1 John 4:7-16
I was around 15 years old at the time. I was the son of a Uniting Church Minister, and he was preaching. I was sitting in the balcony of the church with a few of the other young people. It was small country town where everybody knew everybody.
As dad was preaching, I heard him say these words, “A young man came up to me the other day, I won’t tell you his name because it would embarrass him, and he said ‘dad’” … At this moment numerous members of the congregation glanced back to me in the balcony. It had to be me, my brother was away at boarding school in Sydney.
In that moment I knew the betrayal not simply of my father but the betrayal of the church. It was a betrayal my father experienced many times himself in ministry. Such to the point that when I came to give my father a letter to candidate for ministry my mother who was here simply said, “You should know better.”
“You should know better.” Clearly, I didn’t, but I did come into ministry with my eyes wide open to the failings of the church and its people.
Just this week I was teaching a Year 10 religion class and I shared with them the Compass episode entitled “For the Love of God: How the church is better and worse than you ever imagined.” It covers the Crusades and association of Jesus with violence and then moves into the 'troubles' in Ireland during the late Twentieth century before moving on to the message and ministry of Martin Luther King Junior.
In teaching this lesson I made the comment that taken at face value, based on the history of the church and its current failings, you would not want to touch the church with a 10-foot pole. Part of why I am saying all of this is to recognise difficulties are nothing new for us as Christian people. Division, mistakes and failings are par of the Christian life.
Yet here we are. Here I am. Here you are. But, why?
I think that the first letter of John gives us a clue. “We love because God first loved us.” Or maybe we stay “because God first loved us.” It is God’s love which holds us fast beyond the failings of us as individuals and as an institution. The God who comes to us in Jesus.
So, in this moment, on this day, in the midst of your personal life journey and your journey as a congregation my question is how you understand and find love now. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it sound like? What does it taste like? Because it is precisely in times of trouble that we need to draw on love and to recover its meaning.
But as U2 sang in their wisdom in the song Walk on “love is not the easy thing.”
Love is not the easy thing.
- Not when we have encountered suffering.
- Not when we have encountered betrayal.
- Not when there has been a break down in trust.
- Not when we are dealing with grief.
- Not when we say the injustices of the world around.
- Not when we feel as though we are walking through the alley of the shadow.
- No, love is not the easy thing.
And as Christians we know this for it is seeing Christ on the cross that we see and know God’s love. As we sing in the old hymn “When I survey the wondrous cross”:
- See from his head, his hands, his feet,
- Sorrow and love flow mingled down;
- Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
- Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
But what does it mean for us to love one another having encountered this love of God. Firstly, we should know that love is far more than an emotion.
Working in an educational setting I’ve often encountered the quote by Maya Angelou, the American writer, poet, and activist.
She said, 'I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.' There may be some truth in her words but what is done and what is said matter, and these things matter because they lead us to how we feel.
So, as we contemplate our human expressions of love and how we are feeling now it is worth reflecting on our human expression of how we love one another.
Back in 1992, a few years before I was giving my dad the letter to say I wanted to candidate for ministry, Gary Chapman wrote this great little book called The Five Languages of Love.
In the book Chapman spoke about how we as human beings express and receive love with one another. He spoke about these five ways we give and receive love:
- Words of affirmation
- Acts of service
- Receiving gifts
- Quality time, and
- Physical touch
Whilst I don’t think Chapman’s work is grounded in empirical research, I would suggest that there is something valuable here for us to reflect on because his work helps us understand why love is not the easy things.
You see if you gave me a gift thinking that I would understand that you love me but what I needed was to hear was words of affirmation that told me I was doing a good job then the gift and its intention are lost in translation. If I gave you a hug and then moved on but what you really needed was quality time then you would be left wondering why I didn’t care. Even the basics of understanding how we can love one another are not an easy thing. The requires us to listen deeply and take notice of each other and consider how we connect to another person’s need to feel loved and include.
In our attempts at loving one another and finding the right way to do this I was reminded of the words from Philippians:
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset of Christ Jesus.”
No, love is not the easy thing. And rebuilding that sense of love which involves trust and hope and new life after encountering confusion is hard work. But for me it is the work of resurrection. It is the work of understanding love. It is not the easy thing but it is the work of a resurrection people.
During Lent I read daily devotions from a book called On Earth as in Heaven. It is quotes from the works of N.T. Wright compiled by his son Oliver. In one of his reflections Wright acknowledges lent as a time to weed the garden and maybe even to do some serious digging to root things out.
Then he goes on to say, “Easter is the time to sow news seeds and to plant out a few cuttings.” To be able to do this requires us to have hope. Hope in the signs of new life and resurrection because how often to we lean on the words, “God’s mercies are new every morning, great is thy faithfulness.”
Hope doesn’t lead us to complacency though. It leads us to action. I saw an add on TV for an interview with Jane Goodall which is coming up. At aged 90 she is still working, and it is hope that drives her to do so. I did a little googling, and she has lots of quotes about hope. This one comes from here book aptly titles The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times.
“Hope is often misunderstood. People tend to think that it is simply passive wishful thinking: I hope something will happen but I’m not going to do anything about it. This is indeed the opposite of real hope, which requires action and engagement.”
(Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times.)
In the midst of all the mistakes that we make as people in the church, whether personal or institutional, we nurture a hope in things not seen. This is faith. We tend the seedlings of new life, we plant new cuttings, we reach out to one another tentatively trying to find the way of love because God first loved us. We draw strength from the Holy Spirit, and we lean into our relationship with Jesus in whom we abide and who abides us for in him we know that we are loved.
It is said that Karl Barth, possibly the greatest Protestant thinker of the twentieth century, when asked what was the most import theological truth that he knew said these well-known words:
“Jesus loves me this I know, and the Bible tells me so.”
Many of you will have heard about the different words used for love used in the Scriptures. Love is communicated through four Greek words which are eros, storge, philia, and agape. They are characterized as romantic love, family love, brotherly love, and unconditional love. One of my mentors Professor James Haire once said to me that whenever we read the word agape in the Greek we should read it as “Jesus dying on the cross”.
Love is God’s action towards us and whilst we may seek to express agape in our community our stumbling attempts usually look more like eros, storge, or philia. But that’s O.K. because in these feeble expressions we encounter love and seek to love one another because God loved us.
To return to my religion lesson with Year 10 this week one of the students asked me the difference between Christian and Catholic. Having spent nearly 12 years on the national dialogues between the Roman Catholic and Uniting Church in Australia I could have said many things. But I would begin by reflecting on the idea that Catholics are Christians and denominations area a sign of our unfaithfulness to the teaching to love one another.
But I would then also reflect on the reality that I learnt many things and one of them from Bishop Michael Putney, who I counted as a friend and mentor. He has a wonderful expression which connects to N.T. Wright’s concept that we plant seeds and cuttings. Bishop Putney used to say that when “When Peace breaks out we see the kingdom of God.” I would go to say that when pace breaks out, we encounter hope, and we act to proclaim God’s love.
There are days that I am still that 15 year old boy in the balcony grappling with the failures and betrayal of the church of people I thought loved me. There are days that I reflect on my mother’s words “You should know better”. But somehow the Holy Spirit has held me in, and I have seen signs of new life – seedlings springing forth and cuttings being planted. I have found hope in things not seen and when I am struggling, I often think of the last conversation that I had with my father who reminded me “it’s not you who finds God it is God who finds you.” Maybe this is love, that God finds us.
Or, as John wrote, “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.”
Take a moment to contemplate what love looks like now for you and what God is saying to you today.
