Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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In November 1886, a certain Simon Fallowfield, wrote a now-famous note to his girlfriend, proposing marriage. It ended like this: “I hope you will say nothing about this. If you will not accept of me, I have another very nice woman in my eye, and I think I shall marry her …, but I thought you would suit me mother better, she being very crusty at times.” (In case you’re wondering, the proposal was declined.) Poor Simon’s half-hearted effort did not represent anything close to what we would call “love.” But it might provide a good jumping-off point for talking about what true love is, and why it’s so important for Christians to understand. We need to draw a line here. In the world outside the church, the word “love” has been badly overused and abused and has become super-sentimental, maudlin almost meaningless. But for us it is the holy of holies.

And John tells us why it’s so important for us to get “love” right.. In the fourth chapter, of his letter he says, “God is love….” (“Is,” of course, is an equal sign. And wherever there is an equal sign, the formula can be reversed. So “God equals love; love equals God.” John tells us that love is not one of God’s many attributes, it is his essence.) God cannot stop loving. And, John continues, love, whenever and wherever you find it, is a sure sign of God’s presence: “those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” Love is, as one person has said, “the most characteristic manifestation of God we can ourselves imitate.” We cannot be like God in his wisdom, nor in his power, but (at least in some small and inadequate way) we can “love one another as he loved us.” Love is our vision of God. When we see it, we see Him.

Christian love is a far cry from all the other things that go by the name. One preacher (preparing his sermon) went to the dictionary and looked up the word “love.” He said, “there were many definitions. There was romantic love, and love of country, and brotherly love, and the kind of love that’s closer to friendship. I even found the word love defined as “a zero score in tennis,” but nowhere was there even a hint of the unselfish, sacrificial, unconditional, unmerited, Christ-like love we Christians say is the definition of God.” When you hear the word “love” used on television, or in a movie, or come across it in some romantic novel, ask yourself if, in that context, the word could possibly represent the essence of God. We have to draw boundaries around the word “love” these days, to protect it.
Here we are at the very heart of our faith. This is the roundhouse, where all the tracks of our theology meet. If the good news is that God loves us with a reckless, proactive, never-ending love (in spite of all we are, and aren’t), and if we see that irrefutably in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s Son, then the only question remaining is how to respond. And the answer is everywhere in the New Testament. We respond to God’s love by loving him back and loving other people in the same unconditional way he loves us. God’s love is the model for our love. This is kindergarten Christianity. But we frequently forget what we knew in kindergarten.
Love comes from God. We need to keep the order right. We don’t originate unconditional love, we only imitate God in such love. “Herein in is love,” John writes, “not that we love God but that he loved us and gave himself for us.” He had the order right. God’s the source, the author of love. We can’t love in this remarkable way on our own – it’s not in our nature. Were it not for God, we might, in some animal way, love our offspring, or even those of our own tribe or family. But to love the different, the unlovely, to reach out in love to those we would otherwise hate, that’s not in us. That comes from God. Jesus asked a hard question: “If you only love those who love you, what thank have you? Even the publicans and sinners do that.” When we do accomplish that kind of love, it’s because (as _____ read this morning) we’re branches tied into the vine. Without the vine we could bear no fruit.

Mark Lowry was thirteen years old, in seventh grade, when the doctors diagnosed cancer and ordered surgery and chemotherapy. The surgery came and went. When the time arrived for the chemo, his teacher prepared the class for the fact that Mark would almost certainly lose his hair. The day after the first chemo session, with all his hair still in place, Mark returned to school and found that all eighteen boys in his class were bald. When asked how long they would shave their heads, one boy answered for them all: “Until Mark’s hair grows back.” It was as simple as that. And yet it was as profound as God’s love for us. Far afield of our genetics. Far beyond what anyone could have asked or expected. An amazing grace.

Our love is mostly a matter of gratitude. An old man, thin now and bent slightly at the waste, walks tediously every Friday afternoon down to the ocean, carrying a bucket of shrimp. He pads out to the end of the short pier and, as the sun sets, begins to feed the birds (who have been waiting there for him) with the shrimp. The old man is Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, already a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for valor in the First World War, who in October of 1942, was sent by President Roosevelt to deliver a important, top-secret message to General McArthur. But his B-17 went down in the Pacific, and he and the seven members of his crew ended up in life rafts. They were adrift at see for twenty-four days, fighting the sun, the sharks and the hunger. Rickenbacker encouraged the other men, conjoled them, led them in prayer, but finally, at the end of their rope, having prayed all they could pray, they gave up. Rickenbacker went to sleep, on his back, with his sailor’s cap over his face. He was awakened when he felt something land on that hat, a bird, and he knew that if he could catch it they would get another chance. He did catch it. They ate the bird and used its entrails as bait. And survived. Now, as an old man, he goes back to the water every Friday and feeds the birds. It’s my way of saying “thank you,” he says.
Such a good illustration of the way God saves us and the way we respond with thanks. He came to us when we were utterly lost. Died that we might live. And all we are left to do is to thank him, love him and imitate his sacrificial love in our lives.