Easy To Say; Hard To Do
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
For Sundays In Advent, Christmas, And Epiphany
"Love is a many splendored thing...." Or so we heard Don Cornwall and the Four Aces sing time and again. Of course you or I might have other words to describe love, depending on our situation.
Love. "I love you." "I love to play golf." "I just love pistachio lush!" "It's tough to love some people." "Jesus loves me, this I know."
Love.
What can be said about love that has not already been said? The writer of the first letter of John obviously thought deeply about love and did his best to write about it. Saint Paul had a similar piece on love which he wrote to the church at Corinth. We know it as the Love Chapter, 1 Corinthians 13. Remember? "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal ... Faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love" (RSV).
Great things have been written about love and wonderful things have been done and are still being done motivated by love. Yet, we can still sing with great fervor another popular song: "What the world needs now, is love, sweet love, that's the only thing, that there's just too little of...."
Need I list the horrors of Sierra Leone and countless other places on this Good Earth where violence still stalks daily life? Need I list the hopelessness and violence in our cities and poor rural areas and plush suburbs in our own nation, where meaninglessness is a daily companion to millions, and violence of all sorts is commonplace?
Indeed, it is surely true, that "what the world needs now, is love, sweet love...."
Why could it be, 2,000 years after God gave us the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, to teach us and live before humanity the truth that God loves us with an everlasting love, as Jeremiah had said years ago (Jeremiah 31:3)? Not only that, but Jesus also made it clear that God loves us even in our sin; we don't have to offer a sacrifice to approach God and be right with God. How could it be that such a great and life-changing salvation, such a great love, could still elude so many in so many places in this world?
I think a brief two words in our scripture reading this morning might help us. To get the relevant verses in our heads, I'd like us to remind ourselves of a song I used to teach the campers in our summer church camp.
Beloved, let us love one another, love one another.
For love is of God, and everyone who loveth is born of God,
And knoweth God.
He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love,
God is love.
Beloved, let us love one another,
First John four, seven and eight.
What I want us to note are the two words in verse 7. The author writes, "For love is of God." The New Revised Standard Version states that "love is from God." The New International Version says that "love comes from God."
The first statement the author of 1 John makes about the specific relationship between God and love makes it clear that God is not an ephemeral, mysterious force field of goodness which we call love. Rather love is a quality of being, a quality of relating which comes from God; it's a gift from God.
In other words, the selfless, sacrificial, other-centered love we know from Jesus, which calls us and enables us to forgive those who have wronged us or even to love our enemies, that kind of love cannot simply be passed on from person to person. That kind of love must be grown fresh in each human heart from contact with and living with God, the God we have come to know through Jesus Christ.
Let's listen to the words again:
Beloved, let us love one another, love one another.
For love is of God, and everyone who loveth is born of God,
And knoweth God.
He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love,
God is love.
Beloved, let us love one another,
First John four, seven and eight.
In trying to think through how to communicate the significance of this seemingly obvious point, an example came to mind from the computer world. When you install a new computer software program, there are many complicated programs which really need to be installed from the original installation CD or disks. Just copying the program from one computer to another does not install it properly. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, you will find that the copied program just doesn't work properly. It's not properly integrated with all the files, something the installation process does automatically. Frustrated, you have to go searching for the original installation disks or CD to install it properly.
My friends, Christian love, the sort that moves mountains, the kind Jesus died to reveal, is not just a nice feeling or set of good intentions. Real love, which enables one to forgive the unforgivable and causes people to do things that look foolish to those who do not understand, such love needs the direct "installation" and support and nurture from God. And to be anything less than honest about that will only lead people into deep waters and great disillusionment if they try it on their own thinking, "Oh, I see. I can do that." It's like seeing a runner loping down the road and saying to yourself, "Hey, I could run that fast!" unaware of the years of daily training required to do what she does.
Recently I ran across the notes from a Pastor's School I attended back in 1977. Listen:
A man was badly deformed from birth and was angry and sinful as he was growing up. He hated himself and others and was bitter toward God.
Then there came a time when one of his neighbors invited him into a Sunday school class. This was a class that taught and learned, that shared fellowship at other times than just during the church school hour, and which was also involved in service projects.
Over a period of months this man began to be touched by what he was experiencing. One day it really came over him how much that group of people really loved him. It seemed impossible.
Another day he was struck by their Bible study which revealed again and again that God loves you as you are. "In Jesus Christ, know that God loves you." "Impossible," he thought.
Another day he was touched by the joy of the sharing of skills, money, and effort with others in meaningful, difficult service and mission projects. "I can't be doing this," he thought. "Impossible."
And suddenly, one day, he got up in the morning and looked in the mirror and realized that for the first time in his life he could say to the one looking back at him, "I love you." And he became a new man.
Were it not for the church and the gospel it carries, that never would have happened. It took regular involvement in study, fellowship, and service in the church, which enabled the love of God and the love of God through persons, to enable that man to love himself. And then everything was different.
The speaker concluded this way: "I'll bet that the church he was in was not perfect. But the love which that man came to know was."
Way back in 1930 Dorothy Day said these words:
... it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much.1
That kind of love comes from and is maintained only directly from the heart of God, whom we know in Jesus Christ.
So what does that mean for you today? For me?
Let's sing again:
Beloved, let us love one another, love one another.
For love is of God, and everyone who loveth is born of God,
And knoweth God.
He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love,
God is love.
Beloved, let us love one another,
First John four, seven and eight.
____________
1. Dorothy Day, House of Hospitality, ca. 1930.
Love. "I love you." "I love to play golf." "I just love pistachio lush!" "It's tough to love some people." "Jesus loves me, this I know."
Love.
What can be said about love that has not already been said? The writer of the first letter of John obviously thought deeply about love and did his best to write about it. Saint Paul had a similar piece on love which he wrote to the church at Corinth. We know it as the Love Chapter, 1 Corinthians 13. Remember? "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal ... Faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love" (RSV).
Great things have been written about love and wonderful things have been done and are still being done motivated by love. Yet, we can still sing with great fervor another popular song: "What the world needs now, is love, sweet love, that's the only thing, that there's just too little of...."
Need I list the horrors of Sierra Leone and countless other places on this Good Earth where violence still stalks daily life? Need I list the hopelessness and violence in our cities and poor rural areas and plush suburbs in our own nation, where meaninglessness is a daily companion to millions, and violence of all sorts is commonplace?
Indeed, it is surely true, that "what the world needs now, is love, sweet love...."
Why could it be, 2,000 years after God gave us the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, to teach us and live before humanity the truth that God loves us with an everlasting love, as Jeremiah had said years ago (Jeremiah 31:3)? Not only that, but Jesus also made it clear that God loves us even in our sin; we don't have to offer a sacrifice to approach God and be right with God. How could it be that such a great and life-changing salvation, such a great love, could still elude so many in so many places in this world?
I think a brief two words in our scripture reading this morning might help us. To get the relevant verses in our heads, I'd like us to remind ourselves of a song I used to teach the campers in our summer church camp.
Beloved, let us love one another, love one another.
For love is of God, and everyone who loveth is born of God,
And knoweth God.
He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love,
God is love.
Beloved, let us love one another,
First John four, seven and eight.
What I want us to note are the two words in verse 7. The author writes, "For love is of God." The New Revised Standard Version states that "love is from God." The New International Version says that "love comes from God."
The first statement the author of 1 John makes about the specific relationship between God and love makes it clear that God is not an ephemeral, mysterious force field of goodness which we call love. Rather love is a quality of being, a quality of relating which comes from God; it's a gift from God.
In other words, the selfless, sacrificial, other-centered love we know from Jesus, which calls us and enables us to forgive those who have wronged us or even to love our enemies, that kind of love cannot simply be passed on from person to person. That kind of love must be grown fresh in each human heart from contact with and living with God, the God we have come to know through Jesus Christ.
Let's listen to the words again:
Beloved, let us love one another, love one another.
For love is of God, and everyone who loveth is born of God,
And knoweth God.
He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love,
God is love.
Beloved, let us love one another,
First John four, seven and eight.
In trying to think through how to communicate the significance of this seemingly obvious point, an example came to mind from the computer world. When you install a new computer software program, there are many complicated programs which really need to be installed from the original installation CD or disks. Just copying the program from one computer to another does not install it properly. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, you will find that the copied program just doesn't work properly. It's not properly integrated with all the files, something the installation process does automatically. Frustrated, you have to go searching for the original installation disks or CD to install it properly.
My friends, Christian love, the sort that moves mountains, the kind Jesus died to reveal, is not just a nice feeling or set of good intentions. Real love, which enables one to forgive the unforgivable and causes people to do things that look foolish to those who do not understand, such love needs the direct "installation" and support and nurture from God. And to be anything less than honest about that will only lead people into deep waters and great disillusionment if they try it on their own thinking, "Oh, I see. I can do that." It's like seeing a runner loping down the road and saying to yourself, "Hey, I could run that fast!" unaware of the years of daily training required to do what she does.
Recently I ran across the notes from a Pastor's School I attended back in 1977. Listen:
A man was badly deformed from birth and was angry and sinful as he was growing up. He hated himself and others and was bitter toward God.
Then there came a time when one of his neighbors invited him into a Sunday school class. This was a class that taught and learned, that shared fellowship at other times than just during the church school hour, and which was also involved in service projects.
Over a period of months this man began to be touched by what he was experiencing. One day it really came over him how much that group of people really loved him. It seemed impossible.
Another day he was struck by their Bible study which revealed again and again that God loves you as you are. "In Jesus Christ, know that God loves you." "Impossible," he thought.
Another day he was touched by the joy of the sharing of skills, money, and effort with others in meaningful, difficult service and mission projects. "I can't be doing this," he thought. "Impossible."
And suddenly, one day, he got up in the morning and looked in the mirror and realized that for the first time in his life he could say to the one looking back at him, "I love you." And he became a new man.
Were it not for the church and the gospel it carries, that never would have happened. It took regular involvement in study, fellowship, and service in the church, which enabled the love of God and the love of God through persons, to enable that man to love himself. And then everything was different.
The speaker concluded this way: "I'll bet that the church he was in was not perfect. But the love which that man came to know was."
Way back in 1930 Dorothy Day said these words:
... it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much.1
That kind of love comes from and is maintained only directly from the heart of God, whom we know in Jesus Christ.
So what does that mean for you today? For me?
Let's sing again:
Beloved, let us love one another, love one another.
For love is of God, and everyone who loveth is born of God,
And knoweth God.
He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love,
God is love.
Beloved, let us love one another,
First John four, seven and eight.
____________
1. Dorothy Day, House of Hospitality, ca. 1930.
