Love’s Answer

There is at present a nation-wide alert that I hope you all are aware of: Tuesday of this coming week, there will be a free taco provided for every single American. From 2pm to 6 pm at Taco Bell restaurants across the United States, you can walk in and get your free crispy beef taco. Now, this is known as the “Steal a Base, steal a taco” campaign. 

It’s been instituted during the World Series by our friends at Taco Bell: When a baseball player from either team steals a base – only upon the first time that happens in the World Series -- the Taco Bell company has promised to provide tacos for everyone – everyone in the entire country!

Over the past few days, I think a growing number of Americans have become aware of the free taco which awaits them, because a base has been stolen. (How many of you did not know about your free taco?) Well   . . .  now you know (who says our announcements at LAC are not helpful?).

Baseball is filled with trivia. And this is a wonderful point of trivial information, I suppose, depending on how you view it. (BTW. Another trivia point: Last year it was Boston’s Jacoby Ellsbury whose stolen base put him into the Free Taco Hall of Fame.)

In the movie Amadeus, the Austrian Emperor Joseph II asks the composer Mozart to adjust one of his operatic compositions. The young Mozart is hurt, stunned and enraged. Mozart demands an explanation. The Emperor says: “There are just too many notes.” Mozart’s temper flared; he insisted that there were just the right number of notes necessary – neither too few nor too many.

Yet, we didn’t really see the word "poverty" in the Warren-Dobson discourse . . . Which is only one example of the missing issues which are found quite clearly in the Bible – in over 2000 places throughout scripture, we find expressed concerns for the treatment of the poor and oppressed . . . along with the call to peace and to be peacemakers . . . along with the call to be welcoming to the foreigner and stranger, and care for those who are ill and on those margins – the youngest, the oldest. And there is the biblical mandate for hospitality, and Jesus’ call to love and pray for enemies.

And what is the greatest commandment, they ask Jesus. And he gives love’s answer, the answer in love: to love God and neighbor and self.

Not one without the other . . . Jesus doesn’t tell them something the Pharisees do not know. His words are a direct summary of the commandments to love in Dueteronomy (6.5) and Leviticus (19.18). His answer is really painfully obvious, since these are passages that every practicing Jew recited each morning and night.

It is a call to covenant promise. A return to a realization and understanding that has been missed in the focus on the particular points and matters of concern to the Pharisees.

Just as now, in the in the face of the hard times we are in, and going into, this is a call and a return to the values of cooperation and compassion and community – values that have been weakened and in some cases lost – in recent years --in the midst of marketeering, predatory practices, and the great pursuit of the personal, at the expense of the other and the community we are called to be.

While the former Federal Reserve Chief pleas this past week that he doesn’t really know how we got into this.” One reason is the focus on “me” instead of “we.” And now we are looking at seismic impacts  . . .  just as the lines of people increase each week at the HOPE food pantry next door in New Rochelle, or an estimated 5 million are having to join those already 40 million without health insurance. Along with difficulties and drops in retirement accounts, college loans, home values.

There will be tough days ahead. This is a call to revisit and return to values and convictions we know in these moments . . .  we are called to the values of community and care, to and with one another . . .  loving God and neighbor and self.

On the national scene, we don’t seem to have a clear plan just yet. We will. But it will be tough up ahead. I am reminded that these tough days are different than 1929 (when this beautiful sanctuary was completed), since – going forward -- we do have certain things in place to help see us through . . .  like depositors’ insurance, social security and government as a lender of last resort. Let’s see . . .

Yet, we do have this covenant as people of faith: the promise of God’s love and our call to love one another. Let this be a time and place – this church – where we realize that. There are meals and moments for us to share here – dinners with food and support, pooling together what we have, to maximize what might seem minimal so as to reach out to others; counsel and comfort in crisis and the everyday; a sanctuary open to all – at all hours – for prayer; helping others and in so doing helping ourselves.

We can see these tough times through, and always, by loving God, -- putting others first, through care for neighbor and one another, even as you love yourself – let it be so . . .  In Jesus Christ Amen.