Love is a Verb

A parish member who often seemed angry tackled the rector after worship one Sunday morning. “I’m so glad you preached a historical sermon,” she said. The rector was shocked by this unusual praise and beamed his thanks. The parishioner continued, “Yes, because I am sick and tired of hearing about love all the time.” In the interest of truth in advertising, I am warning you up front: this sermon is about love. Actually, we have been hearing about love throughout Easter tide, in all our Scripture texts. God loves us. God sent God’s Son to live, die, and rise again for us. We are branches of the vine that is God’s Son. As God’s beloved children we are commanded to love one another. But the “love” we are talking about is more than a feeling, more than a word, more than even a gesture. Loving one another as Jesus loves us means realizing that we are not the center of the universe, committing ourselves wholeheartedly to working for the good of others, serving others as widely and generously as we can, and enabling others to know God’s great love for them. As St. Augustine said, “One loving heart sets another on fire.”

One of those many loving hearts who set others’ hearts on fire was Harriet Bedell. When so many of us suffer from lack of love, Harriet Bedell models for us the love to which Jesus calls us. Bedell was born in Buffalo, New York in 1875 and was originally trained as a school teacher. However, she was inspired by an Episcopal missionary to China, and so she enrolled as a student in the New York Training School for Deaconesses. There she was instructed in religion, missions, teaching, and hygiene. After a further year of nurse’s training, she was sent as an apprentice deaconess to Oklahoma to minister among the Cheyenne. Her love for the people she served was so great that she was adopted into the tribe. In 1916 she was sent to Stevens Village, Alaska. She also served as a teacher and nurse at St. John’s in the Wilderness at Allakahet, just 40 miles south of the Arctic Circle, where she sometimes travelled by dogsled to remote villages. When she went home for a sabbatical in 1932, Bedell agreed to begin ministry to the Seminoles in Florida. She used her own salary to reopen a mission among them. She encouraged them to revive native crafts and to use the sale of their handicrafts to improve the local economy. Bedell knew that love is a verb, and that our love in and for Christ is to be a way of life. Even after officially “retiring” at the age of 63, Bedell continued her ministry of health care, education, and economic empowerment until Hurricane Donna wiped out her mission in 1960. Even after she finally moved into a retirement community at the age of 85, she continued to model Christ’s love for the residents of the community by teaching Sunday school, working in the infirmary, recruiting mission workers, and writing for the national Episcopal mission periodical, The Spirit of Missions. Bedell died on January 8, 1969, just short of her 94th birthday.

Throughout her long ministry Bedell showed no partiality to anyone, ministering alike to Native Americans, whites, and blacks. She too had seen Peter’s vision of God’s love for all. She too had learned the lesson that Peter and the other Jewish Christians learned in their encounter with the Roman commander Cornelius, that God has no favorites, and that the power of the Holy Spirit is available to all, regardless of community or ethnicity. Bedell also understood the lesson we heard in today’s second reading. She knew that her ministry was grounded in her relationship with Jesus. She believed that Jesus is the Son of God, and that we are freed by Jesus from the values of this world, and so she was free to minister to her neighbors, both inside and outside the church. Just as God had sent Jesus into the world, Bedell knew that she was sent to carry out Jesus’ mission. Like Jesus, she accepted her ministry not as a painful or burdensome duty, but as a joy-filled response to God’s call to her.

Indeed, Bedell was grateful for having been chosen by Jesus. She knew that she was not Jesus’ servant or slave, but rather that she was his friend, truly Jesus’ beloved. As Jesus’ friend, she had the honor of sharing with Jesus all that Jesus had learned from the Father. As Jesus’ friend, and as a member of the community called into existence by Jesus, she did her best to go and bear fruit that would last. Although Hurricane Donna destroyed her physical mission, Bedell is still remembered among Native Americans for her compassion and her respect for their way of life. The diocese of Southwest Florida continues to honor her memory on January 8, the anniversary of her death.

So, are we ready to follow Harriet Bedell’s example? Bedell’s example should help us to understand how, through committing ourselves to Jesus, we may carry forward God’s mission. Bedell shows us how to offer real witness to Jesus’ love. We too may be inspired to bear in our own time and place the fruits of love, generosity, and service that Bedell bore in her life. Oh yes, we have families, we have jobs, we have lives, we have duties, we have civic obligations to which we must attend, and surely we need time for rest and recreation. Certainly, our obligations are real. Even so, we too have been called into relationship with Jesus and with each other. We too have committed ourselves in baptism to prayer, witness and service. We too have been called Jesus’ friend, and we too have heard his commandment – his commandment, not his suggestion -- to love one another as he has loved us.

How can we too live out Jesus’ command to us, both as individuals, and as a Christian community called together by God in this place? I invite you to remember a simple formula: ASAP. No, not “As Soon as Possible.” Rather, Acknowledge God’s sovereignty, seek to do God’s will, accept personal responsibility and accountability, and place Jesus first.

ASAP. To what do those letters call us? A: Acknowledge God’s sovereignty. Who is the Lord of our lives? Is it God, or is it something or someone else? Is God someone we think about only between 10:30 and 11:30 on Sunday morning, or does our commitment to God impact the rest of our day and week? Are you putting your skills and talents to use everywhere but in this parish? Would this parish benefit from your deeper involvement in its life?

S: Seek to do God’s will. Do we prayerfully invite the Holy Spirit to guide us? Not only as we sit in this place, but in all that we undertake? I commend to you the prayers for guidance in the Book of Common Prayer. I especially invite you to ask God to direct us, so that “in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy Name.” I challenge you to pray this prayer daily for the coming week. Let the Holy Spirit guide your works. May we continue to follow that guidance as we embark on ministry wherever we go.

A. Accept personal responsibility and accountability. What limitations and weaknesses in our lives do we need to acknowledge, so that we can begin to heal and grow? With what are we unhappy in our lives that we may personally begin to change? Are there old enmities that we need to put to rest? Whom do we need forgive and by whom do we need to be forgiven?

P: Place Jesus first. Does Jesus really have first claim on us? Does faithfulness in our commitment to Jesus come before anything else in our lives? Here’s another challenge for you. Today, think about the person in your life, either someone you know personally, or someone you know about, who for you comes closest to modeling the kind of deep love for others that we see in Harriet Bedell. Can you follow that person’s example more closely? Are there ways in which you can love people you may never meet through working for justice and through financially supporting ministry to those in great need? At the end of the day, how can you tell if you’ve been a genuinely loving person that day? I commend to you a spiritual discipline that many have found a source of growth. Take a few minutes in your last prayers of the day, perhaps before bedtime, to reflect on the day. Thank God for all that went well, for all of God’s many blessings to you in that day. Ask God’s forgiveness for those unloving things you have done or the loving gestures that remained undone. Ask God to help you deepen your relationship with Jesus, so that you may truly live out your commitment to Jesus and obey his commandment to love one another as he has loved us.

In all that Harriet Bedell said and did for the sake of the Gospel, she brought to life the texts that we heard today as we live into resurrection life in Christ. May Harriet Bedell encourage us to offer our own witness to God’s power, and may we too partner with God so that God’s reign of peace and love may come into being.