May 4, 2025

Talk or Power?

I had an epiphany of sorts one morning.  I happened to notice out the window an enormous crow come flapping down onto the garage roof.  He probably measured twenty inches from beak to tail — it was an awesome sight.  He was perched on the roof ridge with his back to me, black feathers glistening in the morning light, as though he were, from a lofty mountain, surveying his realm.  He stood for a long minute, then gently glided off the roof and swept out toward the field behind our house, making a slow, imperious turn before moving on to another corner of his kingdom.  I thought to myself, “He must have no natural predators.  He’s fast and strong; he can soar up to the heights and quickly dive down on his prey. What could be more powerful than such a huge, intimidating bird?”

Just then my gaze wandered up and I spotted a lone blue jay perched higher up on a small bare tree limb.  He had been quietly observing the crow from his superior vantage point.  Although Jays can be quite noisy and very aggressive when it comes to smaller birds, this one, in the presence of the crow, was silent.  I thought, “No wonder he’s minding his tongue.  I would too with a great glistening monster like that gliding around.”  Just then, the jay hopped along the branch and back behind a tree trunk.  In a moment he re-emerged flying on a beeline towards the back yard, followed immediately by his companion, another jay that had been sitting just out of view behind the tree.  I’m not sure that the one jay had been keeping quiet to avoid provoking the crow, or, even more fancifully, had been remaining conspicuous to protect his hidden mate, but it seemed that way.  And it was that fleeting fancy that brought to mind a very dependable if often tired truth: It is love – love is the thing more powerful than brute force.  But if love has power, what is the nature of that power, and from where is it derived?

Jesus knew a thing or two about the power of love.  In fact, you could say that his entire life, all of his ministry, the sum total of his teaching, was about the power of love.  He demonstrated that power in his active compassion for those around him — his many acts of healing and feeding and forgiveness.  He demonstrated that power in his uncompromising insistence on speaking truth — even when that truth was angry or painful — because he knew that truth is liberating.  He demonstrated the power of love when he absorbed all the hatred and slander and abuse that could be thrown at him, and carried it with non-reactive strength and compassionate forgiveness to the cross, so that we could get a taste of divine love — the real thing.

There’s an entire lifetime of lessons and examples and stories about the power of love to be mined from the gospels, but they all seem to be summed up in this account of Jesus and the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias.  It’s a warm and wonderful narrative of a miraculous resurrection appearance.  It has the disciples bobbing around in the water all night trying to fish, Jesus appearing as a stranger on the shore at daybreak, cooking breakfast for them over an open fire.  It’s the kind of tale that leaves you feeling all toasty and cozy inside.

And in the afterglow of that magical breakfast of fish and bread, Jesus seized the moment to teach them something about love.  Three times he asked Peter, “Do you love me?”  Three times Peter said, “Yes, of course!”  And three times, as if to drive the point home, he reminded him that love is more than words.  “If you love me, you’ll feed my sheep.”  “If you love me, you won’t just say so, you’ll do something about it.”

“If you love me, don’t just send a Hallmark card on my birthday.  If you love me, don’t just tell me you’re my best friend.  If you love me, don’t just whisper sweet nothings in my ear” — because love is not just talk, it’s power!  And the power of love lies in what it does to people — how it changes lives — how it transforms, redeems and nourishes.

The Apostle Paul got the message.  Writing to the Christians in Corinth, he admonished them about throwing words around unsupported by actions.  He said “the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.”

How easy it is to say all the right things.  How readily the words come to our lips when we want to impress, or to win someone’s favor.  What a simple matter it is to talk as if our hearts were in the right place, and our souls were overflowing with goodness, and our hands were clean.  I know, because I’m good with words.  But I stand convicted along with everyone else in this room of not always living up to the rhetoric.

Speaking as a man, I can tell you this “I love you” stuff is sometimes a real problem.  There are those men who just can’t bring themselves to say it at all.  So that, if they ever did, their wives might faint dead away.  Like the story of the husband who came home from work with a dozen red roses, hugged his wife, and said, “Honey, I love you!”  His wife burst into tears.  “What a day!” she lamented.  “The washer broke down.  Junior fell out of his highchair.  And now you’ve come home drunk!”

But it’s really not that bad for most of us.  For any of us, especially in moments of intense feeling, the words slip off our tongues like butter from a knife: “I love you.”  “Of course, I love you.”  “Why, you know I love you.”  Wasn’t it Telly Savalis who used to say, “Who loves ya, baby?”  And we felt the depth of his sincerity, didn’t we?

How often we human beings find it easier to profess our love than to demonstrate it in ways that are meaningful to the person we love.  How easy it can be to walk into church on Sunday morning and profess our love of the Lord, our love for all the earth’s children, our love for creation, and then go home to self-absorbed lives, hoarding more possessions, and squandering the earth’s natural resources.

I don’t think many of us are being deceitful when we so easily profess our love, I think we’re mostly just oblivious.  We’ve got things all mixed up.  We think that love is a feeling — it’s a feeling you have if you’re “in love” with someone, a feeling you develop about a friend, or a feeling you should have toward everyone if you’re a “good” person.

I hope I don’t upset too many applecarts if I say that I don’t think love is a feeling.  Love isn’t something you feel; love is something you do.

A wonderful phrase has emerged from the civil rights movement, and it’s been taken over by society at large.  It’s the difference between those who “talk the talk,” and those who “walk the walk.”  And we all know that each one of us, at one time or another, is guilty of talking the talk we’re not walking.

But we also have our moments, don’t we?  There are times when, by the grace of the Almighty, our words and our deeds are clearly in sync, and love’s power seems to flow through our lives, and touch others.  You see, the power of love to change the world and save lives is not due to some vague, supernatural influence whereby strong emotions send out cosmic vibrations that alter the course of fate.  Love changes everything because of what it compels people to do.

A man I knew many years ago served as an Area Minister in the American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts.  His name was Stan Manierre.  Stan was a rare and gifted area minister because he had the capacity to be a pastor to pastors unlike anyone I have ever known.  He used to just “show up” regularly to visit me and find out how things were in the church and how the ministry was going, and he was always close at hand when there was a need.`  I knew he was there for me, and his caring and compassion were always obvious.  This capacity was developed, I believe, over the course of a very painful but growth-producing experience.

Stan had been a flier in World War II.  His plane was shot down over the Pacific, and he was subsequently captured by the Japanese.  The time he spent as a prisoner of war was horrendous.  I never heard all the details from him, but I know that he was left with real hurt and deep animosity toward the Japanese.  When the war was over, Stan had to find a way to come to terms with his experience.   One option would have been to live in bitterness and resentment the rest of his life for all that had been done to him, and all the pain he had endured.  Another option would have been to forgive the Japanese and try to move on with life, having nurtured love in his heart.

Stan chose another option.  He enrolled as an American Baptist missionary to Japan.  He spent many years in Japan, living and working with the Japanese, learning from them, and offering them the love and grace of Christ.  When he completed his missionary career, he became an area minister in Massachusetts and began going out and sitting down with clergy to share their burdens and inspire their ministries.  His loving heart, his ability to put feet on his feelings, was won in a hard-fought battle of the soul.  And because of his real, tangible, caring ministry, many lives have been touched and changed — here and around the world.   That’s the power of love!

Every day, you and I are given the opportunity to answer Christ’s question, “Do you love me?”  Each moment offers the possibility of responding with more than words.

In the play, My Fair Lady, Eliza is being courted by Freddy, who writes to her daily of his undying love. Eliza’s response is to cry out in frustration:

“Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!…

Don’t talk of stars

Burning above,

If you’re in love,

Show me!

Don’t talk of love lasting through time.

Make me no undying vow

Show me now!”

I submit that if we could ever put away the folly of waiting for some feeling to surface that we might call love, and seize instead every opportunity to do love, a power might be discovered that could change the whole world.

Pierre Teihard de Chardin looked to the future of the human race with hopeful eyes.  He saw the great accomplishments of science and technology beginning to blossom, but knew that the greatest power available to us had yet to be tapped.  He said, “Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, [we] will have discovered fire.”1

So, the question is before us: are we out to change our lives, and then change the world, or are we just foolin’ around?

Jesus says, “If you love me, feed my sheep.”

 

1Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “The Evolution of Chastity,” Toward the Future. 1934