2025-11-10
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
“Love as the Healing Force”
Matthew 22: 34-40
Rev. Judith Bagley-Bonner
There are many forces in today’s world that promise healing— traditional medicine, herbs, reiki, yoga, physical therapy, talk therapy and a host of others too numerous to name. And all have their place as tools in the toolbox. But I would like to posit today that healing is at its best when these tools are undergirded and infused with one potent force, namely love. At the risk of sounding like I’m on the outer ring of the fringe, I would assert that love is the current running underneath healing transformation, whether of body, mind, or soul.
I recently read a book entitled The Rabbit Effect by Dr. Kelli Harding. Perhaps you heard her interviewed recently, as I did, on NPR’s One-A. Harding is a research scientist in addition to being a medical doctor, and her book is indeed filled with compelling research. One study she shares is about an experiment from the 1970s. Scientists were studying the impact of high-fat diets on heart health in rabbits. Several different groups of rabbits were fed a diet of high, animal fat, and they showed the expected results of clogged arteries and cardiac problems. But one group of rabbits on the high fat diet retained unexpectedly healthy hearts and arteries. The researchers were puzzled and considered every possibility. The only variable they were eventually able to isolate for the healthy rabbits wasn’t in the diet or the data—it was in the lab assistant. She happened to be extraordinarily kind. She talked to the rabbits, stroked them, held them and even named them. And that simple difference—being cared for, being loved—had measurable biological effects. Harding calls this “the Rabbit Effect”: the power of kindness, connection, and nurture, namely, love to affect physical health, and her book is full of research about this. It turns out that love is not just poetic—it’s physiological.
Relationships are medicine. Compassion lowers cortisol levels and blood pressure. Belonging strengthens the immune system. Our bodies, it seems, are built for love, and love, it seems, literally heals.
We see this truth not just in rabbits being fed bacon, but in a small clinic in Seattle in the 1980s called The Montreux Treatment Center. Montreux was a pioneering residential program for women struggling with anorexia and bulimia. It was founded by Carolyn Costin, who had recovered from anorexia herself. At a time when most eating disorder treatment was based on control, compliance, and rigid medicalization, Montreux dared to believe something radical: that unconditional love and nurture were the true medicine. They called it “feeding the soul, not just the body.” At this treatment center, each patient was treated with constant warmth and nurture. They were literally immersed in love, kindness and care every waking moment. A companion even stayed with patients in their rooms at night so that if they woke up in fear, they would be reminded of their beloved status and treated with TLC until they returned to sleep. Meals weren’t punishment or proof of progress—they were shared like family dinners. Patients were not “cases” but beloved individuals. Staff sat at the table with them, not as supervisors but as companions. Carolyn Costin believed eating disorders were not really about food—they were about pain, fear, and a longing for acceptance. So at Montreux, they treated not the symptom, but the soul. Love was not a technique—it was the very therapeutic agent. And their success statistics were consistently and substantially higher than programs based on traditional treatment models which emphasized nutrition education and behavioral control. One resident said later, “At Montreux, I learned I didn’t have to be perfect to be loved—and that’s when I began to heal.”
And isn’t that the essence of the gospel? That we are loved into wholeness, not shamed into change? That lovr, not judgment, is the great physician? Although Montreux eventually closed, its ideas deeply influenced later eating disorder treatment. Carolyn Costin later founded Monte Nido Treatment Centers in California, which exists to this day, continuing the same philosophy of compassionate, integrative care with similar, high-success results. And her book “8 Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder” captures much of Montreux’s philosophy. Love, it seems, literally heals.
There’s an old interfaith document sometimes shared on social media called “Love in All Faiths.” It gathers sacred texts from many traditions to show how love stands at the heart of them all:
Christianity: “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
Judaism and Christianity: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Islam: “None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”
Hinduism: “He who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, loses all fear.”
Buddhism: “Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal law.”
Across all religions, across all centuries, the message echoes: Love is the universal healer.
The force that protected those rabbit/s hearts and restored young women to life at Montreux is the same force that mends the rifts between neighbors, between nations, between political foes. Because love isn’t just an emotion—it’s the fabric of the sacred woven through all creation. As 1 John reminds us: “God is love.” Not “has love” or “gives love”—God is love itself.
Certainly people noticed this truth in the early church. Tertullian, a second-century writer, described how outsiders looked at Christians and said, “Behold how they love one another.” It wasn’t their doctrine that impressed people, they hadn’t pounded out doctrine yet. It wasn’t their buildings, they met in homes. It was their love. They cared for widows, for orphans, for the sick abandoned in the streets. They crossed social lines. They risked their lives in plagues to serve strangers. They didn’t just believe in love.
They embodied it—radically, inconveniently, courageously. Love was their evangelism, calling to mind the words of St. Francis of Assissi- “Preach the Gospel at all times, and when absolutely necessary, use words.” Love, it seems, heals and attracts.
Now, don’t get me wrong, love isn’t always warm and fuzzy. Sometimes, love must speak the hard truth. Paul wrote in Ephesians, “Speak the truth in love.” Love doesn’t mean avoiding hard conversations. It means being willing to engage them with compassion, warmth, kindness and respect- not contempt or judgement.
As the saying goes, “Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.”
That was Martin Luther King Jr.’s understanding of justice: not vengeance, but love
made public. He said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
This sermon series has been based on the fact that we live in an age of deep division—political polarization, social fragmentation and isolation.
But if love could heal women starving themselves in despair…
If love could soften hardened arteries in laboratory rabbits…
If love could sustain a persecuted church through centuries of fear and empire…Then surely love is still enough to heal us now. And I would suggest that love alone can do it. Not argument. Not ideology. Not even winning the next election. Only love—the kind that sees the humanity in the other, that listens, that forgives, that reaches across lines of difference—only love has the power to bring us back together.
So, dear siblings in Christ, as followers of the One who is Love, this is our calling and our identity. To make love visible in our families, our communities, our politics, our world, and most certainly in our churches. And let me say that this is one area where I think this church excels. People talk about a special feeling here: a palpable sense of warmth and care. I have always felt it in my now fifty plus years of association here. And it’s not just in this building, it’s in you, the people and goes from our building and from you out into the world through our many mission and outreach efforts. And through each one of you as you take light and warmth, namely, love out into your world. As you choose to operate out of love when it’s easy and when it’s hard. To remember that love heals bodies, heals hearts, and heals nations. At Montreux, they learned that no amount of fear or control could heal an eating disorder—only love could. At the heart of every faith, the truth is the same: love heals. Science confirms it and the gospel proclaims it. Because God is love, and wherever love is found, God is at work, no matter what you call it.
So go and scatter it generously, extravagantly, even recklessly. Speak it. Live it, lead with it always. Return to it as quickly as possible when you lose your way. Because, in the end, they will know we are Christians not by our creeds or dogma or anythinh else, except by our love.