When I was a kid, we had this cute little cross-stitch in the bathroom of a kitty cat with a ribbon around it’s neck with the saying, “Love me, love my cat.” I contemplated this little thing many times because I just didn’t get it. One, who wouldn’t love a cat. And two, I did not see the connection. You can love me, you can love my cat. What does this have to do with one another? It was a mystery to me.

 

Now, this may not confuse you, but it took years before it dawned on me what it meant. Eventually I figured out there were some words missing that would have made this an intelligible sentiment to me, but the full sentence wouldn’t work as well as a cross stitch.

 

I eventually understood this to mean:

If you are to truly love me, you will also love my cat because my cat and I are so bonded that we come as a set pair. If you want to be in my life, then you also get a cat who you are essentially commanded to love.

 

My stepdad Ron did indeed do this, I think, as an act of love for my mom. This little cute cross-stitch clearly was purchased by my mom or for her many years ago. She has always been a cat person and Ron was more of a dog lover. But he loves my mom and so he cultivated a love for her cats. This is one way we know that love is present.

 

We all have things like this that we could make our own cross-stiches about. Each of us could say, “Love me, love my … fill in the blank.” Your kids may be that part of your life that is so inseparable from you that anyone who loves you must also love your kids. Or it might be friends, your community, your hobbies, or an inexhaustible love of throw pillows. I know plenty of married couples where there is one person who is completely perplexed by the need for throw pillows while the other one keeps bringing home new throw pillows to add some pizzazz to every room in the house.

 

Again, it is an act of love that the one who is perplexed by this makes space in their heart and their home for their beloved’s throw pillows.

 

So, what do you think would be on Jesus’ cross-stitch in his bathroom? His might read:

Love me, love the world.

Love me, love the poor and unwanted.

Love me, love the sick.

Love me, love the ones you don’t want to love.

Love me, love yourself.

Love me, love the hungry.

Love me, love the addicted and homeless.

Love me, love Creation and this wonderful planet.

Love me, love all animals.

Love me, love the forgotten.

 

All the way through Scriptures, Old and New Testament alike, the command to love and care for the poor, the sick, the lonely, the widow and the orphan is there. There are numerable stories of the lowly being lifted up as being part of God’s great action in the world, like Moses or Mary. Time and again, we are shown that the weakest among us, including the weakest part of ourselves, are the most precious to God and to Jesus.

 

The powerless ones are so integral to God’s very being that we must include the powerless in our circle of care if we love God.

 

God says many times in the Bible in one way or another, love me, love my people – the wounded, the lost, the lonely, the imprisoned, or the fearful. Last week, we talked about how fear interferes with our ability to love. All of us are afraid to one degree or another. We’re afraid of each other and in some ways afraid of the ones who are suffering the most because we’re afraid to suffer ourselves. Suffering is indeed contagious because we are made to feel each other’s suffering. We are made to be empathetic.

 

To be with someone who is suffering and to love them well means we become vulnerable to their pain and that we indeed will take some of it on ourselves. Because of our love and commitment, we will lay down our lives in sacrifice to others in a multitude of ways. For our family members and friends, this may come at least somewhat automatically. But God continually asks us to extend our circle of care beyond ourselves, beyond our families, beyond our communities, and countries to ultimately include the world.

 

This is the call, as inconvenient or awkward as that can be.

 

It’s really not that different than Ron learning to love my mom’s cats or someone putting up with or maybe even coming to appreciate an incredible number of throw pillows throughout the house. The difference is a matter of scale.

 

Last week, we talked about our world as a Christ-soaked world and that Christ in us and around us breaks down our boundaries. Christ breaks down the boundaries we build that define our circles of care bit by bit so that we begin to approach loving each other as Christ loves us – inclusively, expansively, and generously. Bit by bit, we learn how to lay down our lives for each other and in that way enter the joy of God’s love for all of us.

 

Today is Cinco de Mayo, an easy day to love. May your margaritas and guacamole be wonderful if you celebrate this good day. However, it is also Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s Day. This is a less easy day to love for people who may lie outside our normal circles of care.

 

An ELCA video about this day of awareness included these statistics:

• Indigenous women are 250% more likely to experience violent crime than non-indigenous women
• 40% of all women targeted for trafficking are indigenous women while indigenous people are only 2.9% of the population
• 97% of these crimes, when solved, are perpetuated by non-native people

 

Jesus declares to us: love me, love these missing and murdered women. Love me, love these ravaged communities who are suffering in the wake of their grief and our national indifference.

 

How do we love these women? We can pray for them. We can let our hearts and minds be changed by their suffering. We can ask questions and learn. We can follow the calls on our hearts on how to respond. We are limited as human beings. We can’t pick up every cause as our own, but we can slow down enough to hear the calls of pain and respond with care.   

 

If we indeed love Jesus, we must open our hearts towards loving these women and eventually the world because Jesus comes with the world. Jesus comes as a package deal with the suffering, weak, and lowly.

 

Jesus moves into our hearts bringing with him all people, all of creation, all of life with all of its pains and sorrows. He moves in with all the world because the world is so integrated into the being of Christ that he can do nothing other than move into our hearts with all that baggage. Jesus won’t be placing throw pillows on every single surface, but he will continue to open your heart and your eyes to yet more beauty and yet more pain. That is part of the walk of discipleship.

 

Thankfully we do not need to love the world through our own power and will. God provides the love. Abide in me, Jesus says. Live in me. To live in Christ is to live in love. And when we are in Christ, in the flow of God’s love, how can we not be expanded in our love for the world? We may be frightened by this. We may not want to do this, because the demands on our lives may feel too much. But there is no greater love than this, we are told, than to lay down our lives for one another.

 

Jesus tells us, “If you love me, open your heart to all that I am which includes the world and all its pain.”  Included in that command is you (by the way) in all your pain, weakness, and complication. In Christ, we all belong to God and to each other. In Christ, all our burdens are seen, loved, and shared. It is not for you to hold the pain of the world as an individual. It is also not for you to hold all your own suffering to yourself. That burden is too much for anyone.

 

Instead, we are commanded to love as Christ loves, in the flow of God’s foundational love for all of us. When we allow our fears to be soothed by Jesus, we can indeed enter into that flow of love and not be overwhelmed by the suffering. We enter in and are made new by the grace of God for the sake of ourselves and the whole world. This is love in action in our lives, for us and for all Creation.

 

AMEN