Love

Love                                               The Dover Church

May 6, 2012                                             Scripture: 1 John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8

          I love to read the Bible. That probably comes as no surprise to you. I am a Christian pastor and preacher after all, and reading the Bible sort of falls into the "what we assume he must be up to" category of my job. "Of course he has to read the Bible. What else is he going to do all week?" But I didn't say "I have to." I said "I love to" and I love to read the Bible because it is an adventure into the person of God. In the same way that I am a complex person and some people know me as Max the pastor and others know me as Max the friend, husband, father, son, brother, friend, neighbor, classmate, roommate, colleague and so on, God is a complex person. Every author in the Bible brings us his or her unique insights without which we would have an even more incomplete picture than we necessarily have with someone like God, who is ultimately beyond total comprehension. But aren't we all beyond total comprehension? And isn't it true that we really want to know as much as we can about the people who are really important to us? Who among you has superficial relationships with our spouse, our children, our best friends? No. We want to dive all the way in and that's exactly what we do. Well, that's my love affair with the Bible.

          When we read the four Gospels, for example, Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us  chronological and episodically detailed stories of the Godman Jesus, in whom we are told we see what God is like as one of us. And then comes the Gospel of John, in which we don't get a record per se, an attempt at a detailed biography, as much as we get a window into a cosmic reality, an invitation into the heart of God. Everything John writes down is pregnant with meaning, sort of like looking through a microscope in which we can see the inner workings of an otherwise hidden reality, or through a telescope in which we see the farthest reaches of the universe beyond the range of our normal vision. John is both a microscope and a telescope into the primary personal characteristic of God, which is love.

          God is fiercely in love with creation. From the first page of the Bible to the last we read of God’s love affair with Creation. You can see the evidence all around you in the beauty, wonder, diversity and interconnected ness of Creation. I am not arguing with science and evolution. For me, science and evolution only reinforce what I can see with my own eyes: the most beautiful, lovely and wondrously wrought ball of life I can possibly imagine. And it truly all is love. How so? Well, we now know with the extinction of species and degradation of ecosystems that the removal of one part out causes the whole suffer, the exact same way we suffer when some life we are lovingly connected to is taken from us.

          Within this love is God's special creature, us, whom God really loves, and there's nothing we can do about it. Each of us unique and created in God's own image. Think about this and you know it's true. Think about your own children, each unique and absolutely holy to you, with all their foibles and idiosyncrasies. Holy because you treasure them and love them, knowing that they are both part of you and a once in forever never before and never again event, which in church talk we call a blessing. People will argue with me that all people are not blessings, beloved children of a loving God, people like Hitler, Stalin, or Saddam Hussein for example, to which I would say, have you ever seen Adolf Hitler's baby pictures? A beautiful, chubby, blue eyed son. His mother loved him the same way we love our kids. Things definitely went wrong later on, but everyone starts out in the crucible of God's love. Everyone. No exceptions. I dare you to try to come up with an exception. I have given up trying. What went wrong is another sermon.

          Created in God's own image means that there is something of God in us both materially and potentially. Materially, I have already touched on the beauty and wonder, the indescribable and uncategorical holiness of every human life. If you doubt me, think about how you value your life or the life of your children. There is nothing you value more, right? Well, it's the same for everyone. We all know our own holiness. We may not feel the same way about our neighbors, but they do and God does.

          Behaviorally, I mean there is a God life, a God destiny for us to live our lives into. It's not enough for us to just exist, either parasitically or in a survival of the fittest mode going through life. If God is love and we are created in God's image, then that life and destiny can only be love. That's how we're supposed to find our way. Nothing else will cut the mustard, hit the mark, or bring us true fulfillment.

          I am certain that everyone here this morning knows the experience of love, as all of you have other people in your lives who love you and whom you love. Human love, it's true, tends to be quite imperfect compared to God's unconditional, steadfast, abundant and endless love. Who among us can possibly pull that off 24/7, or even come close with everyone let alone a select few? Even in our imperfection, however, we all get glimpses of God's love going before us as both our path and our destiny.

          Let's remember for a moment the experience of falling in love. You all can remember that, right? Do you remember what it felt like? How amazing the beloved was? How beautiful and wise and kind and desirable? How all you wanted to do was just be with the beloved?  How intensely alive you felt because there was a beloved? How intense and vibrant all the rest of your life felt because there was a beloved? How time was historic? The first this and the special that? So much was so memorable, so worthy of taking pictures of and saving for the scrap book. How everything looked, sounded, tasted, smelled and felt, for lack of a better word, much more alive than normal. And because you were falling in love, you only tended to see the best in the beloved. It was if all the faults and shortcomings faded to the edges or disappeared altogether, by the power of love. Do you remember? If you don't, let me give you an example of the miraculous power of love to see through the messiness in another to the holiness. My wife fell in love with me and just look at me. Enough said!

          And how does love make us act? Absolutely selflessly. When we're in love we'll drive to Nova Scotia for a date. We'll eat things we don't like to please the other. We try to see the best in the beloved's family and friends. We'll open our minds to new ways of thinking and seeing to get closer to the beloved and if we just can't think it or see it their way we'll aim for open minded acceptance and tolerance, way beyond anything we'll do for others. We'll often give up things we once thought were vitally important because the beloved is more important. And if it is a healthy love, we will be amazed to find the beloved running towards us in the same, selfless, self abandoning way.

          Which is where Jesus comes in. Before Jesus, God spoke from a distance to people through prophets, spoke about God's self and our human path and destiny of love. With Jesus, God came running towards us, gave up all the divine distance, all the divine prerogatives of supremacy, invulnerability, untouchability, and became an earthy servant, a completely vulnerable to the point of being put to death, an oh so very touchable and willing to touch the untouchable, human being. The Son of Man he called himself, which was his way of saying "an authentic human being." All because God is love and God loves us and God really wants us to walk the path of love which is our true path and live into our destiny of love which is where our only happiness lies.

          Which brings us finally to the vine and the branches and bearing fruit. Because we are all human beings, which means, pardon me for saying it but,  messy bundles of contradiction, self delusion and self destruction, all of us have lived lovelessly. Maybe not always and forever, but from time to time or for periods in our lives, in fear, anxiety, bitterness, regret, isolation, competition, judgment, comparison, all the things that are the opposite of love. And we know what that felt or, Lord have mercy, feels like. Compared to the joy and vibrancy of love, it feels cut off, like a branch from its vine, a once living but now dying thing cut off from its source of life. As opposed to the fruits of love, which are yet more love, the fruits of lovelessness are fear, anxiety, bitterness, regret, isolation, competition, judgment, comparison and all the other experiences of life we bemoan and wish were not ours. And they don’t have to be? The irony is that the only thing standing between each of us and the love we long for is…us.

          That's what John is getting at this morning. He's basically telling us things we already know are true. There's life and there's a waste of life. In Jesus, we know the difference. Until now I have asked you to remember love in the past tense, to bring to mind episodes of love from your life. In Jesus, we can live this truth, this love, right here and right now, loving not episodically but continually in the present and future tense, walking in Jesus' footsteps who is our way, our truth, and our life. My friends, its as simple as this, every experience of love you have ever known has been nothing less than our fiercely loving God inviting you into the divine. And every desire you might feel to love in the future is our wildly, self-abandoning, no holds barred God inviting you into the most wonderful adventure of your life. This is the Good News of Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God.