Mike Burnard:  https://thethirdway.org/books-available/

[1] John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel. See John of the Cross: Selected Writings, ed. Kieran Kavanaugh (Paulist Press: 1987), 44-45.

[2] 2 Corinthians 1:3-4  Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

[3] http://www.higherperspectives.com/empath-2505318837.html