GOD’S MISSION: LOVE

(Preached on Sunday, February 1, 2004)

But strive for the greater gifts.  And I will show you a still more excellent way.                                                             -I Corinthians 12:31

 

How would you define love?  (Try to get some responses.)

What would you say if I told you that you had all gotten it wrong?  You would probably argue with me.

But I am surprised that none of you said this: “Love is the score of zero in a tennis match.”  I know some of you have been watching the Australian Open this past week.

 

My point is that what words mean depends entirely upon the ways they are used within specific contexts of use.

If we are going to understand what “love” means in the scriptures, we cannot begin with abstract notions about what God’s love should be.  Rather, we must engage the nitty-gritty ways in which the word is actually used.

 

The same is true for understanding what love is and means in life.  If we are to understand what love is, then we must remove it from the abstract ruminations of our minds and get out and use it.

What we will discover is that love is always about others and not ourselves.

It is about building community and integrating ourselves within it, not about benefits for isolated individuals whether ourselves or others.

Love is doing the things that Paul describes in I Corinthians 13:4-7, not only for the present but for eternity.

These verses are certainly significant in our romance-addled culture.  Every other song on the radio, every other magazine on the rack, every other film at the theater seems to present “love” in terms of emotion, drenched in sentimentality and steeped in passion.

Not just sexual love either — parent-child relations, friendships, all sorts of relationships are presented in terms of how people feel about each other.

 

In startling contrast, Paul describes love as unselfish behavior.  Love is not described as feeling a particular way about people.  It is treating people in a certain way, regardless of how one feels.

This, of course, is the only sense in which love can be commanded.  It is the only sense that gives meaning to “love your neighbor,” much less “love your enemy.”

God is not primarily concerned with how we feel about our neighbors or our enemies (or even with how we feel about our parents or children or friends or spouses).

God is concerned with how we treat them.

 

A teacher in Texas was helping one of her kindergarten students put on his cowboy boots.  He asked for help and she could see why.  Even with her pulling and him pushing, the little boots still didn’t want to go on.  Finally, the second boot was on and she had worked up a sweat.  She almost cried when the little boy said, “Teacher, they’re on the wrong feet.”  She looked and sure enough, they were.

It wasn’t any easier pulling the boots off than it was putting them on.  She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get the boots back on, this time on the right feet.

He then announced, “They aren’t my boots.”

She bit her tongue, didn’t scream, and once again she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off his little feet.  No sooner they got the boots off and he said, “They’re my brother’s boots.  My Mom made we wear ‘em.”

Now she didn’t know if she should laugh or cry.

But she mustered up the grace and courage she had left to wrestle the boots on his feet again.  Helping him into his coat, she asked, “Now, where are your mittens?”

With large, innocent eyes, he looked up at the teacher and said, “I stuffed ‘em in the toes of my boots.”

Love is patient...it bears all things.

Christian love, God’s love, is acting more than feeling.

 

We can go too far with this point.

Some Christians want to take on popular culture in a way that denies the validity of romantic feelings, and belittle the excitement of infatuation or the strength of sexual desire.

M. Scott Peck does this in his best-seller, The Road Less Traveled.  Drawing on his mentor, Erich Fromm, he describes romantic feelings as illusory, theorizing that they are probably the result of some chemical reaction tripped by the evolutionary tendency to encourage mating.

He warns that such feelings will always be temporary.

I pity him, knowing from my own experience (and from the testimony of a thousand poets) that he is wrong.

But I agree with the point he ultimately wants to make, that the solid foundation of love is behavioral.

Fromm described love as an art that can be taught, practiced, and learned.

It is doubtful whether one can ever teach or learn how to feel a certain way, but with practice we can learn how to act in ways that are patient, unselfish, and kind.

Newspaper columnist and minister George Crane tells of a wife who came into his office full of hatred toward her husband.  “I do not only want to get rid of him, I want to get even.  Before I divorce him, I want to hurt him as much as he has hurt me.”

Dr. Crane suggested an ingenious plan.  “Go home and act as if you really love your husband.  Tell him how much he means to you.  Praise him for every decent trait.  Go out of your way to be as kind, considerate, and generous as possible.  Spare no efforts to please him, to enjoy him.  Make him believe you love him.  After you’ve convinced him of your undying love and that you cannot live without him, then drop the bomb.  Tell him that you’re getting a divorce.  That will really hurt him.”

With revenge in her eyes, she smiled and exclaimed, “Beautiful, beautiful.  Will he ever be surprised!”

And she did it with enthusiasm, acting “as if.”

For two months she showed love, kindness, listening, giving, reinforcing, sharing.

When she didn’t return, Crane called. “Are you ready now to go through with the divorce?”

“Divorce?” she exclaimed.  “Never!  I discovered I really do love him.”

Her actions had changed her feelings.

Motion resulted in emotion.

Love is established by often repeated deeds.

 

What Paul was trying to tell the Corinthians is that love is the most excellent way.

Paul says this because this type of love was the way of Jesus.

Throughout his life and death Jesus demonstrated this love.

He was patient and kind with people.  He was never envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.

Jesus did not insist on his own way but lived God’s way.

He was never irritable or resentful.

He never rejoiced in wrongdoing, but rejoiced in the truth.

Especially in his ordeal of suffering and death, Jesus bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things.  His love never ended.  Even as he was led to his death he trusted in God.  Even on the cross, he loved even those who were crucifying him and spoke words of forgiveness.

Jesus demonstrated in everything he did that his mission was all about love; not sentimental, sappy, Hollywood movie love, but God’s love.

Love lived out in deeds of kindness, compassion, caring, acceptance, forgiveness, justice for all people.

Jesus demonstrated that love is the basis of all God’s dealings with us.