Sermon Title: "Love Divine"
Date: February 13, 2011
Minister:  The Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  1 John 4:7-12

In the past two weeks, both while we were in Sonoma visiting antique shops and thrift stores, as well as locally in card shops and in nearly every department store ad, the merchandising of Valentine’s Day is extremely evident.  Dollars spent on Super Bowl parties last Sunday now switch to Valentine’s cards, gifts, flowers, candy and dinners.

The three year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary, often used by Rev. Susie and myself for sermon themes, has no scripture selections specific to such secular or national holidays as Martin Luther King, Jr., Valentine’s Day, the Fourth of July, Memorial, Labor or Veteran’s Day.  The weekly scripture selections are tied to the liturgical seasons of the church year and Biblical events.  However, we in the United Church of Christ are not obligated to preach from the lectionary texts every Sunday, so with all the commercial hype of Valentine’s Day, and it falling tomorrow, I believe it too good an opportunity to let the topic of love go undiscussed.

Love.  What a subject.  Where to begin?

What is the moment in anyone’s relationship when it changes from first noticing another person, goes beyond being fascinated or charmed by him or her, and is transformed into human love—the kind of love that makes you want to be with that person forever . . . the feeling you have when you see your partner’s car in the garage when you arrive home and are happy to know that he or she will be inside to welcome you?

One of life’s peak experiences for some of us men was being present when our child was born.  There is overwhelming love for your wife who carried that baby in utero for nine months.  Yet as a man, even a father, I am totally incapable of describing the feeling of love which must dwell within a mother’s heart the moment that newborn babe is laid upon her breast.

As that child grows and a parent is pulled along in the maturation process, there are countless moments of love for your child as you watch him or her fulfill milestone moments in life—birthdays, graduations, marriage, first grandchild.

Love is not only for the young.  We are especially privileged in this church to celebrate with couples who have reached milestone anniversaries.  Back in 1998, Fred and Vera Fleek celebrated their 50th by renewing their vows and having a reception next door in Gabrielson Chapel, in the very spot they were married in 1948.  Yesterday, Larry and Marcia Foley celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary by renewing their vows at the foot of these chancel steps in the presence of family and friends.  Many of you have attained 60, 65, or more years!

Yet my sermon title suggests I am going to go somewhere else with this sermon.  The interpreter of today’s epistle from First John is faced with a challenge:  How does one approach a subject so shopworn and trivialized as love?  The author—identified in the original Greek as “the elder”—has a view of love that is surprisingly fresh and altogether different from what we see on the movie or television screen of late.

Today’s passage begins:  “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” (4:1)  This exhortation to love one another is by no means a strategic move, calculated to dispose God toward loving us in return.  To the contrary:  God first loved us before we offered any loving response.  Love comes from God, which implies that our love is not self-generated, but evolves from our parentage by God.  God’s love for us is the source of our power to love God in return, and love one another as well.

God’s supreme sign of love for humanity is touched upon by the elder:  “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.”  (4:9)  Or, in the words of the gospel writer John:  “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” (John 3:16)

Here is love divine most aptly demonstrated.  Here is the ultimate sacrifice.  God loved the people of Earth so much that he sent to them his own Son, to teach them, to save them.  And humanity kills him in return.  God’s act says much about his love for the humans he created—a love that persists even when we are unlovable in return.

Other than thanking God unceasingly for the greatest gift of Jesus, and attempting to follow Christ’s teaching in our daily living, how else are we to respond?  Is it possible to have love for one another when the other seems so unlovable?  Are we to love absolutely everyone we see and know . . . even if they hurt us?

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the words in the first epistle of John is that they exist at all.  In spite of the hate the elder and his readers felt aimed at them in a hostile anti-Christian first century environment, the writer never advocates hatred in return.  In an atmosphere thick with ill-will and hatred directed toward these new Christians, the faithful remained oriented to Jesus, remembered as one who loved and was loved.  To be claimed by a text like this has the power to transform one’s life.

In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till traveled from Chicago to his homestate of Mississippi for a visit with his uncle.  The African-American boy made some comments to a 21-year-old white woman in her store.  He was kidnapped by the woman’s husband and a friend, savagely beaten and thrown into a river with a 75 pound fan tied with barbed wire around his neck.  Decades later, Emmett’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley was asked if she harbored bitterness toward two white men, or toward whites generally, for the brutal murder of her son.  This is what she said:

“It certainly would be unnatural not to [hate them], yet I’d have to say I’m unnatural. . . . The Lord gave me shield, I don’t know how to describe it myself. . . . I do not wish them dead.  I did not wish them in jail.  If I had to, I could take their four little children—they each had two—and I could raise those children as if they were my own and I could have loved them. . . . I believe the Lord meant what he said, and try to live according to the way I’ve been taught.” *1

She realized she could never profess love for an unseen God if she could not love those around her—even those who took her own son’s life.  The elder in today’s epistle knew this when he declared:  “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” (4:12)

Tomorrow when we celebrate romantic love, we are reminded of a higher calling—to express love for those around us, for in them, God dwells.

Any candidate for the Christian ministry, either prior to entering seminary or when preparing for ordination, is usually examined for fitness by a committee of the denomination.  One veteran minister asked the same theological question of every potential candidate for over 30 years.

“He began by asking the candidate to look out the window.  The puzzled examinee peers out the window, and the old minister adds, ‘Tell me when you see a person out there.’

“‘I see one,’ the candidate will haltingly announce.

“‘Do you know that person personally?’

“‘No, sir.’

“‘Good.  Now my question is this:  Will you please describe that person theologically?’

“In three decades of experience in asking that question, the seasoned minister found that the candidates tend to give one of two different answers.  Some will say something like, ‘That person is a sinner in need of the redemption of Jesus Christ.’  Others, however, will respond, ‘Whether they know it or not, that person is a child of God, loved and upheld by the grace of God in Jesus Christ.’

“‘I suppose, this minister reflected, ‘that, technically, both these answers are theologically correct.  But it is my experience that those who give the second answer make the better ministers.’” *2

Do you see those around you as sinners, or as persons loved by God?

Your answer just may define how much you believe in love divine.

 

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*1 Quoted in Studs Turkel, Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession, (New York: New Press, 1992), 21-22.

*2 Thomas Long, Whispering the Lyrics: Sermons for Lent and Easter, (Lima, OH:  CSS Publishing Co., 1995).