Love's Expectations
Sermon
Ashes To Ascension
Second Lesson Sermons For Lent/Easter
Our text expresses the heart of the Gospel: God's love for the world is revealed in the life of Jesus, and those who proclaim that they belong to Jesus seek to love as he loved. God's love was not abstract, but made visible in Jesus, and the author admonishes us to make our love visible rather than sentimental and abstract. Love becomes authentic when it is acted out in the world in concrete ways with others. Philip Halle in his book, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, reveals an incident in World War II where love became visible in the French village of Le Chambon in 1944. Le Chambon was a farming community of about 5,000 French Protestants. The village carried out the heroic rescue of 5,000 Jews without any betrayal or loss of life. They were inspired and led by the Protestant pastor, Andre Tracome, who called them to fight the Nazis with the "weapons of the Spirit." In doing so they risked their very lives. If caught by the Nazis they would have been put to death. A documentary film was made about this story by a French filmmaker, Pierre Sauvdage, a French Jew who was born in Le Chambon in 1944. What a remarkable demonstration of love.
Scholars feel that this paragraph of scripture (vv. 7-12) is one of the most eloquent statements about love in all of the Johannine literature, if not the entire New Testament. It may not be as well known as 1 Corinthians 13, but it is a more adequate theological discussion about the origin of love than Paul's famous passage. In contrast to Paul's more popular poem, the writer of 1 John gives a distinctively Christian explanation of the origin of love "becoming a more classical model for theology and ethics" (Smith, Interpretation on Commentary, p. 106).
The writer declares that love is of God and it is the basic premise of Christian faith, theology, and practice. A failure to love invalidates any claim to know God: "for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen ... those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also" (vv. 20-21). Is it possible he is making a declaration regarding love because of a situation he has encountered? The author is careful to point out that his statement regarding love is not to be taken out of context. It is to be understood on the basis of God's love as revealed in Jesus. In verses 9-10a, he states that "God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him ... in this is love." Therefore, God defines the nature of love by giving his Son and we, by this love, are to give ourselves to others.
God Takes The Initiative
The author's definition of love begins with the clear assumption that God has taken the initiative. Love results from God's giving up his Son and sending him, as first expressed in John 3:16 along with the parallel passage here in verse 9: "God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him." It is a particularly important factor for John that this love is initiated and proceeds from God: "not that we loved God but that he loved us" (v. 10). Love is not abstract, but is based upon God's concrete, historical deed in the appearance and death of Jesus. This is the heart of the gospel: that God has revealed his love for the world through Jesus and those who declare that they belong to Jesus seek to love as he loved. It has been pointed out that God is accessible to us only as we love. In both the believer as well as God's historic revelation in Jesus, God's reality manifests itself as love (Smith, ibid., p. 108). The writer of 1 John's theme is that apart from love it is meaningless to inquire about God's reality or being, for "God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God" (v. 16b).
No other New Testament writer has spoken so directly and eloquently about the origin and expectations of love as the author of 1 John. Here are both the theological basis and the moral implications of Christian love. Because God loves, we ought to love, not only God, but also one another. Possibly these words were directed to certain members of the church that the author had in mind, but they need to be directed to all members of the Christian community. These words regarding love provide for the Christian Church today the fundamental premise for Christian ethics. God's love is no abstraction, but consists in the giving up of his Son, so the believer's love is not merely an emotion or attitude, but consists of meaningful deeds. Apart from such deeds, the very claim of love becomes empty. We need to ask ourselves: What does this understanding of love mean for us? What does Christian love expect of us in today's world? How do we move from our abstract generalizations and comments about love and loving to incarnating Christian love in our everyday human encounters?
Barriers To Love
The message of the text is clear: We are loved by God and we are to love one another. But the truth is we do not find it easy to love. We are more aware of our fear and pain in relation to others than we are of compassion and connectedness. Living with others can be hell. We see and hear this every day in the media. Love brings both pain and joy, but pain seems to prevail. As we confront the barriers to love, is it possible for us to use them as opportunities for us to grow in grace? If love is genuine, it will always encounter barriers, conflicts, and resistance. Consider those unhappy encounters you have had with spouses, children, neighbors, colleagues, and church members. Do you think, by God's grace, that these encounters could become creative events in your life and that the Spirit can help you to grow in your ability to love?
What do we do when we encounter these barriers to love? I have found some suggestions by Gregory J. Johanson which have proved helpful. He suggests that we recognize a barrier to love, which is usually obvious by our anger, unhappiness, and fear. We need to take responsibility for our part in the barrier, which is the most difficult thing for us to do. We need to invite the Holy Spirit to help us meditate on the barrier until it reveals the deeper hurt, pain, or fear that is generating it, which is often connected to earlier, unhealed memories. We need to recognize Jesus' experience of this same type of hurt and allow him to be with us in the midst of our pain. We need to offer our willingness to be healed in a way which honors both the reality of our suffering and the new possibilities we now have to relate to others and to the world around us (Lectionary Homiletics, May 1994, p. 3f.). When the barriers to love have been removed we can now carry on with our own ministry of love, healing, and reconciliation as our text challenges us to do in verse 11.
Love Involves Risk
Because love involves risks many are willing to allow their definition of love to remain sentimental and abstract. When God so loved the world God took a risk. This risk could result in the rejection and death of God's son. This is exactly what happened. If God's love incarnate in Jesus cost him his life, it is inconceivable that a person living a Christ-like life would be without cost. Responding to the call of Christ can be a risky business. Jesus one day met an affluent young man who asked, "What must I do to inherit the kingdom of heaven?" Jesus responded, "Take what you have, sell it and give the money to the poor, and then come and follow me." The young man left because he felt the price was too high. There is a risk in asking such a question of Jesus. But the demand of the kingdom of God has never been any less. There is a risk in following Jesus -- it can be a risk to your possessions, your ambitions, your values, even your expectations. The call of Christ has a way of totally upsetting and redirecting one's life. Ask the apostle Paul.
What about all of those who have suffered for the sake of love? There is a risk involved for those who love deeply. If you don't think so, then ask Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King, Jr. If you don't think that love causes pain then ask Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, along with the multitude who are unknown and unnamed who sought to love deeply and paid dearly. In Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It, there is the example of love taking risks for the well-being of another when the elder brother Norman relentlessly responds to the needs of his difficult younger brother Paul through escalating bouts of drinking, fighting, and gambling. At his brother Paul's eventual death in a gambling brawl, Norman muses, "It is possible to love completely, without complete understanding." Norman's grieving father, a Presbyterian minister, responds, "That I have known and preached."
Love -- Being Christ To Others
In the United Methodist Book of Worship I have had deep appreciation for the prayer at the end of the service of Word and Table which reads: "Grant that we may go into the world in the strength of your Spirit, to give ourselves for others, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen."
After we share together the bread and the cup, celebrating that moment when God's love in Christ is made visible, then we depart from the table to go in the strength of the Spirit to give ourselves for others in the name of Christ. Now it is possible for the Word to be made visible through our lives as we serve others. Joan Delaplane, Professor of Pastoral Theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology, told what a dear friend had said to her as her friend was dying, "You are a sacrament of God's love for me." She said, "Isn't that what we are all called to be to one another -- a sacrament of God's love?" We need to be for one another part of what Jesus is for us -- one who heals, nourishes, strengthens, forgives, and challenges. It was Basil the Great who said, "The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry. The clothes hanging in your closet are the clothes for the naked. The shoes you do not wear are the shoes for the one who is barefoot. The money you keep locked away is the money of the poor." Maybe this is what Scott Peck had in mind when he wrote, "Call it what you will, genuine love, with all the discipline it requires, is the only path to substantial joy. The more I love, the longer I love, the larger I become. Genuine love is self-replenishing" (The Road Less Traveled, p. 28).
Shortly after he came to Park Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, David H. C. Read said he was speeding down Park Avenue in a taxi with D. T. Niles, the Methodist scholar and evangelist from Sri Lanka, taking him to catch his train at Grand Central Station. He said that they were involved in a vigorous debate regarding homiletics and the theology behind it. As Niles got out of the taxi, he stuck his head in the window. "David," he said, "in the end there is only one thing to say: God loves you. Good-bye!" He said a few days later he was on the edge of a huge crowd in Central Park and heard the familiar voice of Billy Graham on the loudspeaker, "God so loved the world É" He said a few years earlier I might have been tempted to say, "Here we go again." Then he looked at the faces around him -- young, teenage, adult, and old. In spite of all of the distractions the people were listening. Graham spoke of the contrast between his text and the city around them -- crime, drugs, violence, cruelty -- and the people listened. Read said in their faces he could read the question: "Is there really such a God?"
Yes! There is.
Scholars feel that this paragraph of scripture (vv. 7-12) is one of the most eloquent statements about love in all of the Johannine literature, if not the entire New Testament. It may not be as well known as 1 Corinthians 13, but it is a more adequate theological discussion about the origin of love than Paul's famous passage. In contrast to Paul's more popular poem, the writer of 1 John gives a distinctively Christian explanation of the origin of love "becoming a more classical model for theology and ethics" (Smith, Interpretation on Commentary, p. 106).
The writer declares that love is of God and it is the basic premise of Christian faith, theology, and practice. A failure to love invalidates any claim to know God: "for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen ... those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also" (vv. 20-21). Is it possible he is making a declaration regarding love because of a situation he has encountered? The author is careful to point out that his statement regarding love is not to be taken out of context. It is to be understood on the basis of God's love as revealed in Jesus. In verses 9-10a, he states that "God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him ... in this is love." Therefore, God defines the nature of love by giving his Son and we, by this love, are to give ourselves to others.
God Takes The Initiative
The author's definition of love begins with the clear assumption that God has taken the initiative. Love results from God's giving up his Son and sending him, as first expressed in John 3:16 along with the parallel passage here in verse 9: "God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him." It is a particularly important factor for John that this love is initiated and proceeds from God: "not that we loved God but that he loved us" (v. 10). Love is not abstract, but is based upon God's concrete, historical deed in the appearance and death of Jesus. This is the heart of the gospel: that God has revealed his love for the world through Jesus and those who declare that they belong to Jesus seek to love as he loved. It has been pointed out that God is accessible to us only as we love. In both the believer as well as God's historic revelation in Jesus, God's reality manifests itself as love (Smith, ibid., p. 108). The writer of 1 John's theme is that apart from love it is meaningless to inquire about God's reality or being, for "God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God" (v. 16b).
No other New Testament writer has spoken so directly and eloquently about the origin and expectations of love as the author of 1 John. Here are both the theological basis and the moral implications of Christian love. Because God loves, we ought to love, not only God, but also one another. Possibly these words were directed to certain members of the church that the author had in mind, but they need to be directed to all members of the Christian community. These words regarding love provide for the Christian Church today the fundamental premise for Christian ethics. God's love is no abstraction, but consists in the giving up of his Son, so the believer's love is not merely an emotion or attitude, but consists of meaningful deeds. Apart from such deeds, the very claim of love becomes empty. We need to ask ourselves: What does this understanding of love mean for us? What does Christian love expect of us in today's world? How do we move from our abstract generalizations and comments about love and loving to incarnating Christian love in our everyday human encounters?
Barriers To Love
The message of the text is clear: We are loved by God and we are to love one another. But the truth is we do not find it easy to love. We are more aware of our fear and pain in relation to others than we are of compassion and connectedness. Living with others can be hell. We see and hear this every day in the media. Love brings both pain and joy, but pain seems to prevail. As we confront the barriers to love, is it possible for us to use them as opportunities for us to grow in grace? If love is genuine, it will always encounter barriers, conflicts, and resistance. Consider those unhappy encounters you have had with spouses, children, neighbors, colleagues, and church members. Do you think, by God's grace, that these encounters could become creative events in your life and that the Spirit can help you to grow in your ability to love?
What do we do when we encounter these barriers to love? I have found some suggestions by Gregory J. Johanson which have proved helpful. He suggests that we recognize a barrier to love, which is usually obvious by our anger, unhappiness, and fear. We need to take responsibility for our part in the barrier, which is the most difficult thing for us to do. We need to invite the Holy Spirit to help us meditate on the barrier until it reveals the deeper hurt, pain, or fear that is generating it, which is often connected to earlier, unhealed memories. We need to recognize Jesus' experience of this same type of hurt and allow him to be with us in the midst of our pain. We need to offer our willingness to be healed in a way which honors both the reality of our suffering and the new possibilities we now have to relate to others and to the world around us (Lectionary Homiletics, May 1994, p. 3f.). When the barriers to love have been removed we can now carry on with our own ministry of love, healing, and reconciliation as our text challenges us to do in verse 11.
Love Involves Risk
Because love involves risks many are willing to allow their definition of love to remain sentimental and abstract. When God so loved the world God took a risk. This risk could result in the rejection and death of God's son. This is exactly what happened. If God's love incarnate in Jesus cost him his life, it is inconceivable that a person living a Christ-like life would be without cost. Responding to the call of Christ can be a risky business. Jesus one day met an affluent young man who asked, "What must I do to inherit the kingdom of heaven?" Jesus responded, "Take what you have, sell it and give the money to the poor, and then come and follow me." The young man left because he felt the price was too high. There is a risk in asking such a question of Jesus. But the demand of the kingdom of God has never been any less. There is a risk in following Jesus -- it can be a risk to your possessions, your ambitions, your values, even your expectations. The call of Christ has a way of totally upsetting and redirecting one's life. Ask the apostle Paul.
What about all of those who have suffered for the sake of love? There is a risk involved for those who love deeply. If you don't think so, then ask Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King, Jr. If you don't think that love causes pain then ask Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, along with the multitude who are unknown and unnamed who sought to love deeply and paid dearly. In Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It, there is the example of love taking risks for the well-being of another when the elder brother Norman relentlessly responds to the needs of his difficult younger brother Paul through escalating bouts of drinking, fighting, and gambling. At his brother Paul's eventual death in a gambling brawl, Norman muses, "It is possible to love completely, without complete understanding." Norman's grieving father, a Presbyterian minister, responds, "That I have known and preached."
Love -- Being Christ To Others
In the United Methodist Book of Worship I have had deep appreciation for the prayer at the end of the service of Word and Table which reads: "Grant that we may go into the world in the strength of your Spirit, to give ourselves for others, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen."
After we share together the bread and the cup, celebrating that moment when God's love in Christ is made visible, then we depart from the table to go in the strength of the Spirit to give ourselves for others in the name of Christ. Now it is possible for the Word to be made visible through our lives as we serve others. Joan Delaplane, Professor of Pastoral Theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology, told what a dear friend had said to her as her friend was dying, "You are a sacrament of God's love for me." She said, "Isn't that what we are all called to be to one another -- a sacrament of God's love?" We need to be for one another part of what Jesus is for us -- one who heals, nourishes, strengthens, forgives, and challenges. It was Basil the Great who said, "The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry. The clothes hanging in your closet are the clothes for the naked. The shoes you do not wear are the shoes for the one who is barefoot. The money you keep locked away is the money of the poor." Maybe this is what Scott Peck had in mind when he wrote, "Call it what you will, genuine love, with all the discipline it requires, is the only path to substantial joy. The more I love, the longer I love, the larger I become. Genuine love is self-replenishing" (The Road Less Traveled, p. 28).
Shortly after he came to Park Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, David H. C. Read said he was speeding down Park Avenue in a taxi with D. T. Niles, the Methodist scholar and evangelist from Sri Lanka, taking him to catch his train at Grand Central Station. He said that they were involved in a vigorous debate regarding homiletics and the theology behind it. As Niles got out of the taxi, he stuck his head in the window. "David," he said, "in the end there is only one thing to say: God loves you. Good-bye!" He said a few days later he was on the edge of a huge crowd in Central Park and heard the familiar voice of Billy Graham on the loudspeaker, "God so loved the world É" He said a few years earlier I might have been tempted to say, "Here we go again." Then he looked at the faces around him -- young, teenage, adult, and old. In spite of all of the distractions the people were listening. Graham spoke of the contrast between his text and the city around them -- crime, drugs, violence, cruelty -- and the people listened. Read said in their faces he could read the question: "Is there really such a God?"
Yes! There is.
