LOVE ENCOURAGES

Ezra 8:21-9:15; 1 Corinthians 5:1-13; Psalm 31:1-8; Proverbs 21:1-2

“From the days of our ancestors until now, we have been steeped in sin. That is why we and our kings and our priests have been at the mercy of the pagan kings of the land. We have been killed, captured, robbed, and disgraced, just as we are today. But now we have been given a brief moment of grace, for the Lord our God has allowed a few of us to survive as a remnant. He has given us security in this holy place. Our God has brightened our eyes and granted us some relief from our slavery. For we were slaves, but in his unfailing love our God did not abandon us in our slavery. Instead, he caused the kings of Persia to treat us favorably. He revived us so we could rebuild the Temple of our God and repair its ruins. He has given us a protective wall in Judah and Jerusalem.”

“So let us celebrate the festival, not with the old bread of wickedness and evil, but with the new bread of sincerity and truth.”

“I trust in the Lord. I will be glad and rejoice in your unfailing love, for you have seen my troubles, and you care about the anguish of my soul. You have not handed me over to my enemies but have set me in a safe place.”

“People may be right in their own eyes, but the Lord examines their heart.”

Love encourages, even (maybe especially) in the midst of its own travail. This is not the Maundy Thursday message I expected to receive. Not at all. I was considering something about humility, maybe how to deal with betrayal. But encouragement? Hardly. This is not a happy time. It’s a dark time; at best, a reflective time. Still, as we all know by now, the Holy Spirit rarely thinks like I do, and it showed me something new I had never put together before. In His Last Supper discourse, Jesus certainly had His heavy moments, but consider also these other statements He made:

“Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.... Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

“In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.”

“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth…. You know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”

Blessing. Sanctuary. Power. Comfort and wisdom. These are not the words of a man obsessed with His own death. These are the words of a Savior deliberately choosing life in the face of death. They are words passing on transcendent love despite the grief He personally felt and the pain He knew He would soon feel. These are not the words of a dying man at all! They are words of abundant life from quite possibly the only fully alive Man the world has ever known. They are the most stellar example of loving encouragement in Scripture this side of the Cross. Jesus is not a man beset by his own frailty and mortality. He is a Man using His frailty and mortality as a foundation for those who will soon be more lost than He. The Father’s focus in this scene is not gloom and doom at all. The Last Supper’s ultimate message is one of encouragement! Loving encouragement of others should be the goal of every Christian, particularly when facing their own adversity and apparent defeat. It’s a strange formula, I know, but it may just help us withstand the storms of depression when they threaten to swallow us. Because, of course, encouraging others allows the Holy Spirit to flow more fully through us and not just to us.

Ezra no doubt would have appreciated the irony. He was faced with some serious disappointment himself. The flock with which he had been entrusted by God soon returned to their old, sinful ways and abandoned that which would save them. Mortified, Ezra hit his knees and cried out to God. Hidden within his lament, however, was the encouragement of history, which Ezra shared with his people: a Light still exists in the darkness. Sin may mask or make us forget blessings, but it does not eliminate them or their Giver. Nothing is impossible with God; even enemies can become allies. Pretty encouraging stuff.

Paul saw the benefits of using encouragement in spite of despair, too. Awash in a misguided tolerance of sexual depravity, the Corinthian church was in serious danger of going the way of Ezra’s Hebrew leaders. Make no mistake. Paul did not spare his anger and frustration that they would fall so far so fast. But he added into his diatribe a word of encouragement as well. He called for a celebration, a feast where the menu would include sincerity and truth.

Here’s my takeaway. Love encourages in the midst of its own travail because love encourages to spite its own travail. The word choice – “spite” – is again unfamiliar in context but nonetheless true. We lovingly encourage others in spite of our own difficulties to release their grip on our souls. The ability to keep encouraging others when our worlds are crashing in may be the best evidence we have that the Holy Spirit is still living in us and doing His work. Where else could selflessness come from when pain envelopes us? Encouragement of others reminds us we still have the ability and the God-given Power to see and act outside and beyond our own personal limitations. Alleluia!

It may not take a great deal of Spirit-generated, shared encouragement to get others over rough spots, either. Just this afternoon, I unexpectedly ran into a friend in the elevator. I had been feeling blue all morning. A discussion with an out-of-work attorney the day before had brought back to mind the tenuousness of everyone’s position in this economy, and my heart was troubled. I know, for a fact, my friend had bigger worries, but he is as compassionate and caring a man as I have ever met. He could easily have been consumed by the challenges and difficult decisions he faces, yet in just a sentence or two, he removed the gray cloud over my head. Specific words don’t matter much when the sentiment is that we are valued and blessed, and that was the message he shared with me today.

There is no greater gift of love than the gift of encouragement. Christians, particularly, need to show a little more audacity in the presence of disappointment, disillusion and despair. We have the power to act in spite of those emotions and to deny them the power to affect our reality. Let’s do it. Maybe, if we force ourselves to live just a bit more outside ourselves and in reliance on the promised Counselor, we will not only encourage others. We may also encourage ourselves!