LOVE IS A VERB!

(Preached on May 10, 2009)

No one has seen God, ever.  But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us — perfect love!               -1 John 4:12

 

The woman came into her pastor’s office full of hatred toward her husband.  “I 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!”  The pastor suggested an ingenious plan.  “Go home and act as if you really loved 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, the pastor called, “Are you ready now to go through with the divorce?”  “Divorce?” she exclaimed.  “Never!  I discovered I really do love him.” 

 

This story sums up the entire sermon.   If you were out late last night, spent too long at the “bingo tables,” or if you have something else on your mind, if you listened to that story, then you got the message of this sermon.  Her actions had changed her feelings.  Motion resulted in emotion.  The ability to love is established not so much by fervent promise as often repeated deeds.

 

That word “love” is one of the most overused and abused words in the English language today.  The word “love” keeps Hallmark in business and gives the poets and songwriters ample material to expound.  “Love” is used by advertisers to sell just about anything, especially when “love” is equated with “sex.”  What is our Mother’s Day celebration about if not love?

 

And love is central to our understanding of God and Jesus.  The writer of the first Letter of John, in these 7 verses, uses the word 21 times.  We begin our worship each week with a reminder of Jesus’ command to love God and love one another.  But the love Jesus is talking about is a unique brand of love.  It has little to do with what people label as love in our world today.  It is in another league.  The word translated love most often in the words of Jesus and the writers of the New Testament is the Greek word “agape.”  (I know you may have heard this before, but it needs repeating to rescue the word from triviality.) 

Agape was an almost forgotten, and colorless, Greek word for love.  Far more central and important in the Mediterranean culture of Jesus’ day were the words Eros and phileo — erotic love, the love of romance, and brotherly love, the love of friendship.  The Christians took the word agape off the shelf, dusted it off and used it to describe the totally new thing which had come with Jesus of Nazareth.  Agape is not primarily a mood or a feeling.  It is not predominantly a sentiment or passion.  It is not based on mutual interests, likes, or attraction.  Agape is a pledged way of life.  It involves not gushy impulses but a strong decision of the will.  Repeat: a decision of the will.  Agape is a commitment.  Commitment is essential to its nature.  Therefore it should never be confused with whether we like certain people or not.

 

This is the love we speak of when we declare that God loves us — God loves the world.  This does not mean God has all positive feelings about earthlings, or that God likes what we do to each other.  It means that God is committed to our well being with all the Divine “heart and soul and mind and strength.”  This is what the author means when he declares “God is love.”   To say this implies that all God’s activity is born in love, motivated by love, and is loving activity.  Perhaps no one understood this more clearly than the 14^th century mystic, Julian of Norwich.  After much wrestling, she finally came down to the thought that there is only one think you can say about God.  “God is love.  That’s it.  Nothing more and nothing less.”  She goes on to expound:

“Would you know our Lord’s meaning in all this?  Learn it well.  Love was the meaning.  Who showed it to you?  Love.  What did God show you?  Love.  Why did God show it to you?  For love.  Hold fast to this and you shall learn and know more about love.  But you shall never learn anything except love from God.”

 

Notice that Julian speaks of “learning” about love.  There is probably no more destructive myth in our culture than the one which says love comes naturally to us.  But the scripture teaches us that love comes to us from God.  We love because God first loved us.  Love is a gift, a talent, a skill.  Like any talent or skill, love is something we must work at to develop.  If you ask a world-class athlete, or pianist, or computer expert, how they became so good at what they do they will tell you, without hesitation: “Practice, practice, practice.”  Yet we think of love as something that we fall in and out of, with no control over it, and no ability to influence it.  That may be true of Eros or phileo, but it is not true of Agape, of God’s love, of the love with which Jesus calls us to fill our lives and devote our attention — heart, soul, mind and strength.

A commitment to love begins with a commitment to sensitivity and a willingness to listen to one another.  It calls for accepting the other person as God created them and is shaping and molding them. This love is nurtured and sustained with prayer and patience.  A man observed a woman in the grocery store with a 3-year-old girl in her cart.  As they passed the cookie section, the child asked for cookies and her mother told her “No.”  The little girl immediately began to whine and fuss.  The mother said quietly, “Now, Ellen, we just have a few more aisles to go; don’t be upset.  It won’t be long.”  The man passed the mother again in the candy aisle.  Of course, the little girl began to shout for candy.  When she was told she couldn’t have any, she began to cry.  The mother said, “There, there, Ellen, don’t cry. Only two more aisles to go, and then we’ll be checking out.”  Later, the man happened to be behind the pair at the checkout, where the little girl immediately began to clamor for gum and burst into a terrible tantrum upon discovering there would be no gum purchased today.  The mother patiently said, “Ellen, we’ll be through this checkout stand in five minutes, and then you can go home and have a nice nap.”  The man decided to compliment the mother.  “I couldn’t help noticing how patient you were with little Ellen.”  “Ellen?” said the mother, “I’m Ellen.  My little girl’s name is Tammy!”

 

Yes, often the patience required for a commitment of love is needed most for us and to encourage us in our commitment. This type of love is not easy but the more we practice this commitment of love, the more powerful is our witness to the world of a God who is love.  Hank was sitting at the bar after work, drinking and shooting his mouth off.  He declared that the problem with church people is that they say one thing on Sunday and are crooked as a dog’s hind leg the rest of the week.  When he was done drinking, he went out to his car in the parking lot only to find out that his battery was dead.  Hank began ranting and raving.  Shaking and upset, a quiet man who was the designated driver for another group of men told Hank to go back in and have a couple cups of coffee.  Later the quiet man returned into the bar and told Hank that he jump-started Hank’s care battery.  Hank quietly asked the man why he did this.  The man said that he was a Christian who practiced his faith during the week.  This is the type of unconditional love which filled Jesus’ life and which the author of 1 John calls us to practice.