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March 27, 2008

We will never be able to live the greatest commandment ‘to love’ without allowing ourselves to be first loved without condition or prerequisite.

 Ministry in the inner city anywhere in the world is always filled with extreme blessing and an extreme challenge. For us on the front lines at UGM Vancouver it is no different. Because of this, one of my greatest challenges as Senior Chaplain is to ensure that the team is cared for and that they are caring for themselves and each other.I see my ministry to the team as “cheerleader” rather then “coach,” that I might motivate all to keep on with the task at hand amidst the adversity. In one of our latest bi-weekly ministry team meetings I asked: What would it take for you to deeply know and experience the LOVE of God to ensure you are restored, strong and encouraged so that you are fully empowered to better express God’s LOVE back to all that God would have come to us, which includes the hard to love, even an enemy?

In a close reading of John 15 - particularly verses 9 to 17 - we connect with the heart of Jesus, the heart of God, whose heart is, according to Henri Nouwen, “only love”.  In verse 12 we are given perhaps the greatest commandment, which is to “love one another as He has loved us”. This is, of course, Jesus strengthening His statement in chapter 13 verse 34 when is give the “new commandment” of  “Love one another; as I have loved you, you also should love one another”.

It is important to note that we first receive this love from God, then we are able to love ourselves, then it is able to be extended to friends/family/believers/all others. This stream of living water flows from God to us, then through us. The ‘scarlet thread ’ flowing from these beautiful and holy Scriptures is this love, one for another (any and all others), is how ‘they’ (anyone) will know we are Christians; experiential evangelism.

Out of this love flows the desire to be the active voice of advocacy for the voiceless and the determination to couple it with the hands and feet of putting this advocacy into action.

- Rev. Bruce G. Curtiss, Senior Chaplain, UGM

“We have to kneel before the Father, put our ear against His chest and listen, without interruption, to the heartbeat of God. Then, and only then, can we say carefully and very gently what we hear. I know now that I have to speak from eternity into time, from the lasting joy into the passing realities of our short existence in this world, from the house of love into the houses of fear and pain, from God’s abode into the dwellings of human beings. I am well aware of the enormity of this vocation, this call.” (Henri Nouwen)