Jn 16:29-33 & 1 Jn 4:7-12, 17-21

18 May 2003

5th Sunday of Easter

“Love” (Part 2)

            I’m not sure what to say, other than…it’s finally caught up with me.  The time has arrived when I’ve set out for myself a sermon I really don’t want to preach.  (Well, I do and I don’t!)  Last week, I said that love is something very difficult to define.  It defies explanation!  When we choose to live by the way of love, we set such a high bar for ourselves.  A whole lot of pettiness has to take a back seat.  The same is true when we accept the challenge of hospitality, of welcoming the stranger as Christ.

            I can’t claim to be very knowledgeable about, or to be a very good practitioner of, the way of love.  I find myself constantly having to re-learn lessons that I should have already learned.  When it comes to traveling the path of love, I need all the roadmaps I can get!  Thus, my sense of reluctance when approaching this sermon.

            Considering the incredible, awesome statement in our epistle reading, “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8), I wonder:  what do we make of that?  Is it possible to reverse the words, as some suggest, to say “love is God”?  It depends, I guess, on what we mean by “love” (and I suppose, what we mean by “God”).

            Add to that the amazing way our gospel reading ends.  Jesus tells his disciples to “take courage; I have conquered the world!” (Jn 16:33).  When it comes to courage, my displays of that have been few and far between.

            But that’s my theme for today.  Last week, my focus on love put into practice was hospitality.  This week, drawing on today’s scriptures, it is courage as the expression of love.  It is, after all, love that gives us courage.  Love can cause us to move mountains, to hurdle all kinds of obstacles, to…say things we never thought we would say!

            Still, I don’t want to leave that statement in 1 John too quickly.  God is love.  For some, there seems to be ample evidence to the contrary.  For example, think of some things that the insurance industry calls acts of God:  earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes!  Even though there are scientific explanations for all that, I suppose it’s understandable if one were to see a divine hand at work.

            But what about events caused by the human hand—things we can’t blame on forces of nature?  It could be something relatively minor, like an insult, or something as horrific as the Holocaust or the attacks of September 11.  People ask, “Why did God let this happen?” or even more directly, “Why did God do this?”

            William Sloane Coffin, one of the twentieth, and now twenty-first, century’s best-known ministers, has had an interesting life:  World War 2 combatant, employee of the CIA, and civil rights marcher with Martin Luther King, Jr.  He addresses the concerns I just mentioned.

“If, as Scripture says, ‘God is love,’” Coffin says, “then human freedom is real…[F]reedom is the absolutely necessary precondition of love.  We are not slaves but children of our Father, free to do good, free to sin.  So, when in anguish over any human violence done to innocent victims, we ask of God:  ‘How could you let that happen?’ it is well to remember that God at that very moment is asking the exact same question of us.”[1]

In a way, it would be so much easier if our God weren’t a God of love.  It would be much easier if we had a god of omens.  You see, with a god of omens—a god of fate—we’re relieved of the burden of freedom.  All we have to do is follow orders!  I say “burden” of freedom, because freedom means choice, and choice can be an irritating, worrisome, even terrifying, thing.  Love carries responsibility.  It means that we are our brother’s and sister’s keeper.

The good news for us is that we have a Lord who, as he says, has “conquered the world.”  What could that mean?  I think we’re safe in saying that Jesus isn’t talking about military might.  That option is presented to him more than once, and he rejects it every time.

Jesus’ victory over the world has more to do with his fearlessness.  He repeatedly tells his disciples to “fear not.”  One who doesn’t live in fear has no use for weapons.  But we, sinful and fearful as we are, and possessing little in the way of love and faith, press for the tools and methods of violence, believing that that is what courage is all about.

During our last Wednesday night service, we had a brief discussion on the question of pacifism.  It was prompted by a line from the prayer that we’ve been using during the Easter season:  “May my hands never harm a living being.”[2]  As much as I admire the pacifist position, I can’t really claim to be one.  And by the way, there’s a world of difference between a pacifist and someone who’s simply too scared to fight!  I tend, for better or worse, to go along with the just war tradition, which sets out several determining factors on the appropriateness of lethal force, among them being just cause, proportionality, and last resort.  If these and other factors are taken seriously, then the just war position comes very close to the pacifist one.

I go into all of this to clarify the point that, for Jesus, conquering the world isn’t a matter of lethal force; it’s a matter of…soul force.  Love compels him to walk the path of nonviolence, a path that requires courage.  And it’s my opinion that Jesus is one of the few true pacifists to ever walk the earth.  For him, it’s no political position; it’s who he is.

For the last two weeks, during our affirmation of faith, we’ve used sections of A Brief Statement of Faith, which comes from the 1983 reunion of the northern and southern churches to form our present denomination, the PC(USA).  The focus in that confession is on members of the Holy Trinity:  two weeks ago, it was God the Son—last week, it was God the Father.  In a few moments, we’ll focus on God the Spirit.

There’s a line that speaks of the source of our courage.  “In a broken and fearful world the Spirit gives us courage” to do a variety of things, which the confession goes on to name.  In verse 18 of our epistle reading, we learn, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”  Both love and courage come from God, and both of them represent the defeat of fear.  The greater the love, the less the fear.  The greater the love, the greater the courage.

Here’s another one:  the greater the love and courage, the greater our ability to deal with conflict.  And deal with conflict we must, since conflict is a part of human nature—it’s a part of life.  It’s a part of our life here at Westminster.  I know that comes as a shock to you, but it nonetheless is true!  Some people think that Christians should never be in conflict with each other, but the real test of our Christianity is how we respond to conflict, to resistance to change.  Without conflict, there can be no transformation.  Therefore, we should embrace it!  (Like I’ve said before, I didn’t say it’s easy!)

In the current newsletter put out by the PC(USA) Network for Churchwide Transformation, there are some helpful suggestions when dealing with conflict.[3]  They include:  listening to the other person’s point of view even if you feel they’re not listening to you, seeking to create a climate of trust, staying calm and engaged, looking for common ground, maintaining a clear focus on the vision even if you’re attacked, and above all, engaging in daily prayer and reflection.  Take care of your spirit.

If we neglect our inner life, we lose contact with the source of love and courage.  We head down the path of escalating animosity to either fight or flight—to actually enjoying conflict or attempting to avoid it at all costs.  Please don’t just dismiss this as some generic advice.  I’ve heard some disturbing things.  Our words can either hurt or help.  We can act against the Spirit, or we can work with the Spirit.  We all need to pray for the grace to do the latter.

Yesterday, Banu and I went to the Benedictine monastery in Erie for a meeting with those who, like us, are in their first year as oblates.  We’re called initiates, which fortunately, involves no type of hazing!

Anyway, we looked at Chapter 4 of the Rule of Benedict, which is called “The Tools for Good Works.”  There’s a section of it that really jumps out at me, one that’s especially meaningful for us today.  It reads, “Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way; the love of Christ must come before all else.  You are not to act in anger or nurse a grudge.  Rid your heart of all deceit.  Never give a hollow greeting of peace or turn away when someone needs your love.”

Perhaps the greatest courage is to be real with each other—to be transparent.  I realize that, to some extent, that’s impossible, because we don’t even fully understand ourselves.  Still, we do carry grudges, things that we simply won’t let go of!  When we greet each other with peace, we’re just going through the motions.

         But the thing that really jumps out at me is that last part:  don’t “turn away when someone needs your love.”  That brings me full circle, back to the beginning of the sermon.  That’s a lesson that I—and all of us—need to continually re-learn.

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