Sermon: Guilty of Love

Delivered at Bethel United Methodist Church in West Greenville, South Carolina on May 13, 2012.

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.

Guilty of Love

Scripture:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey His commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

1 John 5:1-5 (NRSV)

And I will live

To carry your compassion

To love a world that's broken

To be Your hands and feet

And I will give

With the life that I've been given

And go beyond religion

To see the world be changed

By the power of Your Name

From "The Power of Your Name" by Lincoln Brewster

"If Christianity were illegal would there be enough evidence to convict you?"

When philosopher Peter Rollins saw this question on a bumper sticker, he was inspired to write a story about a dystopian world in which following Christ has been declared both subversive and illegal. In this story, the main character catches the attention of the authorities and is taken to court. The evidence is presented: photographs of the suspect attending worship services and speaking at church, worship CDs, religious books, poetry and other writings in the suspect's handwriting that declare a love for God, and a well-worn Bible full of underlinings and notes. The suspect is afraid being found guilty and executed but remains silent so as not to deny Christ, as the disciple Peter did when Christ was on trial. All of the evidence is considered, and the suspect is found...

not guilty.

Considering the abundance of evidence presented, it would be quite easy for one to think that the suspect is indeed a devout Christian. Even so, the evidence falls far short of proving that the suspect is truly a follower of Christ. The photographs only suggest that the suspect can speak well and perform well in public. The worship CDs only show that the suspect likes happy, hopeful music. The poetry and other writings about God only prove that the suspect is a good writer. The well-worn Bible and other religious books only prove that the suspect is well read and scholarly. Though the evidence presented is substantial, none of it can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the suspect is truly a disciple of Jesus Christ.¹

In a world in which people are put on trial for the crime of following Christ, what would it take for a person to be found guilty? I think that St. John offers us a clue toward the end of his first letter, where he writes:
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey His commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey His commandments.²

John's exhortation to obey God's commandments, to love God, and to love the children of God calls to mind an encounter between Jesus and an unnamed scholar of the Jewish Law. The scholar asks Jesus, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" Jesus replies,
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.³

Jesus said that the second greatest commandment to love one's neighbor is like the greatest commandment to love God, and John wrote, "Everyone who loves the parent loves the child." Perhaps Jesus did not really offer the religious scholar two different commandments but rather a single commandment stated in two different ways. Perhaps there is actually no distinction between loving God with all one's heart, soul, and mind and loving one's neighbor as oneself. Perhaps love for God and love for other people are actually inseparable, like two sides of the same coin. At another time, Jesus said to His disciples, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."⁴ It would seem that following Christ, loving God, and loving other people are somehow inextricably linked.

God wants all of us to love each other, because God loves each and every one of us, God's children.

In the short film She, pastor Rob Bell recalls biking on a trail in the woods where he comes across a family of geese in his way. He tries to provoke them to scatter from the trail when the largest goose issues forth what he calls a "truly satanic noise" and "a sound that no human being should ever have to endure." By this time, Rob realizes that he has upset the mother. Still intent on intimidating the geese he backs up and begins walking toward them very quickly. The mother goose then assumes attack position, issues forth a hiss "straight from the pit of hell," and charges him. He then throws his bike over his shoulder for his own protection and runs down the trail in the opposite direction, away from the geese.⁵

Today, on Mother's Day, we celebrate the love of a mother for her children. As fierce and protective the love of a mother may be, it pales in comparison to the love that God, our heavenly Mother and Father, has for each of us. The love of God, like the love of a mother, is extended not only to good, obedient children, but to bad, wayward children as well. Remember Christ's Parable of the Prodigal Son: when the younger, wayward son returns home having squandered his part of the family fortune, the father, representing God, welcomes him home, throws him a party, and pleads with the bitter older son to join in the celebration.⁶ In this story, the father never gives up on either of his sons, good or bad.

Jon Acuff, on his website Stuff Christians Like, shares the story of hiring a moving company when he and his family moved from Atlanta to Nashville. The two men who helped them move their belongings showed up late, were argumentative, complained a lot, and made Jon's wife feel very uncomfortable. In a moment of frustration, Jon prayed that he would see the two movers the way that God sees them. At that moment, he heard God say to him, "They're two of My favorite people."⁷ That day, Jon learned that two people he couldn't stand were among God's billions of favorite people.

As Christians, we are so quick to dismiss and denounce people who do not believe like we do or behave like we do, but I wonder if God actually takes offense when we have such an attitude. When we say hateful things about people we don't like, perhaps, if we stop and listen, we can hear God saying to us, "That is my beloved child you're talking about." How much more is God offended when we actually act out of malice or hatred toward other people?

Because God loves each of us, we are called to love each other. One of the greatest treatises on love, in my humble opinion, was written by St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church. Paul begins his discourse poetically:
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.⁸
Here Paul reminds us that love is everything and that anything without love is nothingness itself. Perhaps we can articulate our faith with the wit and wisdom of C.S. Lewis and with the vulnerability and poignancy of Donald Miller, but, if we are not speaking in love, we are only making noise. Perhaps we have skills, talents, and abilities that border on the miraculous, but, if we do not show people love through these gifts, we have nothing to offer. Perhaps we share everything we own, but, if we are not sharing love, we are not sharing anything.

Paul continues his discourse, with a beautiful description of love:
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.⁹
Love is not inwardly focused but outwardly focused. Love is not concerned with self-preservation or with getting its own way: love is concerned for the well-being of others. Love does not ask, "What can you do for me?" Instead, love asks, "What can I do for you?" These are beautiful insights into the true nature of love, but notice that nowhere in this treatise on love does Paul offer us a clear-cut definition of love. Love is like God in that it cannot truly be defined: it can only be experienced and then clumsily described with our faltering human language.

Paul concludes his discourse on love by saying, "And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."¹⁰ Here Paul shocks us by saying that love is greater than hope or even faith. These can be challenging words when so often in the church we emphasize the necessity of faith and the hope for eternity. How can love possibly be more important than faith? Perhaps love, by its very nature, contains both faith and hope. Perhaps all people, Christian or otherwise, who truly love their fellow human beings already have faith and hope in something they don't necessarily realize.

Peter Rollins, in his book Insurrection, offers some additional thoughts about love. First, love does not exist in the sense that it "stands forth from the background": instead, love shows us that other people exist by ushering them from the background into our sight. Second, love does not declare itself to be sublime, beautiful, or glorious: instead, love shows us that other people are sublime, beautiful, and glorious. Third, love is not meaningful: instead, love saturates our lives with meaning.¹¹ "Love," Rollins says, "is so humble she hides away."¹²

When we truly love other people, the beliefs of our hearts are lived out in our actions. When we love, we affirm the divine importance of each and every individual as, not just someone worth dying for, but someone worth living for. When we love, we show the world our hope that there is more to life than simply "looking out for number one." When we love, we live out our faith that the world was meant for so much more than the hatred, violence, and poverty it now knows so well.

St. John, earlier in his letter, writes, "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love."¹³ John's proclamation that "everyone who loves is born of God and knows God" calls us to ask the question, What is an atheist? Perhaps true atheism is not just the rejection of some concept of God but the rejection of love itself, for "God is love." Perhaps the true atheist is not someone who refuses to believe in - let's face it - a very finite, human understanding of an infinite God, but someone who simply refuses to love. Perhaps a Christian who does not truly love is not really a Christian, and perhaps an atheist who truly does love is not really an atheist.

Later in the letter, John writes:
And [God's] commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?¹⁴
John has stated that "everyone who loves is born of God" and that "whatever is born of God conquers the world." What logically follows is the proclamation of the ancient poet Virgil, "Omnia vincit Amor" - "Love conquers all" - or, as Rob Bell might simply say, "Love wins."

Let us now return to the question at hand: In a world in which following Christ is a crime, what would it take to be found guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt? To be found guilty of truly following Christ, one must be found guilty of love, so who is it that will be found guilty of love?

Christ offers us a vision of the future when He ushers in His kingdom here on earth. To His right, He will gather the faithful, the "sheep," and to His left, He will gather the faithless, the "goats." Christ will turn to those at His right hand and say:
Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed Me, I was naked and you gave Me clothing, I was sick and you took care of Me, I was in prison and you visited Me... Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of My family, you did it to Me.
Christ will then turn to those at His left hand and say:
You that are accursed, depart from Me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave Me no food, I was thirsty and you gave Me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome Me, naked and you did not give Me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me... Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.¹⁵

In this vision of the future, Christ has nothing to say about anyone's theology, doctrines, or religious beliefs. In fact we know nothing about the beliefs of anyone present except that the sheep did not believe they were helping Christ and that the goats did not believe they were neglecting Christ. In this vision, Christ only cares about how the love within a person's heart is made manifest in acts of kindness for the last, the least, and the lost. The sheep at Christ's right hand are the ones found guilty of love. There are witnesses to testify against them, for they fed the hungry, gave water to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, nursed the sick, and visited the prisoner. The people they served are the people with whom Christ directly identifies. The goats at Christ's left hand are acquitted of love, for there is no evidence whatsoever of love at work in their lives and no witnesses to testify against them. In their loveless lives, the goats both denied and neglected Christ, not in what they did, but in what they left undone.

Mother Teresa, who was renown for her work with the sick and impoverished in Calcutta, India, took Christ's vision of the future very literally. In an interview with Time magazine, when she was asked what her order did after their early-morning prayer time, she answered, "We try to pray through our work by doing it with Jesus, for Jesus, to Jesus. That helps us to put our whole heart and soul into doing it. The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved - they are Jesus in disguise."¹⁶ I don't think anybody would argue that Mother Teresa was not guilty of loving God and loving her neighbor.

"If Christianity were illegal, would there be enough evidence to convict you?"

If following Christ were a crime, would there be enough evidence to find you guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt of loving your neighbor as Christ loved you?

Amen.


Notes:
1 - Peter Rollins. The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales. 2009, Paraclete Press. pp 3-9
2 - 1 John 5:1-3a (NRSV)
3 - Matthew 22:34-40 (NRSV quoted)
4 - John 13:35 (NRSV)
5 - Rob Bell. NOOMA She | 021. 2008, Flannel.
6 - Luke 15:11-32. See also: Ed Dobson. "The Father." Mars Hill Bible Church podcast, 07/04/10.
7 - Jon Acuff. Stuff Christians Like: "Seeing People." 06/22/11.
8 - 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (NRSV)
9 - 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NRSV)
10 - 1 Corinthians 13:13 (NRSV)
11 - Peter Rollins. Insurrection: To Believe is Human, To Doubt, Divine. 2011, Howard Books. pp 121-122
12 - Peter Rollins. "Pyro-theology." Mars Hill Bible Church podcast, 02/20/11.
13 - 1 John 4:7-8 (NRSV)
14 - 1 John 5:3b-5 (NRSV)
15 - Matthew 25:31-46 (NRSV quoted)
16 - Edward Desmond. "Interview with Mother Teresa: A Pencil In the Hand Of God." Time, December 4, 1989. (alternate link)

The images featured in this sermon are believed to be public domain.


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