No Law Against Love

It was one of those friend of a friend encounters.  A Brazilian friend of Robson, our friend and mission partner from Jardim América and Buritis, was in the area and we met for lunch out of respect for our common friend, if for no other reason.  But there were other reasons. 

Gerson is a man in his thirties, I would guess, and God has planted a passion for mission in his heart.  He is now working with Robson in developing a mission strategy for Igreja Presbiteriana in Buritis, and that is what brought him to the United States.  And that is another story.

Gerson had been in the U.S. less than a week when we met yesterday, but already he was tired of speaking his very good English, and so was happy to converse in his native Portuguese.  As we shared table fellowship, I asked Gerson about his love for the church’s mission.  He told me about his father who was an evangelist and church planter in Brazil and how in every village and town they lived in – seventeen different places by the time he finished high school – his father would plant the seeds for the new church in the rich soil of home-based Bible studies and as a fellowship began to grow around that discovery of the Word they would reach out to their community with acts of compassion and works for social justice.  Reaching out to those in need seems to be part of Gerson’s DNA.

When God’s call came to Gerson, it, too, was to church planting and mission, but he tends to stay in one place longer and his mission field has become the world.  In particular, Gerson has fallen in love with the people of Cuba where he goes to from time to time to help and encourage a small and quiet evangelical ministry. 

As Gerson’s story unfolded, I asked the obvious questions about his safety on the old dictator’s island.  He told me it is not always safe to share the Good News and to be about acts of compassion and works for social justice when you’re in Cuba.  In fact, he said…

Gerson had arrived in Cuba for a month’s stay and one of his two suitcases was filled with donated medicines and drugs that would be used by the Christian community he was visiting to soften the suffering of some in their town.  Unlike on all his previous trips, the Cuban customs agent asked to examine his bags and the drugs and medicine were discovered at once; they wasn’t hidden.  Gerson was immediately taken to a detention room where one and then another Cuban official asked all sorts of questions and reminded him that he was violating Cuban law by attempting to bring medical supplies into the country without a permit.  Then he was left alone.  He was left in the small, windowless room for hours.  He had hours to think about his wife and his little girls back home in Brazil.  He had hours to think about Cuban prisons. 

Finally, he heard a key in the door and a woman with a hard and heartless look on her face entered the room.  She asked all the same questions and reminded him again, in no uncertain terms, that he was in violation of Cuban law and that there are consequences to violating Cuban law.  And then in one of the moments that Jesus talked about in Mark 13 when he said “Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit,” Gerson was given a question to ask.

“Is there a law against love in Cuba?” he asked the woman.  He told her that the medicines were just a way to share love with people who need love.  The woman was silent for a long time.  When she spoke at last it was not with the same voice she had used when she was interrogating Gerson.  “No,” she said, “there is no law against love.”   She told Gerson to take his things and wished him well. 

There were good reasons to share a lunch with Gerson. 

Herod was an old dictator, slowly dying, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea.  He tried to make a law against love and ordered the slaughter of the innocents to enforce his wicked law.  But God spoke to Joseph in a dream and he and Mary and the Baby fled to Egypt. 

Pilate was a hard and heartless official in the Rome bureaucracy who was willing to bend the law to serve the purposes of those who had come to hate Love.  They tried to kill the King of Love with the weapons of the law, but God spoke again and Jesus rose up from the grave bringing healing and new life to all who believe. 

Neither old dictators nor the mightiest empire in the world have enough power to enforce their laws against Love. 

In Advent we celebrate the coming of the Promised One of the God who is love, God himself sharing and giving love to a people in desperate need of love.  Against this love there can be no law. 

On Sunday we light the first candle of Advent, the candle of hope.