Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 5/3/15
October 5, 2013. Sweat
dripped down my face and my knees were knocking as I stood in Duncan Memorial UMC before my
friends and family, but more importantly before Heather as I waited to say
those special vows of marriage. The party had already processed in, we had sung
a great hymn of love, and the minister had announced the intent of the day, we
were getting married. As the service went along I must admit that most of it
felt like a blur, but I remember one of my close friends getting up and reading
scripture from 1 John chapter 4. I remember in the midst of the all of the nerves
that come with the service, and the excitement to be getting married to
Heather, hearing these words that kind of refocused me, and made me recognize
what it was all about. “We love because he first loved
us.” Wow, whoever planned this wedding really knew what they were doing.
This expression of love from me for Heather, Heather for me, and to us both
from all of our friends and family was only possible because God first loved
us. For as much as that day and this marriage is about the love between Heather
and I, it is more of a manifestation of God’s love lived out in the world.
As we have journey through 1 John we have talked a lot
about love. We have differentiated the love of God from the profane and mundane
ways that we usually talk about love. We have even asked the question how do we
know when we are loved? In all of our questions about love we have so far
failed to ask the most basic, cliché question made popular in song. We have
failed to ask, “What is love?” Not only what is it, but how is it possible? If
I asked you to define love what would you say? Is it positive emotional
response to someone or something you hold dear? Is it a the bond of a
relationship? Is it self-sacrifice for the well-being of another? I don’t think any of these answers would be
wrong, but for us as Christians 1 John makes the answer to this question as
simple as possible. What is love? God is love. Notice that it doesn’t say that
God is loving; this isn’t just a description of God’s character like saying God
is caring, or God is just, or God acts righteously. God is love. There is no such thing as love apart from God. Love only
exists because God is love.
What then is this thing that we experience in our lives
that we call love? Love as we know it is God’s manifestation in our lives and
in our world. When God created the world he looked at it and called it good,
and when he created humanity he called it very good. If God is love, then we
are created by love. Our very existence is through love. And even when we threw
it all away, when we chose pride and arrogance over that love from God as we
consumed of that sacred fruit in the garden, we never stop being creatures of
love, for Love made us. Love covenant with the Israelites to be their God and
for them to be God’s people. Love spoke through the prophets to draw those who
had strayed back to the fold. And when all else failed, Love “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”. Our God, who is love, has called
us as his children, as children of love.
And that is why those words spoken at
Heather and my wedding are so important, “We love
because he first loved us.” The love expressed in our marriage is only
possible because we know love through God who first loved us. The love I have
for my mom, dad, sister and all my genetic family is only because God first
loved us. And the love that we share this morning as the Church, as children of
God, as children of love, is certainly only possible because God first loved
us, and has continued to show us that love, including the embodiment of love in
human form through Jesus Christ. Through Christ, humanity has been able to witness
firsthand what the love of God looks like expressed as a human. It is that
manifestation of love that we are called to strive towards.
In fact our scripture tells us that “God’s love is perfected in us.” For many of us this
term perfection is difficult for us to grasp. How can I be perfect? Does that
mean that I will never mess up, that I myself will be like a God? It is hard
for us to understand growing in love, but I think once again the analogy of a
wedding is somewhat helpful. When Heather and I said our vows, that was not the
end of our love for each other, it was of course the beginning. And everyone
will tell you that marriage is hard work, but why is that? It is because your
love for each other is not staying stagnant, it is growing and it takes work.
Love takes work when you begin to live full time with someone. Love takes work
when decisions about time and money are now made together. Love even takes work
trying to decide what to watch on t.v. some days. Our love is growing, it is
changing and it really is working towards that day in which the two truly do
become as one.
And that’s just love in marriage. If we want to grow in
love, we must grow in God, for God is love. To be perfected in love is to be in
relationship with God. John Wesley explains, “No one, then, is so perfect in
this life, as to be free from ignorance. Nor, Secondly, from mistake; which
indeed is almost an unavoidable consequence of it.” Perfection is not that we
become infallible like God that we cannot fail or err, but perfection is a
perfect unity of our heart with God. Perfection is our ability to love as God
loves, and in doing so truly exhibiting through us the God of love. When all of
those areas of our lives in which we show love (or should show love) are tied
together by the God who is love, then God love is perfected in us. And why
wouldn’t we seek that? Why wouldn’t we want to love like the true source of
love? Why wouldn’t we want to grow closer to God, and to each other? Maybe
because that love requires us to lay down our lives for others as Christ laid
down his for life for us? Or are we afraid to be perfected in love because that
might require us to love those we don’t want to love. Maybe it’s because we’re afraid to lose control,
we want to love on our own terms, but there is no such thing, because we are
only able to love because God first loved us. So let us strive for that love to
be perfected in us, so that we may truly know with our hearts and our minds,
that God is love.
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