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Sermon on Love

LOVE ONE ANOTHER

Mother's Day

TEXTS: I JOHN 4 (SELECTIONS) 

INTRODUCTION TO SCRIPTURE
The story is told about a four-year-old boy who watched his parents bring his baby sister home from the hospital. Soon after she was installed in her bassinet, the little boy asked if he could be alone with her. Hmmm, the parents were puzzled and weren't sure it was a great idea, but the boy persisted. Finally they relented but left the baby monitor on. He tiptoed to the side of the crib and then they heard him whisper to the infant, "Tell me about God, I'm beginning to forget."
Tell me about God. Isn't that our question too when we read the Bible or go to church? Tell me about God. In scripture we read about the people who struggled so mightily with the meaning of God, and we assume, as did the little boy about his sister, that they have come from God's presence and maybe have a secret to share.

All talk about God is inadequate, of course. But we pile up adjectives and metaphors in an attempt to name the mystery. Just flip through the hymnal and you will find multiple ways poets try to conceptualize God. Creator, rock, judge, fortress, king. In honor of the day, the choir reminded us of the "mothering God."

The scripture today is one person's attempt to tell us about God. I read this a lot at weddings but it wasn't written with a wedding in mind. It's about every relationship in all of life.

I JOHN 4:7-12
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 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, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

 

God is love. What a remarkable claim! Notice that John does not say, "God is loving," but "God is love."

DISCOVERING GOD, AGREEING WITH ATHEISTS
Are any of you keeping up with the buzz generated by the new atheists? The authors of popular books on atheism are making the talk-show rounds. Picking up on Nietzsche but with none of his sophistication, they claim that God is dead. Well, these authors are so behind the times theologically, that they are critiquing a God that has long been dead to most theologians and churches as well.

Ironically, these atheists seem to be more literal about the Bible than the average Christian. They take paint a picture of a superhuman sky deity who outdoes us all in vengefulness, favoritism, and capricious behavior. The God they deny is the one interpreted by some TV evangelists who maintain that God hates the same people they do. Most of us do not believe in the existence of that God either.

One of the primary tasks of theology and the church is to discover God because if we are to discern the will of God, we want to know what God desires, who God is. The bible lesson for today will take us far away from the God that is simply a bigger, more powerful, more righteous version of ourselves. It takes us away from a God "out there" who is sitting on some throne of judgment or even a God out there who is listening to prayers and answering one way or another-the being Martin Luther King Jr. calls the "cosmic bell hop."

GOD, BEYOND THE PERSONALIZED
God is love. This is not a personalized being but an ever-present spirit. The God that is love is here right now, present in this room, flowing between us. Love is a God we carry with us, a God we receive from others and give away.

GOD BEYOND RELIGION
Moreover, John suggests that Christians do not have a corner on this God. "Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God." True believers are known by the acts of loving kindness they extend toward others not by their piety, not by what religion they belong to or how rigorously they practice their faith. Everyone who loves knows God.

GOD IS LOVE TOWARD US
This is going to be only a two-point sermon. First point. God is love. God is love toward us. We are God's beloved. God is for us and has created us for delight. God loves us more than we can know. That love flows about us all the time; all we need to do is to accept it and let it carry us.


GOD IS LOVE IN US
Second point. God is love in us. We are conduits of divine love. A pastor told about preparing for a funeral for a long-time member of the church he attended as a child; he remembered her fondly.

She was a humble, working class woman with many heartaches in her life, middle-aged and aging fast when I was a teenager.  Here's what she said in church and to my Sunday school class, ‘God is love and love is action."  That idea was as natural to her as breathing.  If she saw someone in need and she had anything which might help relieve that need, offering what she could was her immediate action. She certainly wasn't helping folks in order to get some reward in the present or future.  She just lived her core belief that God is love and love is action.

Today is such a good day for this scripture to appear in the lectionary. It's Mothers Day-when we think about the ideals of parental love. It's no accident that when Jesus wants to assure us that God is love, he uses the image of a parent. If we're looking for unconditional love, we get a hint of that in the love a parent holds for her child.

GOD IS LOVE AND LOVE IS ACTION
And then we have these living testimonials before us. Emily and Tom Collins and their ministry in Honduras-extending love through medical treatment but even more importantly, through friendship. And Mona Roy and her husband Subhash, caring sacrificially for their sons one of whom is severely disabled.

Do you see and feel the God in this? God is in the love extended through every gesture of caring. God is in the love that flows daily through our relationships.

The theologian Carter Hayward speaks about this swirl of love as "godding." I like that because it means we've really got some control over how much of God is manifest in the world. If we want to see more of God, we go about the business of "godding."

No one has seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us. And that's how God gets seen!

The story goes that a wealthy man was touring a mission hospital when he saw a nurse bending over a poor, wasted man, suffering in the last stages of AIDS, dabbing his lips with cool water, cleaning his oozing lesions.
"I wouldn't do that for a million dollars," he remarked.
The nurse kept at his task and responded, "Neither would I."

For love. God is love and love is action.