“Sabbatical Love Story”
Romans 13:8-10
Mark 12:28-34
I’m going tell you a story this morning, but lest you think the point of me telling the story is simply to share part of my sabbatical with you, I want to be clear:
As you may have figured out by now, for a pastor and preacher like me, almost nothing is ever just a story. Instead, almost anything and everything can be a window into the heart of God, a blessing from God, a tender tap on the shoulder from the Holy One, a life-giving lesson, an outpouring of grace—or all of the above.
I believe the story of the experience I’m about to tell you falls into the “all of the above” category: something that blessed me beyond anything I could have imagined. And, because it further opened my eyes and heart to the love of God, I thought it might do the something similar for you.
It is a story about grace and hospitality and generosity. It is about the goodness of people and why loving everyone and seeing God’s love in everyone is so important: Not simply because loving God and loving our neighbor as ourself is the be-all and end-all of the spiritual life, but also (and this is probably why these commandments are so important) because when we do, both we and the world are transformed. Both we and the world are healed at least a little bit. Both we and the world become more of who and what we are meant to be.
The experience I’m going to share with you is also, for me at least, a very clear lesson in the importance of putting aside our judgmental categorizations of people, and how hospitality—both giving a receiving—makes doing that possible.
I did not choose today’s scripture readings—they are the lessons for the day from the Year W lectionary—but they really could not be more perfect. Everything about the life of faith—everything about life itself—boils down to love of God and love of neighbor as ourselves, and we can’t love God without loving our neighbor.
Barbara Brown Taylor touches on this when she writes:
“The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor. That self-canceling feature of my religion is one of the things I like best about it. Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.”
But, I think we should add, Jesus did command us, in keeping with Jewish law, to love God. And how do we do that?
Well, the soon-to-be-saint Dorothy Day put it this way:
“I really only love God as much as I love the person I love least.”
And this, of course, only echoes the strong statement of Jesus in Matthew 25 that whenever we serve “the least of these,” we love and serve him, and whenever we do not, we have failed not only the marginalized but also him.
Now, for the somewhat abbreviated story:
As most of you know, I just returned from the second part of my my sabbatical, an amazing road trip that had me driving more than 9,500 miles over seven weeks—just me and my dog, Scout—visiting family and friends and exploring spectacularly beautiful parts of the United States and Canada.
Did I mention that most of those miles were driven on backroads? Sometimes, an hour or more would go by before I saw another car. Occasionally, I would think to myself: It’s really great to see all these out-of-the-way places, but I’d hate to have the car break down in the middle of nowhere, especially given the dangerously brutal heat.
Well, on the morning of August 2, just a few miles away from the previous night’s Hipcamp rental in the middle-of-nowhere Ponca, Nebraska,
my dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree and the various systems on my car began shutting down. Seconds later I was stopped on the side of the road; the temperature was already 85 and on the way to a forecast heat index of 102.
This was not a total surprise; I had been monitoring some problems with my car’s hybrid system. The day before I had had both battery’s checked, and that morning I had ordered a new hybrid battery, which I was scheduled to pick up in Dubuque, Iowa, the next morning.
So, while having my car die then and there was inconvenient, I was not worried. I would call Triple A, arrange to be towed to a different NAPA store, call that store back and ask them to order the battery, cancel my order at the Dubuque store, and start looking for a new place to spend the night. Everything would be fine, I thought (and prayed).
Did I mention I was in the middle of nowhere?
It turns out that this is a problem for Triple A. Once I had finally navigated AAA’s automated phone system and gotten to a real person, it took her a good 20 minutes to “spot” me on a map.
Finally the Triple A woman told me a tow truck was on the way and would be there in about 45 minutes.
I can handle that, I thought.
And when I called the NAPA stores back, the manager of the nearer store got on the phone and said he would go pick up the battery I needed and have it at his store for me in a couple of hours.
Amazing! I thought. Thank you, God!
It was getting hotter, but raising the back hatch of the car created some shade for both Scout and me. I drank some water, comforted Scout, and began waiting.
After about 40 minutes of this, I began to get a little concerned. I had gotten the name and number of the tow truck company from the Triple A woman, so I called them.
They had no record—I repeat, no record—of a call from Triple A.
With a sinking feeling, I realized that no one was on the way.
Scout and I were in the middle of nowhere, it was getting hotter by the minute, and no one was on the way.
I’ll spare you the details of my several phone calls with Triple A over the next couple hours, except to say that after the next one, a new Triple A person told me she wasn’t sure they’d be able to help me.
I was ending that phone call and starting to get worried when a large pick-up truck stopped in front of my car and a middle-aged couple, both of them wearing Harley-Davidson T-shirts, got out and came toward me asking if I needed help.
Long-story-short: Larry and Paula, who’d noticed I had a dog with me, offered to take Scout and me to their house, just five minutes back down the road, where I could continue working with Triple A in air-conditioned comfort instead of dying of heat stroke. I thought about it for a few seconds, and then humbly and gratefully accepted their kindness, for Scout’s sake as much as anything.
I’m going to skip over more of the drama of the story now, to get at least a little closer to the point of it all:
Larry and Paula, an Iraq war veteran and a high school math teacher, opened their simple home to a total stranger and her dog. For more than a hour, in between my phone calls with Triple A and the towing company they finally engaged, I had the pleasure of getting to know them and learning about their lives. Among other things, they raise puppies who will become service dogs for veterans.
When they took Scout and me back to the car, I met the tow truck driver—a tall, lanky young man named Keith. Over the next hour and a half, at my invitation, he told me much of his life story. Our amazingly deep conversation began when I mentioned that I had heard him tell someone he had recently gotten married and changed his last name; I asked him to tell me about that.
Well, it turns out that this just-turned-25-year-old who had lived in poverty much of his life and is, according to his own passing comments, at least a little homophobic and dislikes President Biden, is an off-the-scale feminist—at least when it comes to the well-being of his 20-year-old pregnant wife.
You see, Keith’s family name was the same as the first name of the man who had sexually assaulted and traumatized the woman he was going to marry. He loved this woman so much that he didn’t want her to take his name, a name that caused her pain. He realized they could both keep their family names, but he wanted to do more than that. So he went to her parents and grandparents and asked their permission to change his last name to hers, and on the day they filled out their marriage license application, he revealed his plan.
I’m sure Keith and I have different views on many things, and he is a remarkable young man and a beloved child of God.
Fast-forward now to the NAPA Auto Parts store in Sioux Center, Iowa. The manager’s name is Donavan, and when I arrived (Scout in tow), he said, of course, he’s going to put the new hybrid battery in the car for me, because he works for Jesus.
And I’m like, Wait. What?!?
God, you’re showing off again!
Another long story short: Working in the 100-degree-heat-index, Donavan ends up needing to replace both of my car’s batteries to get it running again. He does it all with a smile, refuses to charge me for labor, and then gives me what he calls a “pastoral discount” of—wait for it—35 percent on parts.
Before Scout and I drive away, Donavan asks if he can pray over me.
Of course, I say.
I have no doubt that my theology is quite a bit different than Donavan’s. But we serve and love the same God. We are neighbors, and that means we’re called to love each other.
I experienced a whole lot of neighborly love from Donavan, and by the time I drove away my love for God and all the neighbors who had served me that day—Larry and Paula and Keith and Donavan and Audrey, the Hipcamp host who had texted me when she saw my car on the side of the road—had filled my heart to overflowing.
I had experienced so much hospitality and grace. I had encountered the Holy One in these salt-of-the-earth people I never would have met if not for my need. I had been loved and blessed by people I might never have opened my heart to if I hadn’t needed them.
“Owe no one anything,” says the Apostle Paul, “except to love one another.”
Because love—not the feeling, but the action—changes everything.
Because love changes the people who give it and the people who receive it.
Because the love of God lives within that person with whom we think we have nothing in common. Because the healing, transforming love of God can flow through that person with whom we disagree on everything we hold dear.
Because every person is a child of God, and every person is our neighbor.
So let us owe no one anything, except to love one another, and let us love God and everyone with all our heart.
