Faith | What does being ‘provoked’ to love and good deeds look like?
“Provoked”?
You bet I get provoked! Lots of things going on in the world, even in my local community, provoke me, in the sense of what that word normally means ... inciting me to strong negative feelings, even to anger!
Politics, climate disasters, abuses of power, people struggling to have food and health care, and drivers who don’t seem to know the basic rules of the road ... the opportunities for provocation are endless and everywhere.
Provocation is usually defined as inciting anger. But recently I heard a different use of “provoke,” a different path to take when events arouse a strong negative response. From the Bible, in the Letter to the Hebrews “Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.”
Provoke and love were a startling pairing of words.
Provoke to love. Arouse strong positive feelings. Stimulate constructive action, “good deeds,” add to the world’s health instead of the angry toxic atmosphere that surrounds us.
It’s a tall order ... anger seems to be my default setting for provocation. I was going to say “factory setting” but heard an “ahem” from the cosmos, so perhaps the Creator is reminding me that LOVE is the true factory setting.
What does provoking to love and good deeds look like? The Episcopal church in my town is a good example.
A few years ago Christmas and New Year’s fell on Sunday, so many places would be closed the following Mondays as well. Temperatures were forecast to drop to single digits. The newspaper published a list of places unhoused people could go over the holidays to get warm, and finished the article saying that these would mostly be closed!
The article was published the evening the temperature was about 2 degrees.
The congregation was gathered for a pre-Christmas dinner. Enjoying the fellowship, warmth and feast, celebrating God’s loving gift of the Christ Child, some remembered those out in the life-threatening cold and their bleak prospects for finding anywhere to get warm.
People were provoked by knowing there was “no room in the inn” on such a bitter night.
They could have stayed angry at the inadequate response of the city, with them trapped in their toxic anger and the unhoused folks still trapped in the cold.
But these are people always working on their connection to the God of love, and In a couple of hours, the parish hall was transformed with mattresses, blankets, food and welcome.
The word went out via police and social media to come to the church if you needed shelter. That night the first guests arrived.
We are created in the image of the God of love, and supported by the Spirit to respond to the world’s difficulties and tragedies with love. It is who we are, who we can be.
This love is a potent force for good, a powerful response to need and trouble. And when we choose to respond with love, we heal ourselves of the toxicity of anger as we heal the world.
