Reducing Life To A Single Word
Sermon
Conversations Over Bread And Wine
Meditations For The Lord's Supper
"We love because he first loved us." Search where you will in the Bible, you will not find a simpler yet more profound statement than that. Nor will you find any passage that gets so close to the very center of the Christian religion. Just seven words, but they represent the essence of our faith, the gospel crystallized into a single sentence. And the amazing thing is that so many of us miss it! Indeed, in every age persons who have professed faith in Jesus Christ have missed it!
Two and a half centuries ago, the young John Wesley, later to become the leader of the people called Methodists, missed it. As a student at Oxford, he was intensely religious, earnestly living out his commitment to Christ. It was he who founded the Holy Club, which imposed a rigorous self--discipline upon its members, requiring a strict performance of good works. But the efforts of Wesley and the others in the Holy Club left them joyless and empty. In an attempt to find a deeper experience of faith, John and his brother Charles traveled across England to visit the well--known cleric, William Law, who told them that they were trying to make something complicated and burdensome out of the simple blessing of Christianity. "Religion is the plainest and simplest thing in the world," said Law. "It is just this: We love because he first loved us." Neither of the Wesleys at the time fully comprehended what Law was saying, but later the reality of it would strike home, and they would discover the truth experientially. Faith for them became a joyful response to God's love.
But that has always seemed too simplistic for the majority. Religious vitality can't be that uncomplicated. And the history of religion, in large part, is the record of the unrelenting attempt to give faith more form and substance: like adherence to a code of laws or the strict observance of ceremonies, which was the essence of Judaism in Jesus' day; like blind loyalty to the institution of the church or unquestioned reliance on the strictures of the hierarchy, which was the pattern for the Church in the Middle Ages and remains the pattern for some in the Roman Catholic tradition; like acceptance of a system of beliefs and doctrines or diligent effort at self--improvement, which has characterized much of Protestantism. While all Christians would acknowledge divine love and a responding human love to be crucial elements of genuine religion, to say that they comprise the essence of faith would seem to be far too simplistic. There has to be more to it than that.
But the longer I live, the more convinced I become that the statement, "We love because God first loved us," sums up the heart and soul of true faith - rejected, not because it is too simple, but because it is too profound, and not because it is too limited, but because it is so all--encompassing that most people never let its full impact be felt in their lives. But today I want us at least to attempt once more to do that.
Consider, first, the truth of divine love. "God first loved us." There isn't a person among us who would deny that divine love is the cornerstone of biblical faith. Everything in the Judeo--Christian tradition rests on that foundation: We humans, created by God, are loved in a special way by our Creator, who daily sustains us and pours out blessings on our lives. We would all profess to believe that.
The trouble is that for so many people today the affirmation of divine love is little more than idle talk. It is words devoid of real meaning. We may say we believe in God's love, but the truth is that the claim has no relevance for our lives. Perhaps the crowning irony of modern life is that we who talk so frequently about divine love give so little serious thought to God. Never in history has there been a people who possess as many benefits as we Americans. In our society we enjoy unparalleled affluence. But one wonders if there has ever been a people who have given so little serious attention to the Source of all we have.
The Source! Ah, that is the rub, isn't it? There is so much confusion as to the Source. In the midst of our affluence we tend to assume that we ourselves are the source. It is our skill and ingenuity and hard work that have created the abundance we enjoy. Once upon a time human beings may have stood in awe before the mystery of things, and, trembling at a world that seemed so enormous, even frightening and hostile, bowed in adoration before the power that shaped it. Trees and mountains, oceans and skies, all compelled a sense of the holy and inspired feelings of worship and reverence. But today the majority of people are not much impressed with all of that. Far more important to our daily lives are the shopping malls and freeways and corporate towers our hands have constructed. And in a world where food comes from the grocery store, power to operate our computers and televisions comes from a wall socket, and fuel for our cars comes from pumps at the corner gas station, who gives much thought to God?
That is why Jesus said that it is "easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." How will a people who have air conditioners and thermostatically--controlled heat, electric freezers and microwaves, automatic garage door openers and Jacuzzis ever remember God? Who needs God, you see?
In his book For God's Sake Be Human, John Killinger writes:
In a society where one never gets so cold that his bones burn like dry ice inside him ... we are quickly deceived into believing ourselves the masters of our fate, the sole and unconditional architects of our own happiness and satisfaction. Our dependence (we think) is no longer on the sun and the rain, the wind and the frost, the stream and the field; it is no longer on nature and no longer on God; it is on the maintenance crews and traffic conditions and the national economy and international politics.
God? Occasionally, perhaps on Sundays, our thoughts may turn to God and we may even voice a prayer of gratitude. But in the daily routine, Monday through Saturday, who gives God much thought? The very abundance of the things that surround us mitigates against faith in God.
Or if it is not affluence that blinds us to the reality of divine love, then, for many people, it is the occasional interruption of abundance that comes in the form of some painful experience, some crisis, that provokes haunting doubts about God's goodness. What, for example, does one do with the tragedies of human life? Like six million Jews who affirm the reality of God and divine providence as the guiding principle of life and yet are exterminated in Hitler's concentration camps. Like Christian parents, declaring that God has a purpose for every life, whose four--month--old child suffocates in her crib. Like the planeload of passengers on their way to Europe whose aircraft blows up shortly after takeoff. What cannot be denied is that such happenings are part of life. And inevitably they produce in us agonizing feelings of doubt about divine love. We talk about God's love, but maybe at the heart of things is nothing but cold indifference. Maybe Sartre was right and we are on our own in this world - a world that is fundamentally absurd.
If not that, then at the very least we are left with a dilemma that seems insoluble. Traditional Christianity has maintained that God is both all--powerful and all--loving. But reality does not seem to permit both of those attributes to exist side by side. If we affirm God's omnipotence we find it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain that God is all--loving, since so much happens in this world that love would never want. On the other hand, if we affirm that God is all--loving, must we not forfeit the concept of divine omnipotence, since love does not always get its way? The only logical conclusions are these: An all--powerful God must be cruel, or an all--loving God must be impotent. That is the dilemma that haunts the modern world, leaving in its trail lingering doubts about the loving kindness of God.
Now, I have no answers or explanations for the suffering and evil that are present in our world. And yet I believe firmly in both the ultimate power and the endless, unconditional love of God. For me the dilemma is resolved supremely in Jesus Christ who challenged humankind to a new vision of power and of love.
You see, the power of God that is constantly revealed in the New Testament is not one by which some celestial tyrant manipulates events and conditions through the arbitrary exercise of divine will. It is rather that strange power of merciful persuasion by which God, vulnerable to human rebellion and wrong--choosing, woos his wayward children, seeking them in tenderness. Isn't that finally the story of God presented even in the Old Testament? Over and over again the picture of God that gets painted there shows us the Creator restraining the unbridled use of power. While unfailingly God comes with judgment upon human wrongdoing, always that judgment is tinctured with love, born of the hope that people will freely respond in loving obedience.
In the New Testament, the picture becomes far more clear, intimate, and personal, for it is lived out in Jesus - God coming to the world in the Christ, pouring out kindness and mercy, finally even suffering death on the cross, but never ceasing to offer love and forgiveness. And the incredible thing is that the cross, which is the symbol of that suffering, vulnerable love - the essence of weakness - also becomes the symbol of power, the one force that ultimately can change all things because it can change people. For this is the way divine power works - not by fiat or decree, not by a naked display of omnipotence, but through suffering love. Divine power risking everything on the gamble that it can elicit a response from those to whom it reaches out in unconditional love.
Do you see it? Do you begin to glimpse what love is and does? If God is supremely present in suffering love, then the suffering that goes on around us is not the arena from which God is absent, but the place where God supremely may be found. It is, in fact, the place where God is most fully present, participating with us in our suffering and seeking in all things to bring about our highest good. That is why we call the story of Jesus "Gospel" - it is Good News because it is the revelation that God loves us endlessly and is with us every moment, longing to bring us that ultimate fulfillment which comes when we joyfully live in harmony with the divine will.
And if that be true, what then? What is to be our response? The answer, of course, is faith! But let us understand that faith can never be considered some vague acceptance of divine love that takes place in the mind. Faith is not a belief in some teaching or doctrine about the nature of God. Nor is it an assurance felt deep inside that God's love is a reality. In the end, faith is what we do because of God's love. Faith is choice; it is action! Faith says, "Because of God's love for me I will ..." and the writer of the Fourth Gospel spelled out the one and only way that the statement can be completed: "I will love!" "We love because God first loved us."
When all is said and done, love is what God wants from all of us - loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. And that is the response that divine love inevitably produces.
Toward the end of the last century, a man named Washington Gladden was a preacher nearly as well--known in his time as Billy Graham is in ours. In his book Recollections, Gladden tells of his struggle to find a meaningful faith and to experience God's love. While he had grown up believing in the Christian faith, and had earnestly sought to know and to do God's will, he was never able to gain an assurance of divine love. He attended prayer meetings and went to revivals, all in the hope that his faith would come alive. He tried to surrender himself to God scores of times, but nothing ever seemed to happen. Never did he feel that there was a difference in his life. Then one day he met a pastor, particularly sensitive and clearheaded, who told Gladden that if he would just walk as best he could in the ways of loving service, he could trust God's love, whether he had an ecstatic experience or not, whether he felt any assurance or not. It was just the word Gladden needed. He began to walk that way of love, reaching out to people in caring and ministry, and finally was led into full-time service as an ordained minister. His was a ministry of social awareness and concern that reached countless thousands of people for Christ. And ultimately the feeling of assurance for which he had so long aspired came. But it was not the feeling of being loved that was most important. The evidence that he truly believed in God's love was his own readiness to love.
Gladden gave expression to it in a hymn which he wrote, the words of which you may remember:
O Master, let me walk with thee,
In lowly paths of service free;
Tell me thy secret; help me bear
The strain of toil, the fret of care.
Help me the slow of heart to move
By some clear, winning word of love;
Teach me the wayward feet to stay,
And guide them in the homeward way.
In the end, to know we are loved by God and to show it by our love for others is not only what Christianity is all about, it is what life is all about!
Two and a half centuries ago, the young John Wesley, later to become the leader of the people called Methodists, missed it. As a student at Oxford, he was intensely religious, earnestly living out his commitment to Christ. It was he who founded the Holy Club, which imposed a rigorous self--discipline upon its members, requiring a strict performance of good works. But the efforts of Wesley and the others in the Holy Club left them joyless and empty. In an attempt to find a deeper experience of faith, John and his brother Charles traveled across England to visit the well--known cleric, William Law, who told them that they were trying to make something complicated and burdensome out of the simple blessing of Christianity. "Religion is the plainest and simplest thing in the world," said Law. "It is just this: We love because he first loved us." Neither of the Wesleys at the time fully comprehended what Law was saying, but later the reality of it would strike home, and they would discover the truth experientially. Faith for them became a joyful response to God's love.
But that has always seemed too simplistic for the majority. Religious vitality can't be that uncomplicated. And the history of religion, in large part, is the record of the unrelenting attempt to give faith more form and substance: like adherence to a code of laws or the strict observance of ceremonies, which was the essence of Judaism in Jesus' day; like blind loyalty to the institution of the church or unquestioned reliance on the strictures of the hierarchy, which was the pattern for the Church in the Middle Ages and remains the pattern for some in the Roman Catholic tradition; like acceptance of a system of beliefs and doctrines or diligent effort at self--improvement, which has characterized much of Protestantism. While all Christians would acknowledge divine love and a responding human love to be crucial elements of genuine religion, to say that they comprise the essence of faith would seem to be far too simplistic. There has to be more to it than that.
But the longer I live, the more convinced I become that the statement, "We love because God first loved us," sums up the heart and soul of true faith - rejected, not because it is too simple, but because it is too profound, and not because it is too limited, but because it is so all--encompassing that most people never let its full impact be felt in their lives. But today I want us at least to attempt once more to do that.
Consider, first, the truth of divine love. "God first loved us." There isn't a person among us who would deny that divine love is the cornerstone of biblical faith. Everything in the Judeo--Christian tradition rests on that foundation: We humans, created by God, are loved in a special way by our Creator, who daily sustains us and pours out blessings on our lives. We would all profess to believe that.
The trouble is that for so many people today the affirmation of divine love is little more than idle talk. It is words devoid of real meaning. We may say we believe in God's love, but the truth is that the claim has no relevance for our lives. Perhaps the crowning irony of modern life is that we who talk so frequently about divine love give so little serious thought to God. Never in history has there been a people who possess as many benefits as we Americans. In our society we enjoy unparalleled affluence. But one wonders if there has ever been a people who have given so little serious attention to the Source of all we have.
The Source! Ah, that is the rub, isn't it? There is so much confusion as to the Source. In the midst of our affluence we tend to assume that we ourselves are the source. It is our skill and ingenuity and hard work that have created the abundance we enjoy. Once upon a time human beings may have stood in awe before the mystery of things, and, trembling at a world that seemed so enormous, even frightening and hostile, bowed in adoration before the power that shaped it. Trees and mountains, oceans and skies, all compelled a sense of the holy and inspired feelings of worship and reverence. But today the majority of people are not much impressed with all of that. Far more important to our daily lives are the shopping malls and freeways and corporate towers our hands have constructed. And in a world where food comes from the grocery store, power to operate our computers and televisions comes from a wall socket, and fuel for our cars comes from pumps at the corner gas station, who gives much thought to God?
That is why Jesus said that it is "easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." How will a people who have air conditioners and thermostatically--controlled heat, electric freezers and microwaves, automatic garage door openers and Jacuzzis ever remember God? Who needs God, you see?
In his book For God's Sake Be Human, John Killinger writes:
In a society where one never gets so cold that his bones burn like dry ice inside him ... we are quickly deceived into believing ourselves the masters of our fate, the sole and unconditional architects of our own happiness and satisfaction. Our dependence (we think) is no longer on the sun and the rain, the wind and the frost, the stream and the field; it is no longer on nature and no longer on God; it is on the maintenance crews and traffic conditions and the national economy and international politics.
God? Occasionally, perhaps on Sundays, our thoughts may turn to God and we may even voice a prayer of gratitude. But in the daily routine, Monday through Saturday, who gives God much thought? The very abundance of the things that surround us mitigates against faith in God.
Or if it is not affluence that blinds us to the reality of divine love, then, for many people, it is the occasional interruption of abundance that comes in the form of some painful experience, some crisis, that provokes haunting doubts about God's goodness. What, for example, does one do with the tragedies of human life? Like six million Jews who affirm the reality of God and divine providence as the guiding principle of life and yet are exterminated in Hitler's concentration camps. Like Christian parents, declaring that God has a purpose for every life, whose four--month--old child suffocates in her crib. Like the planeload of passengers on their way to Europe whose aircraft blows up shortly after takeoff. What cannot be denied is that such happenings are part of life. And inevitably they produce in us agonizing feelings of doubt about divine love. We talk about God's love, but maybe at the heart of things is nothing but cold indifference. Maybe Sartre was right and we are on our own in this world - a world that is fundamentally absurd.
If not that, then at the very least we are left with a dilemma that seems insoluble. Traditional Christianity has maintained that God is both all--powerful and all--loving. But reality does not seem to permit both of those attributes to exist side by side. If we affirm God's omnipotence we find it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain that God is all--loving, since so much happens in this world that love would never want. On the other hand, if we affirm that God is all--loving, must we not forfeit the concept of divine omnipotence, since love does not always get its way? The only logical conclusions are these: An all--powerful God must be cruel, or an all--loving God must be impotent. That is the dilemma that haunts the modern world, leaving in its trail lingering doubts about the loving kindness of God.
Now, I have no answers or explanations for the suffering and evil that are present in our world. And yet I believe firmly in both the ultimate power and the endless, unconditional love of God. For me the dilemma is resolved supremely in Jesus Christ who challenged humankind to a new vision of power and of love.
You see, the power of God that is constantly revealed in the New Testament is not one by which some celestial tyrant manipulates events and conditions through the arbitrary exercise of divine will. It is rather that strange power of merciful persuasion by which God, vulnerable to human rebellion and wrong--choosing, woos his wayward children, seeking them in tenderness. Isn't that finally the story of God presented even in the Old Testament? Over and over again the picture of God that gets painted there shows us the Creator restraining the unbridled use of power. While unfailingly God comes with judgment upon human wrongdoing, always that judgment is tinctured with love, born of the hope that people will freely respond in loving obedience.
In the New Testament, the picture becomes far more clear, intimate, and personal, for it is lived out in Jesus - God coming to the world in the Christ, pouring out kindness and mercy, finally even suffering death on the cross, but never ceasing to offer love and forgiveness. And the incredible thing is that the cross, which is the symbol of that suffering, vulnerable love - the essence of weakness - also becomes the symbol of power, the one force that ultimately can change all things because it can change people. For this is the way divine power works - not by fiat or decree, not by a naked display of omnipotence, but through suffering love. Divine power risking everything on the gamble that it can elicit a response from those to whom it reaches out in unconditional love.
Do you see it? Do you begin to glimpse what love is and does? If God is supremely present in suffering love, then the suffering that goes on around us is not the arena from which God is absent, but the place where God supremely may be found. It is, in fact, the place where God is most fully present, participating with us in our suffering and seeking in all things to bring about our highest good. That is why we call the story of Jesus "Gospel" - it is Good News because it is the revelation that God loves us endlessly and is with us every moment, longing to bring us that ultimate fulfillment which comes when we joyfully live in harmony with the divine will.
And if that be true, what then? What is to be our response? The answer, of course, is faith! But let us understand that faith can never be considered some vague acceptance of divine love that takes place in the mind. Faith is not a belief in some teaching or doctrine about the nature of God. Nor is it an assurance felt deep inside that God's love is a reality. In the end, faith is what we do because of God's love. Faith is choice; it is action! Faith says, "Because of God's love for me I will ..." and the writer of the Fourth Gospel spelled out the one and only way that the statement can be completed: "I will love!" "We love because God first loved us."
When all is said and done, love is what God wants from all of us - loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. And that is the response that divine love inevitably produces.
Toward the end of the last century, a man named Washington Gladden was a preacher nearly as well--known in his time as Billy Graham is in ours. In his book Recollections, Gladden tells of his struggle to find a meaningful faith and to experience God's love. While he had grown up believing in the Christian faith, and had earnestly sought to know and to do God's will, he was never able to gain an assurance of divine love. He attended prayer meetings and went to revivals, all in the hope that his faith would come alive. He tried to surrender himself to God scores of times, but nothing ever seemed to happen. Never did he feel that there was a difference in his life. Then one day he met a pastor, particularly sensitive and clearheaded, who told Gladden that if he would just walk as best he could in the ways of loving service, he could trust God's love, whether he had an ecstatic experience or not, whether he felt any assurance or not. It was just the word Gladden needed. He began to walk that way of love, reaching out to people in caring and ministry, and finally was led into full-time service as an ordained minister. His was a ministry of social awareness and concern that reached countless thousands of people for Christ. And ultimately the feeling of assurance for which he had so long aspired came. But it was not the feeling of being loved that was most important. The evidence that he truly believed in God's love was his own readiness to love.
Gladden gave expression to it in a hymn which he wrote, the words of which you may remember:
O Master, let me walk with thee,
In lowly paths of service free;
Tell me thy secret; help me bear
The strain of toil, the fret of care.
Help me the slow of heart to move
By some clear, winning word of love;
Teach me the wayward feet to stay,
And guide them in the homeward way.
In the end, to know we are loved by God and to show it by our love for others is not only what Christianity is all about, it is what life is all about!
