Love -- The Only Absolute Commandment
Sermon
Sermons on the Second Readings
Series II, Cycle B
Love is central to the New Testament message. Jesus called his followers to practice love. Paul said love is the single indispensable ingredient of the Christian life. That great theological summary of the gospel in the work of John declares, "God so loved the world that he sent his only Son into the world so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). Similarly, our text from 1 John joins in this call to love, for love is the vital matter of Christian life and living.
Yet, love is a difficult way to live. Jesus on the cross makes this clear. Serious Christians conclude quickly that love is not an easy thing. There is an organization helping parents dealing with difficult sons and daughters called, "Tough Love." Tough Love helps these parents who have children bent on destroying themselves and all that love them. Instead of rescuing these sons and daughters from the results of their destructive behavior, they love in a "tough" way. Tough Love parents will not allow a drug-addicted child to return to the family circle until they change their behavior. Tough Love parents will not bail their children out of jail. Tough Love does not loan money to abusive children nor allow them to con their siblings into assisting their destructive ways. All this approach goes against the normal sense of how parents act. Tough Love joins with other parents in similar situations to find the strength to love in this way. While something of a last resort, this strange way of loving is effective with many at-risk sons and daughters. It is tough -- but it is love.
However, Tough Love is not really a new way to love. Love is always tough. Christian love deceives if it is presented as a lovely and successful way to live. Whatever truth there is in "gentle Jesus, meek and mild," it must also be said that the Jesus way of love involves us in pain and suffering. In what ways is the love to which Christ calls us so tough?
Love Is Tough Because Of Our Inward Resistance
Greeting her congregation at the close of the service, a pastor was confronted by a distraught worshiper. He was distressed because Psalm 137, used in the service that morning, closed with these terrible lines,
O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back for what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!
-- Psalm 137:8-9
John Wesley and others have said that these words are not fit for the mouths of Christian congregations. If love means wanting the best for those who hurt and abuse us, then we cannot wish to inflict the pain of vengeance upon them.
One of the best parts of the Hebrew Bible is the book of Jonah. Its meaning is not that Jonah is swallowed by the great fish. The word of God in Jonah is in reflecting how often we, like Jonah, refuse to love as God loves. Jonah did not want to offer God's mercy to Ninevites, pouting when they responded to their deliverance. Jonah's story challenges those with a too narrow vision of God's compassion. Jonah speaks to our own time over this same issue.
Why do we resist the life of love? It is because we believe we cannot love without denying our own needs, interests, and securities. This is why so many find marriage too high a price to pay, for it means subordinating ourselves to the other person. Marriage exacts from us the need to care for our spouse or partner in ways that interfere with our own needs. When children enter a relationship, the demand of living for others becomes a burden many cannot handle. The resistance increases when it becomes clear that the spouse or partner or the children have selfish agendas that tangle up the relationships. Our Christian faith tells us of love's difficulties, but we prefer to listen to a more comfortable message from our culture, telling us that our personal happiness is the point of marriage. The result is disaster. Love is tough because inwardly we resist its demands.
Love Is Tough Because Others Are So Unlovable
British pastor, Donald Soper, spent Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park Square. There he debated with people of all political, economic, or religious persuasions, as he stood on a small platform and challenged their take on various issues. He delighted in arguing for Christian faith before the doubters and scoffers. Soper was also the pastor of British Central Hall, headquarters of British Methodism across from Westminster Abbey. He worked in Central Hall's ministry to the poor and indigent. One day a woman came to him and said, "Dr. Soper, how wonderfully you care for those unfortunate people. It must be a great joy to you." In a moment of dispensing realism, Soper replied, "No, often it's not a great joy at all. Time and again I find myself working with people who are dirty, unappreciative, and often quite unlovable."
A judicatory official that worked with matching up pastors and congregations was talking about the problems of his ministry. He admitted that he often found great satisfaction in his work. Then he went on to say, "Sometimes it's terribly difficult. We have so many pastors that are just no damn good!" His work was no cinch because the ineptness of many of the pastors made them unlovable and so problematic.
One cannot read the New Testament letters of Paul without sensing that he was working with persons who often were unlovable, putting his love for them to the test. They fought over food at their common meals. Some of them were involved in illicit sexual relationships. Others inside and outside the church stirred up his converts with strange doctrines and burdensome restrictions. Some of the leading women were fussing with each other (and probably the men too, but that would be lost as the New Testament was written and edited by men). They idolized some of their leaders over against others. Some decided that since Jesus was returning soon they could just laze around. Paul's coworker, John Mark, bugged out midway on an important missionary journey, and Peter waffled on freedom from the law when important Jews came around.
If we hear the call of love, we will need to be relieved of the notion that it is a life of ease and calm. Loving others is tough because they can be unlovable.
Love Is Tough Because Life Is So Complicated
In the life of the congregations, its Bible study, worship, and sermons, we sometimes get the notion that the call to the life of love is altogether personal and simple. Thinking of the love relationships as one-to-one, eyeball-to-eyeball, we find its claim upon us to be rather simple. We reduce the claim of loving to our spouse and children, the members of the congregation, the pastor and the church leaders, and our next-door neighbor, even if they are not part of the congregation.
Then one day we are jolted out of this comfortable and narrow view of love's claim. We begin to ask if love has any meaning in the larger world of people and nature. We wonder if love has relevance to world peace, hunger, justice for minorities, economic systems, medical research, sexual orientation, or political structures? Some large mega-churches insist that the church must stay out of these matters, denying that love has any larger meanings to these issues. One has a hunch that such a denial is based on protecting their large memberships. Perhaps they wisely understand that the call of love in these larger arenas would create controversy, affecting their attendance and financial support.
It is true that there is little outright New Testament concern to make a witness of love in the larger world. Paul, and the early church, believed God would soon intervene in history, convene the day of judgment, and inaugurate God's kingdom of peace, justice, well-being, and eternal life.
Wise Christians soon realize that the call to love in the larger world must be translated into the quest for justice. Justice is the name of love for the world. However, it remains tough, for justice answers and strategies are complicated and controversial in themselves. Yet the cross keeps reminding us that difficulty is no excuse for refusal. Loving the world is tough, but Christ calls us to its task.
Love Is Tough Because It's So Often Disappointing
Finally, love is difficult because it does not always work. The prodigal sons' father must have been a loving father to his sons; their unloving decisions did not come from a lack of love from their father. The younger son broke his father's heart when he left home, possibly never to return. His older son was a deep disappointment because he was so judgmental and harsh. The father invested a lifetime in loving both his sons. Instead of returning such love they broke with that love causing the father anguish and heart-sickness.
The prologue, the beginning words of John's Gospel, tells of God's disappointment over the world's refusal of Jesus: "He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him." Much of the biblical story is right here. At this point, the gospel clashes with our American myth. We Americans are told that success is always within our grasp. We falsify the real truth that contradicts this myth. Frantically, we insist that success always comes to those who persist, but the real truth is that most of us are doomed to significant failure by circumstances over which we have little control. The result is despair, disappointment, and a sense of guilt at not having succeeded. Christians have no right to insist that love is the sure-fire way to peace of mind, spiritual, and/or economic prosperity, the admiration of others, and improvements in handling the great issues of our day. Rather, love is always tough, and in many ways, it is terribly disappointing.
So what is a church for? A nice place to meet friends, a place to hear great music and inspiring preaching, for handing the Christian heritage on to children, a center for celebrating birth, marriage, and death, an opportunity to share and discuss great life issues or an alternative voice for our success oriented culture? Yes, the church should be all these things. Blessed are we when we are able to become part of a church like that. Yet, beyond all these things, the church is a place where we confess that love is a most difficult calling. In church, we can share our hurts, disappointments, and failures in the tough business of love. At church, we find the strength once again to make the effort to love -- tough as it is, but joyfully accepted by God.
Yet, love is a difficult way to live. Jesus on the cross makes this clear. Serious Christians conclude quickly that love is not an easy thing. There is an organization helping parents dealing with difficult sons and daughters called, "Tough Love." Tough Love helps these parents who have children bent on destroying themselves and all that love them. Instead of rescuing these sons and daughters from the results of their destructive behavior, they love in a "tough" way. Tough Love parents will not allow a drug-addicted child to return to the family circle until they change their behavior. Tough Love parents will not bail their children out of jail. Tough Love does not loan money to abusive children nor allow them to con their siblings into assisting their destructive ways. All this approach goes against the normal sense of how parents act. Tough Love joins with other parents in similar situations to find the strength to love in this way. While something of a last resort, this strange way of loving is effective with many at-risk sons and daughters. It is tough -- but it is love.
However, Tough Love is not really a new way to love. Love is always tough. Christian love deceives if it is presented as a lovely and successful way to live. Whatever truth there is in "gentle Jesus, meek and mild," it must also be said that the Jesus way of love involves us in pain and suffering. In what ways is the love to which Christ calls us so tough?
Love Is Tough Because Of Our Inward Resistance
Greeting her congregation at the close of the service, a pastor was confronted by a distraught worshiper. He was distressed because Psalm 137, used in the service that morning, closed with these terrible lines,
O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back for what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!
-- Psalm 137:8-9
John Wesley and others have said that these words are not fit for the mouths of Christian congregations. If love means wanting the best for those who hurt and abuse us, then we cannot wish to inflict the pain of vengeance upon them.
One of the best parts of the Hebrew Bible is the book of Jonah. Its meaning is not that Jonah is swallowed by the great fish. The word of God in Jonah is in reflecting how often we, like Jonah, refuse to love as God loves. Jonah did not want to offer God's mercy to Ninevites, pouting when they responded to their deliverance. Jonah's story challenges those with a too narrow vision of God's compassion. Jonah speaks to our own time over this same issue.
Why do we resist the life of love? It is because we believe we cannot love without denying our own needs, interests, and securities. This is why so many find marriage too high a price to pay, for it means subordinating ourselves to the other person. Marriage exacts from us the need to care for our spouse or partner in ways that interfere with our own needs. When children enter a relationship, the demand of living for others becomes a burden many cannot handle. The resistance increases when it becomes clear that the spouse or partner or the children have selfish agendas that tangle up the relationships. Our Christian faith tells us of love's difficulties, but we prefer to listen to a more comfortable message from our culture, telling us that our personal happiness is the point of marriage. The result is disaster. Love is tough because inwardly we resist its demands.
Love Is Tough Because Others Are So Unlovable
British pastor, Donald Soper, spent Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park Square. There he debated with people of all political, economic, or religious persuasions, as he stood on a small platform and challenged their take on various issues. He delighted in arguing for Christian faith before the doubters and scoffers. Soper was also the pastor of British Central Hall, headquarters of British Methodism across from Westminster Abbey. He worked in Central Hall's ministry to the poor and indigent. One day a woman came to him and said, "Dr. Soper, how wonderfully you care for those unfortunate people. It must be a great joy to you." In a moment of dispensing realism, Soper replied, "No, often it's not a great joy at all. Time and again I find myself working with people who are dirty, unappreciative, and often quite unlovable."
A judicatory official that worked with matching up pastors and congregations was talking about the problems of his ministry. He admitted that he often found great satisfaction in his work. Then he went on to say, "Sometimes it's terribly difficult. We have so many pastors that are just no damn good!" His work was no cinch because the ineptness of many of the pastors made them unlovable and so problematic.
One cannot read the New Testament letters of Paul without sensing that he was working with persons who often were unlovable, putting his love for them to the test. They fought over food at their common meals. Some of them were involved in illicit sexual relationships. Others inside and outside the church stirred up his converts with strange doctrines and burdensome restrictions. Some of the leading women were fussing with each other (and probably the men too, but that would be lost as the New Testament was written and edited by men). They idolized some of their leaders over against others. Some decided that since Jesus was returning soon they could just laze around. Paul's coworker, John Mark, bugged out midway on an important missionary journey, and Peter waffled on freedom from the law when important Jews came around.
If we hear the call of love, we will need to be relieved of the notion that it is a life of ease and calm. Loving others is tough because they can be unlovable.
Love Is Tough Because Life Is So Complicated
In the life of the congregations, its Bible study, worship, and sermons, we sometimes get the notion that the call to the life of love is altogether personal and simple. Thinking of the love relationships as one-to-one, eyeball-to-eyeball, we find its claim upon us to be rather simple. We reduce the claim of loving to our spouse and children, the members of the congregation, the pastor and the church leaders, and our next-door neighbor, even if they are not part of the congregation.
Then one day we are jolted out of this comfortable and narrow view of love's claim. We begin to ask if love has any meaning in the larger world of people and nature. We wonder if love has relevance to world peace, hunger, justice for minorities, economic systems, medical research, sexual orientation, or political structures? Some large mega-churches insist that the church must stay out of these matters, denying that love has any larger meanings to these issues. One has a hunch that such a denial is based on protecting their large memberships. Perhaps they wisely understand that the call of love in these larger arenas would create controversy, affecting their attendance and financial support.
It is true that there is little outright New Testament concern to make a witness of love in the larger world. Paul, and the early church, believed God would soon intervene in history, convene the day of judgment, and inaugurate God's kingdom of peace, justice, well-being, and eternal life.
Wise Christians soon realize that the call to love in the larger world must be translated into the quest for justice. Justice is the name of love for the world. However, it remains tough, for justice answers and strategies are complicated and controversial in themselves. Yet the cross keeps reminding us that difficulty is no excuse for refusal. Loving the world is tough, but Christ calls us to its task.
Love Is Tough Because It's So Often Disappointing
Finally, love is difficult because it does not always work. The prodigal sons' father must have been a loving father to his sons; their unloving decisions did not come from a lack of love from their father. The younger son broke his father's heart when he left home, possibly never to return. His older son was a deep disappointment because he was so judgmental and harsh. The father invested a lifetime in loving both his sons. Instead of returning such love they broke with that love causing the father anguish and heart-sickness.
The prologue, the beginning words of John's Gospel, tells of God's disappointment over the world's refusal of Jesus: "He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him." Much of the biblical story is right here. At this point, the gospel clashes with our American myth. We Americans are told that success is always within our grasp. We falsify the real truth that contradicts this myth. Frantically, we insist that success always comes to those who persist, but the real truth is that most of us are doomed to significant failure by circumstances over which we have little control. The result is despair, disappointment, and a sense of guilt at not having succeeded. Christians have no right to insist that love is the sure-fire way to peace of mind, spiritual, and/or economic prosperity, the admiration of others, and improvements in handling the great issues of our day. Rather, love is always tough, and in many ways, it is terribly disappointing.
So what is a church for? A nice place to meet friends, a place to hear great music and inspiring preaching, for handing the Christian heritage on to children, a center for celebrating birth, marriage, and death, an opportunity to share and discuss great life issues or an alternative voice for our success oriented culture? Yes, the church should be all these things. Blessed are we when we are able to become part of a church like that. Yet, beyond all these things, the church is a place where we confess that love is a most difficult calling. In church, we can share our hurts, disappointments, and failures in the tough business of love. At church, we find the strength once again to make the effort to love -- tough as it is, but joyfully accepted by God.
