Unlikely Love

Overcoming hostility is agonizing work. Just look at Syria, the world’s best negotiators have their shoulders to that wheel, and so far the efforts of more than a year have moved the process an inch or two along. Success is marked by getting everyone to agree to come to the next meeting. Meanwhile the world trembles at the wailing anguish of the people of Homs and Aleppo.

You have heard it said, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment. But I say to you that if you are angry, if you insult, and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to judgment. When sweet Jesus demonstrates the salting of the world, we are all salted where it hurts, in the deep human wound.

For Christmas, I was given a book called Unlikely Loves, a collection of stories of animals who crossed the lines between species, to create bonds of love and friendship:

A Great Dane in Canada found an orphaned baby fawn near the house, and took charge of raising it till it was old enough to go back to the forest – but the grown deer came back for tender reunions every now and then.

A homeless dog in Florida found its way to a farm that rehabilitated abused horses, and took one particularly ill and beaten horse into its heart. Together, they dug a hole under the fence that separated them, so the dog could lie near the horse and guard it, a relationship that lasted till the horse died, and then the dog accompanied the horse to its grave.

A donkey in England belonged to a woman who also had a sheep she had rescued. One day a pit bull came into the yard and went for the sheep, sinking its teeth into the sheep’s neck. The woman came running to the sheep’s frantic cries, in time to see the donkey charge the scene and bite the pit bull in the neck, hanging on till the dog let go. It took a lot of nursing to save the sheep, and Dotty the donkey stayed by her side for the months of healing.

Owen, a baby hippo orphaned by the Asian Tsunami, chose Mzee, a 130 year old male giant tortoise for a surrogate mom when he arrived at the animal park in Kenya. It was a miracle Owen survived when his entire pod was drowned. It was a miracle Mzee stepped up to mothering, when he was male, ancient, and from a species that does not nurture its young. For a year and a half they were inseparable, Mzee teaching Owen how to be a fine tortoise, which fortunately includes many of the things hippoos do: swim, eat vegetation along the shore, and sleep in the sun.

Jesus’ salty demand, that we not reject, insult, treat angrily, or murder each other, seems to fly in the face of reality, until we look at such animal examples of the behavior he is calling for, behavior which took place in situations where the humans would not have expected it, encouraged it, or objected to animal aloofness. The wisdom at work in the humans in these stories was to get out of love’s way – to respect what was flabbergasting – and also divine.

Yet so often, in the name of religious righteousness, humans castigate, shun, banish, and decry unlikely love. A couple came to my office, he Asian, she Christian and in tears. Five churches had turned down their request for a Christian-Buddhist wedding. I spent the weeks we had to plan trying to bind their wounds as best I could. The bride wore red, And we decked the church out in red, the Vietnamese wedding color. We incorporated Asian poems and prayers into the service, and blessed their love with a wedding that included some ritual Vietnamese wedding food.

The gay and lesbian weddings held in churches I have served as pastor have always included the shedding of tears for the family who, on religious grounds, would not attend. And there was a funeral, in which the widow told her lesbian daughter she could not sit in the family pew if she brought her partner. So they sat in the back pew, by the door, forever relinquishing the church because it was a place of undeserved pain.

More common is the hush with which people speak of a divorce, afraid if it were known in the congregation they would endure snubs, frosty looks, suspicion. Once, before church, an older woman spouted off about ‘the trouble with the world today is divorce!’ I could see the Deacon next to us, a long-divorced single mom of two, wilting in pain. I spoke up, ‘Sometimes a divorce is the best thing to do – and some single moms are doing a fine job with their kids.’ The older woman said it didn’t mean divorce was acceptable.

Divorce, in Jesus’ day, was different in that women had no ability to own homes or earn money, nor could they inherit any. Jesus, chastising men for divorce in the Sermon on the Mount, gave the first cup of eternal life to a woman who had had five husbands. And Jesus, in his day, stood protectively within the stoning circle with an adulteress.

Who are we to withhold blessing for love avowed, and to refuse the confession of those whose love has died?