Sermon-What the World Needs Now

"What the World Needs Now"

Dr. James L. Mayfield
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

January 9, 2000

Text: Matthew 7:21, 22:26-40, 20:17-20

Today I am going to talk about what the world needs from us and why we need the church.

Some years ago, one of the popular songs contained these lyrics: What the world needs now is love sweet love; that’s the only thing there is just too little of. Although I suspect the love this song sings about is relatively superficial, it is nonetheless a statement of truth. Whether we are talking about the love that is merely a matter of warm feelings or talking about the love that involves the substantive behavior of serving the needs of persons and the needs of society, what the world needs now is love—not necessarily sweet love, but rather real love.

The Greek word for love that is used in the New Testament more than any other is "agape." This love is not an emotion as much as it is an ethic. Agape love is not a matter of what one feels as much as it is a matter of what one does. For us to live lives of agape love is for us to live giving of ourselves for the good of others whether we feel like it or not.

This is the kind of love we see in the life and ministry of Jesus. When Jesus told us to love our enemies, it was the agape kind of love he was talking about. It is in giving of ourselves for the good of others, whether we feel like it or not, that reconciliation, transformation, healing and hope are able to spread around the world.

It was this kind of love that Jesus was talking about when he told us that the greatest commandments are to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves. When Jesus spoke of loving God, he was not talking about our having special religious feelings or emotions in our relationship with God. Jesus was talking about giving of ourselves for the good that God is involved in trying to bring about, and for us to do that regardless of what we are feeling.

It is the doing that matters. "Not everyone who says: ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven," Jesus said. "Only those who do the will of God." Doing the will of God is living lives of Christ like love. Doing the will of God inevitably involves us in loving our neighbors as ourselves, that is, in giving of ourselves for their good.

What the world needs now is what the world has always needed—love, real love, the kind of love revealed in Christ, the kind of love that can transform living, the kind of love that puts us to work doing the will of God in relation to the people around us in the world of our everyday living.

It is not enough to feel pity for those in need. We are to do whatever we are able to do to enable those who are in need to live as God intends them to live—physically, emotionally, spiritually. It is not enough merely to feel anger or frustration because of the injustices done to people. We are to become involved in doing whatever we are able to do to enable justice to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.

It is not enough to be upset by persons who are hurting others and hurting themselves because of what they say and do in their living. We are to invest ourselves as we are able in the kind of tough and tender love that is able to transform persons from living in ways that do damage to themselves, to others and to society into persons whose living helps bring healing and hope. We are to do what we are able to do to enable persons to stop being destructive to themselves and others and to enable them to begin living in ways that are positive, ways that express the best in themselves and bring out the best in others. What the world needs now is persons who are striving to love others as God in Christ has loved us.

But living lives that reflect Christ like love is not easy to do. When Christ like love shapes our living, we sometimes find ourselves reaching out to persons and caring and sharing in ways that sometimes make the people around us uncomfortable—even angry. Sometimes when we live as disciples of Christ we find ourselves objecting to certain ways of doing business. This can cause others to be so uncomfortable they do not want to work with us or they do not want us to work for them. When Christ like love shapes our living we can sometimes find ourselves in situations where we are calling certain social customs or ways of speaking and acting into question. This can make others feel so uncomfortable they do not want to be around us or they will not allow us to stay around them. When Christ like love shapes our living we sometimes find ourselves going against the more popular political policies, and this can cause us not only to lose popularity, but can even cause us to be the target of a variety of kinds of attack.

Christ did not win an earthly award for the kind of love he lived, unless you call crucifixion an award. That we should assume that if we follow Christ in our living we will be rewarded with popularity and what the world calls success is for us to be living in a dream world.

What the world needs now is love, real love, the kind of love revealed in Jesus Christ. But living that kind of love is not easy. The truth is, it is even more than difficult. By ourselves, alone, it is impossible. By ourselves, alone, we will run out of the emotional and spiritual stamina living Christ like lives requires.

This is why we need the church—when the church is really the church. The church is not merely a religious organization. The church is people, but not just any people. The church is those people who, because of what has been revealed through Jesus Christ, are profoundly aware God loves them. Because of the impact of God's love in their lives, they are motivated to love others by doing what needs to be done and saying what needs to be said so that others may also discover they, too, are loved by God and so they, too, will strive to live in response to God's love.

But this is not easy. Like the first disciples, the people who are the church sometimes misunderstand who Christ is and what following Christ involves. Like the first disciples, the people who are the church sometimes fail to do what they should do and even do what they know they ought not do. And yet, like those first disciples, the people who are the church keep trying. They are so aware of the amazing love of God that they ask for and accept God's forgiveness, and they try again and again and again. Like the first disciples, they grow in their understanding of discipleship; they grow in their understanding of God; they grow in their ability to be faithful. Few, if any, attain the perfection of faithfulness that Christ told us to strive toward, but the people who really are the church, regardless of their stumbling, keep moving toward the perfection of faithfulness.

What enables them to do this is that they are continually involved in the disciplines of worship, nurture and service. Worship is central to the people who are the church—both the disciplines of worshipping God with other persons striving to be faithful and the disciplines of worshipping God in private. Worship is central because in worship the people who are the church keep their lives centered around God; they keep their focus on God and God's love. Without worship they tend to lose focus and drift into self-centered living rather than Christ-centered living.

The people who are the church do not try to "go it alone" because they know when they try to go it alone they tend to reshape the Gospel rather than allowing the Gospel to reshape them. The people who are the church stay involved with others who are also trying to follow Christ in their living. These people who are the church offer support for one another, they learn from one another, and together they learn from their ancestors in the faith who in the past have struggled with similar issues of living.

The people who are the church are involved in working together to serve the needs of people around them. They are in ministry and mission to the world—not merely in ministry to one another. And in this ministry and mission to the world, not only do they serve others beyond the church in the name of God, but in the process of serving others they discover they are served and that in serving others they experience in ever new and sometimes unexpected ways the blessing of God in their lives.

The involvement of these people in worship, nurture and service refreshes their souls so that they are able to keep trying to love others out there in the world—even though their efforts to love others as Christ has loved them often seems to be as big a failure as Jesus' ministry appeared to be on the Friday he was crucified.

They are refreshed and enabled to keep going and keep trying because they are the church, and the people who are the church know crucifixion is not the last word. People who are the church remind one another that the story does not end on Good Friday. People who are the church are aware of resurrection and the power of the Holy Spirit to transform persons the way the Spirit transformed Peter, who had denied Christ three times, into the one who proclaimed Christ to the world.

What the world needs now is love, real love, the kind of love revealed in Jesus Christ. But by ourselves, alone, we are unable to live lives of Christ like love. It is only as we are involved in the church, the Body of Christ, it is only as we live our lives involved with others who are striving to follow Christ that, little by little, day by day, we are able to grow in grace and faithfulness, and in our ability to love others as God in Christ has loved us.

God, help us be the church so that we are able to live loving others as you in Christ have loved us. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer:

God, on this first Sunday in the season of Epiphany, we ask for an epiphany. Make the presence of Christ real in each of our lives. Enable each of us to live so that all we say and do can be used by you in an epiphany for others, making them aware of the tough and tender love you revealed in Jesus Christ.

God, in this season that celebrates making Christ known to the world, motivate us to recommit ourselves to being faithful disciples of Christ and effective servants of your grace.

As we are more clearly aware of Christ, we are more clearly aware of how far we are from living as Christ lived. Forgive us for our failures in faithfulness. But we need more than forgiveness. We pray for your Spirit to be at work in us, transforming us so that our values, our attitudes, our actions and our speech are consistent with what you have made known in Christ.

Enable us to live as Jesus was teaching us to live when he taught us to pray: "Our Father . . ."

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