"The Gift"

Dr. James Mayfield
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

May 4, 2003

Text: I John 4:7-12, 19-20, 21b

Today we receive the love of God as it comes through the sacrament of Holy Communion. And today the first of two Service Fairs begin, offering us ways to give expression to our love of neighbor.

We talk a lot about love in church; and all our love talk sounds nice and soothing. But what do we mean when we say God loves us and that we are to love God and one another?

We can twist the meaning of love so that it is in conflict with the Gospel. It is possible to speak of love and speak a lie, a heresy. I remember some years ago, one pastor said that since God is love, then love must be God. And then he went on to advocate sexual freedom as an act of faith. Of course, he was substituting erotic love for the self-giving kind of love revealed in Jesus. And in doing so, he took a statement of the Gospel, and turned it into a heresy, a falsehood.

We humans are skillful in using the word "love" to camouflage all sorts of unloving behavior. In fact we are so skilled we can even fool ourselves. For example, there is the angry rage of jealousy, which we sometimes attempt to justify by saying, "It's only because I love you so much." But, of course, jealousy is not really about love; jealousy is really about possession, ownership, power, and the attempt to be selfishly in control of someone. Another way we humans distort love is for a man or a woman who is caught in the grips of lust driven erotic passion to try to bless adultery by calling it love. We humans are so skilled in using pretensions of love to hide our selfishness, we often fool even ourselves, and we believe the rationalizations we use to camouflage our unloving behavior.

We even try to fool God the way a selfish child tries to manipulate the love of a parent. We make a donation or we say what we think God wants to hear in an attempt to cajole God into giving us what we want and doing what we want done. It is easy for us humans to sail through our days flying the flag of loving God and neighbor when all the while it is self-centeredness charting the course of our living. Without missing a beat and without the least bit of embarrassment, we are able to sing: "O How I Love Jesus," without it having any real impact on what we do with our talent, our time or our money.

Some of us may tell ourselves we love God because from time to time we are so deeply moved in worship that tears come to our eyes. Of course, we really know better. We know that unless the tears we shed in worship are accompanied by daily living that pleases God, our tears are merely the byproduct of good religious drama and music that moves us emotionally. We know that loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength involves more than holding hands in candlelight and singing songs we learned at church camp or on our Emmaus Walk.

It is not the words we say to God or the emotions we feel in worship that reveal our love for God. Our love for God is revealed in the way we live. God created us to live in the image of God, and because (as the writer of I John says) the primary characteristic of God is love, to live in the image of God is to live lives of love.

But what is love -- the love that is at the core of the Gospel? When the Gospel of John proclaims "God so loved the world ..." the word used for love is agape (self-giving love), not eros (erotic or romantic love), not philia (warm friendship love), not even storge (family relationship love). When Jesus said that the two most important laws are to love God and neighbor, the he used was agape. When Paul wrote: "faith, hope, love abide - these three, but the greatest of these is love," the word he used was agape. When Jesus told us to love our enemies, he used the word agape.

Agape is not about what we feel as much as it is what we do. This is what led the writer of I John to ask: "How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a bother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?" (3:17) It is not feeling compassion that is the goal; it is giving of oneself for the good of others that is at the core of Gospel. This is why Jesus could say: "Love your enemy." He was not describing the way we are to feel. He was telling us how to behave. We are to give of ourselves for the good of others, even those who are our enemies. This is the way the world is finally made whole.

This is basically what God did in Christ. God gave of himself for the good of us humans who have pretended to be religious while our attitudes, our priorities, our deeds reveal we live as enemies of God and God's will. As God in Christ gave of himself for our good, even when we lived as enemies of God, so we are to give of ourselves for the good of others.

And the good news is that God's grace at work in our lives enables us to do this. This is the great gift: we are able to live lives of love because God in Christ first loved us. This is the great gift: the gift of being loved, regardless, and it is this gift that enables us to love others, regardless. It is by the grace of God that we are able to love God with all that we are and have and our neighbors as ourselves.

Listen again to the passage of scripture that was read earlier. 7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 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. 10 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. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. . . . 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers and sisters are liars. ... 21 ... those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

All this, God's love for us enabling us to love, is what this sacrament is all about.

God, as we come to receive this sacrament, help us set aside all the ways we distort life and enable us to live the life of love we see in Christ. Amen.

Pastoral prayer:

Let us thank God for our blessings.

God, help us keep our living centered in you so that we are able to receive the benefits of grace you are constantly offering. In this world where little remains the same, keep us focused on you so that we are able us to deal with change after change without fear and with a peace beyond this world's understanding. Give us the power to discern good from evil; and give us the will, strength and courage to do what is good. And when, in the midst of the sinful mess we humans have made, we are faced with no good choices, help us discern which choice will do the least harm and the most good. Give us the faith, hope and strength to pick up our crosses and follow Christ. In the midst of so much that is unloving, enable us to live lives of love. So that we might live as you intend us to live, keep our living centered on all this sacrament represents and proclaims in the name of Christ. Amen.