When Love Refuses to Keep Its Distance
When Love Refuses to Keep Its Distance
There's something deeply uncomfortable about watching someone grieve in public. That raw, heaving kind of sorrow that makes us want to look away, cross to the other side of the street, give them space. We're not equipped for that level of vulnerability in our daily lives.
Yet on Palm Sunday, tucked just beyond the parade route where cloaks carpet the road and voices rise in celebration, we find exactly that kind of grief. While the crowd still echoes with "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord," Jesus stands on a hillside overlooking Jerusalem and weeps.
Not polite tears. The Greek word used here—ekklesin—describes deep, audible, wailing grief. The kind that shakes the body. The kind that cannot be hidden or controlled.
The Geography of Divine Love
What makes this moment so striking is that it's not sudden. Jesus didn't accidentally stumble upon Jerusalem and find himself unexpectedly emotional. Back in Luke chapter 9, we're told that Jesus "set his face towards Jerusalem"—a phrase heavy with intention and resolve. He knew where he was headed. He knew what awaited him there. And he chose to keep walking.
This is love with a physical address. Love that travels. Love that closes distance rather than maintaining it.
From the Mount of Olives, Jerusalem spreads out below—not a stranger's city but a place Jesus knows intimately. And his words in that moment cut to the heart: "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace."
This isn't anger. It's not satisfaction at predicting judgment. It's mourning the gap between what could have been and what is. Between potential and reality. Between the city Jerusalem was meant to be and what it has become.
The Problem of Distance
Here's an uncomfortable truth: most of us have become exceptionally skilled at loving from a distance.
We care deeply about causes and communities. We think about them. We pray for them. We genuinely mean well. We might even change our social media profiles to show solidarity. And it can feel like love. It can feel like enough.
But somewhere between the caring and the actual closing of the gap, something in us hesitates. Because loving from a distance is safer. You can hold the feeling without bearing the cost. You can care deeply while remaining protected from what that caring might actually require of you—or the pain that real love inevitably brings.
We donate without showing up. We pray without proximity. We feel compassion for the unhoused neighbor and drive right past. We're troubled by injustice and return to our comfortable routines. We believe people deserve better and never ask how they're actually doing.
We're not bad people. We're just distant people.
The Cost of Incarnation
The good news of the Gospel is that God refused to love from a distance. That's what the incarnation means—God closing the gap. God deciding that loving humanity from a safe height wasn't enough.
So God gets on the road. Takes on flesh and bone and dust and limitation. Learns what it feels like to be tired, hungry, misunderstood, betrayed. God moves toward us—all the way toward us—not to observe our brokenness from a comfortable vantage point but to enter into it.
This is the love that's been pursuing us throughout the entire season of Lent. The love that made room for the broken woman everyone wanted to ignore. The love that stopped on a dangerous road to tend to a stranger in a ditch. The love that ran down a driveway to embrace a wayward son. The love that got on its knees with a towel and basin to wash feet.
Always moving toward us before we deserved it. Before we asked for it. Before we were even ready for it.
A Love That Leans In
The tears on the hillside matter because they reveal something essential about divine love: it doesn't protect itself. It doesn't retreat when the cost becomes clear. It spills out in grief and keeps moving forward anyway.
Jesus weeps not because he's surprised by Jerusalem but because he loves Jerusalem. He has known since the beginning where this road leads. He sees clearly. He has no illusions about the outcome. And he gets on the road anyway.
Not because the city deserves it. Not because the reception will be warm. Simply because the love is real.
Real love doesn't wait for guarantees before it shows up. It doesn't demand worthiness as a prerequisite. It moves toward the mess, toward the pain, toward the brokenness—eyes wide open.
Finding Our Jerusalem
The invitation of Palm Sunday isn't to wave palms and stay at the parade. It's to ask ourselves an honest question: Where is our Jerusalem? Who is our Jerusalem?
What person, what community, what broken place is God calling us to move toward rather than simply care about from a comfortable distance?
Post-colonial theology teaches us that ministry has an address. The work happens in real, tangible places with physical locations. You cannot love a place from a distance and expect that love to bear fruit. Transformation requires proximity.
This is what John Wesley meant when he insisted there is no holiness without social holiness. Personal piety divorced from engagement with the brokenness of our communities isn't holiness at all—it's just spiritual self-protection dressed in religious language.
The Road That Costs Everything
Jesus reaches the top of the Mount of Olives and sees Jerusalem spread out below in all its beauty and brokenness. And the love doesn't give up. It doesn't look away. It keeps riding straight into the city, straight into the mess, straight into the week that will cost everything.
That's the shape of divine love. That's what it looks like when love refuses to keep its distance.
The question for us is simple but demanding: How close are we willing to get?
Because somewhere between the parade and the cross, between the celebration and the cost, between caring and actually closing the gap—that's where transformation happens. That's where we discover whether our love is real or just another way of keeping ourselves safe.
May we have the courage to get on the road. To set our faces toward our own Jerusalems. To let our hearts break over what breaks the heart of God. And to keep moving forward anyway, because that's what love does.
It leans in.
There's something deeply uncomfortable about watching someone grieve in public. That raw, heaving kind of sorrow that makes us want to look away, cross to the other side of the street, give them space. We're not equipped for that level of vulnerability in our daily lives.
Yet on Palm Sunday, tucked just beyond the parade route where cloaks carpet the road and voices rise in celebration, we find exactly that kind of grief. While the crowd still echoes with "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord," Jesus stands on a hillside overlooking Jerusalem and weeps.
Not polite tears. The Greek word used here—ekklesin—describes deep, audible, wailing grief. The kind that shakes the body. The kind that cannot be hidden or controlled.
The Geography of Divine Love
What makes this moment so striking is that it's not sudden. Jesus didn't accidentally stumble upon Jerusalem and find himself unexpectedly emotional. Back in Luke chapter 9, we're told that Jesus "set his face towards Jerusalem"—a phrase heavy with intention and resolve. He knew where he was headed. He knew what awaited him there. And he chose to keep walking.
This is love with a physical address. Love that travels. Love that closes distance rather than maintaining it.
From the Mount of Olives, Jerusalem spreads out below—not a stranger's city but a place Jesus knows intimately. And his words in that moment cut to the heart: "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace."
This isn't anger. It's not satisfaction at predicting judgment. It's mourning the gap between what could have been and what is. Between potential and reality. Between the city Jerusalem was meant to be and what it has become.
The Problem of Distance
Here's an uncomfortable truth: most of us have become exceptionally skilled at loving from a distance.
We care deeply about causes and communities. We think about them. We pray for them. We genuinely mean well. We might even change our social media profiles to show solidarity. And it can feel like love. It can feel like enough.
But somewhere between the caring and the actual closing of the gap, something in us hesitates. Because loving from a distance is safer. You can hold the feeling without bearing the cost. You can care deeply while remaining protected from what that caring might actually require of you—or the pain that real love inevitably brings.
We donate without showing up. We pray without proximity. We feel compassion for the unhoused neighbor and drive right past. We're troubled by injustice and return to our comfortable routines. We believe people deserve better and never ask how they're actually doing.
We're not bad people. We're just distant people.
The Cost of Incarnation
The good news of the Gospel is that God refused to love from a distance. That's what the incarnation means—God closing the gap. God deciding that loving humanity from a safe height wasn't enough.
So God gets on the road. Takes on flesh and bone and dust and limitation. Learns what it feels like to be tired, hungry, misunderstood, betrayed. God moves toward us—all the way toward us—not to observe our brokenness from a comfortable vantage point but to enter into it.
This is the love that's been pursuing us throughout the entire season of Lent. The love that made room for the broken woman everyone wanted to ignore. The love that stopped on a dangerous road to tend to a stranger in a ditch. The love that ran down a driveway to embrace a wayward son. The love that got on its knees with a towel and basin to wash feet.
Always moving toward us before we deserved it. Before we asked for it. Before we were even ready for it.
A Love That Leans In
The tears on the hillside matter because they reveal something essential about divine love: it doesn't protect itself. It doesn't retreat when the cost becomes clear. It spills out in grief and keeps moving forward anyway.
Jesus weeps not because he's surprised by Jerusalem but because he loves Jerusalem. He has known since the beginning where this road leads. He sees clearly. He has no illusions about the outcome. And he gets on the road anyway.
Not because the city deserves it. Not because the reception will be warm. Simply because the love is real.
Real love doesn't wait for guarantees before it shows up. It doesn't demand worthiness as a prerequisite. It moves toward the mess, toward the pain, toward the brokenness—eyes wide open.
Finding Our Jerusalem
The invitation of Palm Sunday isn't to wave palms and stay at the parade. It's to ask ourselves an honest question: Where is our Jerusalem? Who is our Jerusalem?
What person, what community, what broken place is God calling us to move toward rather than simply care about from a comfortable distance?
Post-colonial theology teaches us that ministry has an address. The work happens in real, tangible places with physical locations. You cannot love a place from a distance and expect that love to bear fruit. Transformation requires proximity.
This is what John Wesley meant when he insisted there is no holiness without social holiness. Personal piety divorced from engagement with the brokenness of our communities isn't holiness at all—it's just spiritual self-protection dressed in religious language.
The Road That Costs Everything
Jesus reaches the top of the Mount of Olives and sees Jerusalem spread out below in all its beauty and brokenness. And the love doesn't give up. It doesn't look away. It keeps riding straight into the city, straight into the mess, straight into the week that will cost everything.
That's the shape of divine love. That's what it looks like when love refuses to keep its distance.
The question for us is simple but demanding: How close are we willing to get?
Because somewhere between the parade and the cross, between the celebration and the cost, between caring and actually closing the gap—that's where transformation happens. That's where we discover whether our love is real or just another way of keeping ourselves safe.
May we have the courage to get on the road. To set our faces toward our own Jerusalems. To let our hearts break over what breaks the heart of God. And to keep moving forward anyway, because that's what love does.
It leans in.
Posted in Devotionals
Recent
Archive
2026
February
March
The Patience That Watches: Discovering the True Heart of the Prodigal StoryTrue Love Waits - Sermon TranscriptLoving & Serving Others (Rev. Tang) - Sermon TranscriptLoving & Serving Others (Rev. Frazier) - Sermon TranscriptThe Courage to Say “I’m Not Okay”The Reckless Love of a Towel & BasinLove Leans In - Sermon Transcript5 Day Devotional: Love Leans In
No Comments