Cringe

This is the sermon delivered by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregations of Unfinished Community and Ashiya Christian Church on Trinity Sunday, June 15th, 2025, drawing from 1 Corinthians 13 and 1 John 4:13-21 (with a noteworthy reference to Romans 5:1-5.

When times are especially tough, as they all too often are, I find myself thinking back to the person I was as a child. Not me as a teenager, or even a young adult - I’ve often talked about how unpleasant those seasons were for me - but me as an actual, little kid. 

It’s been a long time, I’ll grant, but I can still remember at least some parts of who I was then, and how the world looked through those tiny eyes. I remember just being in awe of everything; the beauty of the sunlight, the feel of a gentle breeze, all the many new and interesting things to play with. Life was, through tiny eyes, just an ongoing parade of tiny little joys. 

And in the midst of that, were my parents. Oh, I love my parents even now - they’re watching, so I’ve gotta give them the shout out! - but as a kid they were literally larger than life, and so was the love I had for them! And I was so fortunate, because my parents loved me just as much as I loved them. 

Which was great for little kid me, because that version of me just LOVED to love! I would tackle-hug my parents whenever I saw them, tackle-hug my friends, my siblings…anyone I cared about got more love than they could handle, at speed, from this little ball of screaming, joyous happiness. 

If you’ve met my youngest son, you may be familiar with the phenomenon!

Love was the best thing for little-kid me. The only thing, really. I was all about love! I loved the beauty of nature, picked flowers, cried at beautiful music, loved my parents, loved my friends, loved just…everybody I could. In fact, when my parents first brought home my little sister from the hospital, first thing I did is make room in my bed, and tried to convince mom and dad to let her stay there.

Because of course she'd stay with me! Why wouldn't she? Sure I had only met her just then, but she was my baby sister, and I loved her!

Now I'm sure - as my parents will no doubt gleefuly attest - that I was in no way a perfect child, and I had plenty of anger, stupidity, cruelty, and all those other all-too-human attributes as well. But the thing I remember most, the thing I remember feeling most, the thing that has stayed with me ever since, was this utter certainty in the supremacy of love, this absolute unquestionable faith in the fact that love was paramount among all other things. 

That love was somehow divine. 

Even before I ever picked up a Bible, something in my little heart knew that God is Love. 

And because Love was so wonderful, so amazing, so divine, my young self couldn’t be convinced to keep it hidden. I thought love was something to be embraced, bragged about, screamed about from the rooftops! What good was a chaste and distant nod to your friend across the room when you could knock over three desks and tackle-hug them into a love-filled oblivion?

I loved gleefully, wastefully, unreservedly, and utterly without the barest hint of a second thought.

And then…elementary school happened.

I still remember the first time I told a friend that I loved them in public.

I still remember it because it would be the last time I would have a friend for a very, very long time.

See, I never learned that love was embarrassing. At least, I didn’t learn it in time, anyways. 

Suddenly, and with almost no warning, nobody wanted a hug anymore. Nobody wanted to play. Nobody wanted to smile, and run through the grass, or even be my friend. Since I didn’t know that love was some dirty, shameful thing, I became a pariah. Bullies made me their target, and those who would otherwise be my friend kept their distance lest they be tarred with the same brush.

Because no one wanted to be that kind of person. To be so…obvious. To have your heart right out there in the open where anyone could see it, and anyone could hurt it. 

That was the thing we were all afraid of, in elementary school, if you remember. I think we all were gigantic bundles of love as children when we were little, and even those children with the most brutal of home environments still started from that place of love, suffering because their hearts desperately cried out for a connection left unfulfilled. 

We all started there, but once we got around each other the fear set in, and suddenly love was dangerous. Love was problematic.

Love was….cringe.

As time went on for me of course, the bullies would find many and easier things to bully me for; wealth, clothes, that "belly like a bowl full of jelly" that Santa left me in lieu of presents. But at the heart of it was this idea that who I was, and the love that I so desperately wanted to share, just wasn't socially acceptable.

It just wasn't…appropriate.

So I learned. I stopped giving great big hugs to the people I care about, stopped giving compliments, stopped smiling so much, and let the color drain from the world. I learned - haltingly at time and incompletely, if I’m being honest - to stay my hands, make neutral my face, and to police my words and thoughts in order to eliminate anything beyond simple, socially-appropriate appreciation. 

In short…I grew up. 

I have to admit, I struggled. I can be something of a slow learner at times, but I did, eventually, start figuring out how to express myself in ways more socially acceptable, more in keeping with the barriers and boundaries we set for ourselves. I learned to erect those same, big old french-resistance-style blockades we are all taught to raise up in our hearts and souls because while the bullies may have changed, that fear remains, even as adults. Sure, we may not be living in fear of the muscly, gossipy kid with the locker at the end of the hall and a punch that could stun a horse anymore, but quiet whispers in the break room hurt just as powerfully as quiet whispers in the lunchroom, and the clean-cut, no-nonsense boss with the office at the end of the hall and a stack of resumes to hand for the next time someone isn't a "team player” or can’t “read the room” provides an economic punch to rival even the most powerful of bullies.

In growing up I became fearful, as we all did. I learned to be afraid of love, to hide from its awesome power because by now I had come to know it as something that hurts to experience. In middle and high school we learn to hide our crushes lest people learn about them and embarrass us, we learn never to display affection in public, eschew the invited and welcomed intimacy of a hug or a kiss, and to never…never hold hands in public. 

High school comes to pass, and college comes and goes, and here we are as adults, still terrified of showing love to the people around us. Can you remember the last time your partner gave you a great big hug in public, or just gave you a big, messy smooch? Of course not! To do such a thing in public would be terrifyingly wrong! People might think that two people love each other, and that just wouldn’t be right. 

But just what have we gained, in building a world where the love within us is so restrained, so limited, that we cannot show it for fear of social embarrassment. What have we gained by embracing a way of living where we never tell people how much they matter to us, where we run and hide when people share their affection, where we keep each other at arm’s length because the love that bubbles up within us scares us all?

What have we gained by growing up?

The lectionary text for today, which you may notice I have taken the rare step of not working with this week, is from Romans 5, and reads as follows:

“…we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

This is actually where I began for this week’s sermon, and I wrestled with it for a surprisingly long time, because in truth…I just couldn’t wrap my head around what, exactly, we were supposed to be enduring. Certainly, Paul had in mind the persecutions the Christians in Rome were facing on account of their new faith in Christ Jesus, but I’ve always thought that was something a bit abstract. After all, simply…having a quiet practice of faith is rarely something that pisses off the neighbors. Most folk, then as now, are generally content to leave each other alone unless you’re breaking social convention, sticking out, or generally making people feel uncomfortable. 

For the people of the time - and, if we’re being honest, for many people today as well - religion was a social institute; something that people engaged in as a basis for the world they shared. It established the ground rules of culture, of connection, and of community. And Rome, as it happens, was not too dissimilar from our culture in the way they viewed love, and arguably even worse. 

For the Romans, love was something that got in the way of a society where marriage was a social and economic tool, where affection was seen as a distraction to the intellect, and where physical love was often used as a tool of oppression rather than connection. And it was into this space these first Christians came, and into this place that they were preaching the Gospel of Christ’s LOVE for us all. 

And it was for that, first and above all, that Christians first tasted persecution. Not because they judged, or hated their neighbors, not because they wanted to force their beliefs on others or because they wanted to overthrow the culture and religion of the community.

Because they loved. Obviously, unreservedly, and utterly without shame.

Of course, living your life this way invites conflict, heartbreak, and suffering. Living a life of love in a world that finds love unseemly hurts. 

But this is what we are called to endure, through our faith in Christ Jesus. Not the persecution for our faith, not the judgement of our neighbors because we pray differently than they do, or because we worship differently than they do, or because our hymns and our songs are different from theirs. We are called to endure the pushback, the isolation, the cringe of a world that tells us love is something to be scorned, something to be embarrassed by, or something to be feared. 

The world tells us to be impatient, to abandon people to pursue our own goals.

The world tells us to forget other people, and get ours. 

The world tells us that the quick feelings and instant happiness are to be preferred, even if they come at the expense of others, and that those who would cry out at as our gratification harms them are just selfish, cruel, uncaring, and deserving of our rage and indifference. 

The world tells us to be quick to anger, to lash out at those would get between us and the immediate desires of our own hearts; to never forgive, never forget, and to allow resentment to build until our hearts blister and break.

The world tells us that there is no wrong way to our own happiness, and that happiness which does not come quickly and effortlessly is worthless, because speaking truthfully, sharing honestly, or allowing ourselves to be confronted by our own failures might prevent us from pursuing happiness here, now, in this moment. 

All these things the world tells us about life, and we hear them. We listen to them. We allow these things to flow through our hearts, settle into our souls, and twist our minds until the gleeful child we once were is long gone, and all that remains is a cold, heartless person, desperately grasping for a mirage of love as it slowly drifts farther and farther away.

Because Love, real love, the love in which God dwells and which is itself God; that love, which is the very heart of our being, the imagio dei within us, the first thing we knew and the only thing that matters…that love, is none of these things.

Because love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways, but that love never ended.

Not for me. Not for you. Not for any of us. 

The world may have made it harder to see, our lives may have made it harder to feel, all the temptations that come at us from day to day may have made it harder for us to remember, and fear may be holding us back from expressing it, 

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 

So here I am, all grown up, and learning that eternal truth that my little-kids self knew instinctively; that love is nothing to be ashamed of. Love is something to be embraced, to be treasured, to be built up and nurtured with patience and endurance until it is a monument to all that is possible through Christ Jesus our Lord, and never torn down. 

I love you. Each and every one of you. Without question, without witness, without reward. 

I love you. Each and every one of you. And with both Kagawa and Paul both, I offer this love boldly and unreservedly, and“If I have to be arrested for saying this, let me be hand-cuffed, for I had rather die quickly by the sword than die of thirst in a loveless desert.”

I love you. Each and every one of you. And I can love, we can love, because God first loved us. 

That love lives within each and every one of you, the gift of your creator made manifest in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Have faith. Embrace hope. But above all else, love. 

Love unreservedly. 

Love unashamedly.

Love boldly.

Because the greatest of these things, the greatest of all things, is love.