Geneva Presbyterian Church

Weekly Sermon

December 16, 2001 - "What's Love Got to Do With It? "

Reverend Anne Benefield
Geneva Presbyterian Church

John 15:12-13 John 4:16

Jesus said, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. God is love, those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Prayer: Gracious God, as we await the coming of the Christ Child, help us to understand your profound love and through this scripture to find ways to receive and share your holy love. Amen. I would like to begin today with the legend of the touchstone. I didn't know the legend until I found it in a book that Robin gave me called Christmas Reflections. James Moore writes: "According to the legend, if you found the touchstone on the coast of the Black Sea and held it in your hand, everything you touched would turn to gold. You would recognize the touchstone by its warmth. The other stones would feel cold, but the touchstone would turn warm in your hand. "Once a man sold everything he had, went to the Black Sea, and began picking up stones, hoping to find the touchstone. After some days passed, he realized he was picking up the same stones again and again. So he devised a plan: Pick up a stone; if it's cold, throw it into the sea. This he did for weeks and weeks. "One morning he picked up a stone. It was cold, so he threw it into the sea. He picked up another. It too felt cold, so he threw it into the sea-and so on and so on. Then he picked up yet another stone. It turned warm in his hand; but before he realized what he was doing, he threw it into the sea! He had the touchstone in his hand, and he threw it away. So dulled by the routine, he didn't recognize its specialness. Absentmindedly, he tossed it aside." [James W. Moore, etc., Christmas Reflections, (Nashville: Dimensions for Living, 2001) p.13-14] The same thing can happen to us at Christmastime. We can become so involved in all the activity and forget that at the very center of our faith is the great love of God. It is good to remember the words of Jesus, "God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son that all who believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life." What does love have to do with it? Everything! Still it's not easy to write a sermon about love. My husband was kidding me earlier this week. He said, "Do you remember how two weeks ago you said it wasn't too hard to preach about hope. Then last week you said it was pretty hard to preach about joy. This week, you could get up and say, 'It's really, really hard to preach about love.'" I laughed but he was right. It is really, really hard to preach about love. So much has been written and said about the love of God in Jesus Christ that it seems impossible to think of something new to say. Nevertheless, I'm going to do my best. Love is the central theme of the Christian faith. I have always treasured the scripture I chose for today's sermon. I use it in every marriage I perform. Listen again to John's words: "God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them." We are not talking about a sentimental, flighty love. We are not talking about Cupid's arrow. We are talking about a living, lasting love-a love that dwells in us and dwells in God and unites us with God. The love of God that we share is more taught than caught and God taught the first lesson of love by sending his only Son as a vulnerable baby born to peasant parents in an occupied country. William Willimon, the Dean of the Chapel of Duke University says, "Christian love is not a stupid unwillingness to look at the world as it is. It is recognition that, because the world is as it is, nothing less than love will do." When Johnny was a baby and cried out at 3 a.m. because he was wet and hungry, he was not sending me a message of love, but I responded to him with a message of love. I rose from sleep to give him what he needed. I was teaching Johnny about love. The love of a mother for a child is placed so deeply in our souls that it feels instinctive. Viktor Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning, wrote about his experiences in Nazi concentration camps. There was a moment of insight that changed his life. He wrote: "A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth…--that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love." Frankl watched as prisoners who shared their food survived and those who jealously guarded each morsel died. The prisoners who shared food had a reason to live. They lived for the love of a child or a friend who needed the food they could share. I'm convinced that the prisoners who shared were taught early in life about loving others. The second lesson of God's love is that it is big-big enough to included everyone. For example, the reason we are asked to love our enemies is because God loves with that kind of impartiality. George F. Regas, a protestant pastor tells this story about Desmond Tutu: "I remember something he said to me as we sat together, just sharing the deep things of the soul. 'George, you know I was raised in the Anglo-Catholic tradition of our church. We would have on the altar a tabernacle in which we would place the consecrated bread and wine-those elements made holy by God. And every time we would come by that tabernacle we would genuflect, we would bow our knee, in respect for God's presence at the altar. You know, I feel, George, like genuflecting every time a white person or a black person comes across my path. Bowing before them because they are vessels of the holy and living God.'" George Regas goes on to write, "I could hardly image that. In that cauldron of violence and bitterness and hatred, Archbishop Desmond Tutu sees in every person the worth they have because they are the children of God." (George F. Regas as quoted in "God's Presence in Each of Us," The Living Pulpit, July-September, 1992, p. 11) The love that dwells in God and unites us with God is more taught than caught and it honors all God's children. This love which has everything to do with our relationship with God and with each other is also a courageous love-a love that takes risks, that jumps right into the thick of things. This love is kind of like "smokejumping." Have you ever heard of "smokejumpers?" Smokejumpers are the elite wildfire fighters who travel to battle wildfires across the west from New Mexico to Alaska. The job requires them to parachute out of a plane at 1,500 feet, scramble through the woods carrying 100-pound packs; dig firebreaks, saw down brush and trees and sleep in the rough. The smokejumpers remind us that dwelling in the love of God often means being willing to jump into flames-to leap from safety and security, and plunge into real-world troubles, showing a powerful and passionate love for the people around us. You can't be a smokejumper from a distance. In the same way, God knew that we couldn't understand his love from a distance. God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him, shall not perish. Love from a safe distance isn't nearly as powerful or as hard as love close up. If you are part of a family, you know that. At our house, it is the best of times and the worst of times, but we are loving each other through it. You don't go from a three-person family to a six-person family without difficulties. You learn how to love through working out the differences. "Many years ago, when the great missionary David Livingstone was serving in Africa, he sent an appeal to England for more workers to come and help him with his mission work. The answer that came back from England was that they would like to send workers to help, but first they needed to know if there was a good road to the outpost. David Livingstone is said to have responded: 'If you are offering to send workers who will come only if the road is easy, I can't use them. Tell them to stay home." The love that abides in God and can abide in us doesn't lead us down an easy road, but it is the only journey worth taking in this life.