by Kathleen Kastilahn

"And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love." Some of us remember when that hymn was new and our voices soared above the strum of guitars, un–amplified. It was the end of the ’60s.

I haven’t sung that song in years and years. But the melody, so full of hope and confidence, plays in my memory every now and then. Usually when I’m reading about Christians behaving badly. And I’ll think, "...by our love."

Really?

Pastor and author Jim Wallis, in his recent best–seller, God’s Politics, asks: "How did the religion of Jesus become pro–rich, pro–war, and only pro–American?" In a national survey conducted on street corners, passersby were asked what comes to mind when they hear the word Christians. I forget (probably intentionally) the source of the survey. But I recall too clearly the 8–out–of–10 negative results and some of the searing descriptions, from "bigoted" to "boring." (That’s just the Bs.)

Now, it would be all too easy to launch into a lament about those "other" Christians giving us such a bad name. But we’re going to skip that exercise in criticizing "them" and go straight to our own churches, our own families, our own selves.

We all have stories to tell (or to keep secret) about  how hard it sometimes is to "know we are Christians by our love." Some seem gentle and quaint, like the favorite about the little boy who prayed, "Lord, make the bad people good and the good people nice."

Or consider the story that a mom told me recently, about her 3–year–old daughter who, when she went through the line to shake the pastor’s hand in a church they’d visited, said, quite clearly, "In my real church we have treats, and the pastor is nice."

Oops!

The slap
Sometimes, of course, there is nothing at all gentle about our actions. Here’s another story. This one is about a boy celebrating his fourth birthday. He was gleefully fitting his favorite food—pitted black olives— onto his fingertips and starting to eat them, one by one, as he waited for the rest of the meal to be brought out from the kitchen and for the family to settle at the picnic table for supper. A grandmother reached across and slapped his hand, hard: The family hadn’t said grace yet.

For too many of us, the slaps sting even more as we grow older and our "crimes" more offensive. You can name your own. You feel them still, whether you gave them or got them. The pain radiates throughout the body, our body and the body of Christ.

We’re not the first disciples to get it wrong, of course. Jesus’ friends who walked the dusty paths with him were always trying to protect him from the people who weren’t "good" or "worthy" — like hungry people on a hillside and little children and women of questionable morals and men who made money in unsavory ways, the very folks who were drawn to Jesus’ love. They were kept at bay by those who followed him. Hmmm. Were none of these followers listening when Jesus talked about what the kingdom of God was like? That it was the realm of love?

And through the centuries our ideas of Jesus grew ever more remote, wearing the pristine white robes imagined by pious painters. The message was that we had to be good before we could hear the Good News. And make sure other folks were, too. We didn’t want any sinners, not even anybody not wearing their Sunday best, to come to church.

Growing Up Lutheran, the lighthearted memoir by Janet Letnes Martin and Suzann Nelson, perfectly captures the confusion that comes from such protectionism. Just two among the long list of things they say "little Lutherans ponder upon in their hearts and minds":

"If babies come from God, why was it so bad that the Swenson girl had one?"

"What does a bunch of heathens really act like, anyway?"

And so we learn to separate and to judge — and to make sure we’re good. It’s in our striving for goodness that we do bad, if not evil, that we harm, instead of help or heal.

Why?

Walking the way of love
Could it be that we don’t spread the Good News of Christ’s unconditional love in our daily living because we don’t really believe it ourselves? That the Good News isn’t for that "bunch of heathens" who don’t follow the rules? Or—here’s the scary part—that we’re not good enough either?

I think so. I think fear is at the root of an awful lot of what grows into the crop of "Christian" actions that those folks in the survey found leaves a bitter taste in their mouths.

We could, instead, be handing out the Bread of Life!

How? New Testament scholar Marcus Borg gave me an Aha! moment in his latest book, Jesus:Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary. He sends readers back to the Bible verse most of us memorized before any other, John 3:16.

Love, yes. But with the heavy burden of belief. Borg points out that in the original New Testament writings, "believing does not mean believing in doctrines about Jesus, but ‘beloving,’ the beloving that is a combination of commitment, loyalty, faithfulness, allegiance to the beloved, and trust in the beloved."

A few paragraphs later, he envisions how this might lead to a different way of being Christian. "Christianity is a ‘way’ to be followed," Borg writes, "more than it is about a set of beliefs to be believed. Practice is more important than ‘correct’ belief."

How differently might we live if we poured our hearts into simply walking the way of love?

Beloving God
Let’s go back to that picnic table —  where the birthday party is in ruins. Grandma slapped the boy’s hand, remember, because he nibbled black olives before the family said grace. It was important to her that her grandson learn to be grateful for all God’s good gifts. But that isn’t what she taught him with that slap.

Instead, she could have hugged him and said: "I can see that you think olives are yummy! Do you know they grow on trees, just like apples? God made the trees and all the things to eat that come from them because God loves us. It makes God happy that you like olives, and it makes God happy when we say thank you. That’s why, before we eat, we pray, like this…"

That’s as simple as it gets, this way of living as people beloving God and following Jesus.

Mary Oliver offers a sublime vision, in her poem "Mozart, for Example," in which she muses about the delight that came from his music and the difference it made in the lives of those who heard it. She suggests new possibilities for her readers’ own lives in the last lines:

That’s a more intentional approach than that advocated by the advice (often found on bumper stickers) to "practice random acts of kindness." And for those of us who find ourselves somewhat out of practice when it comes to beloving, there isn’t a better gym for the spirit and the will than that operated by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat at www.spiritualityandpractice.com. In their A–to–Z alphabet of practices, "L," no surprise, is for Love, and there you’ll be offered an array of specific things to do and read and contemplate.

Back to the way of Jesus
I’ve never read any of the works of Karl Barth, the Swiss theologian regarded as one of the giants of the 20th century. As a journalist, though, I’ve long appreciated his advice that "sermons should be written with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other." That doesn’t lead just to relevance, but to care for all God’s world. Which brings us straight back to John 3:16 — as "God so loved the world," so should we who love God demonstrate that "by our love."

But recently I learned of a story about Barth I might just like even better. He was in his 70s when he made his only lecture tour in the United States. At a press conference, one reporter asked this esteemed author of a 10–volume work of systematic theology to sum up his theology in a brief statement.

He answered: "Jesus loves me —  this I know."

I don’t think he sang it. But it does make you wonder if (almost) everything we do need to know we can learn in Sunday school.

If we belove (as well as believe), we can find our way back to "the way" of Jesus. Earlier this year, my congregation adopted a new mission statement, an effort to get us all walking together on that path: "St. Paul Lutheran Church is a congregation that welcomes all who seek God in community. We challenge one another to grow in spirit and compassion and invite all into joyful worship and service wherever we are called. Come, Grow, Serve."

Put on your sturdiest shoes and come along on the way of love.

Kathleen Kastilahn is associate editor of The Lutheran and a member of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Evanston, Ill.