Sermon for Trinity Sunday
Another Love Chapter
By The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer -
“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. 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. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; love is not irritable or resentful; love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Many of you will recognize those words from the Bible’s most famous words about love – 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, words I have read at just about every wedding I have ever officiated at in my 42 years of ordained ministry. Wonderful, caring and loving words, important for us all to hear again and again.
However, today I want to suggest another love chapter, perhaps the most overlooked chapter in the Bible because of what comes right before it.
Everyone knows John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world….” We see it everywhere from bumper stickers to church signs to banners and posters held up at sporting events.
But today I want to look at John 3:17, a verse, as I have just suggested, which is often overlooked – “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
God is not vengeful, not demanding of judgement or appeasement. God is not angry, God is loving. Just plain loving. And the cross is not a mechanism to appease God or to satisfy God’s justice or thirst for blood, but rather is the sign of just how far God will go to show us that God already loves us. The cross testifies that there is nothing God will not do for us in love. Jesus’ resurrection promises that God’s love is more powerful than all things, even death.
It seemed this past week that the entire world had heard about the sermon that the Rev. Dr. Michael Bruce Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA, preached at the royal wedding last Saturday. No other sermon has ever been heard by as many people, more than one hundred million, across the world. And it appears that no other sermon has elicited the kind of response from all over this earth that Dr. Curry’s sermon has.
Curry began by quoting from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King who said “We must discover the power of love, the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make of this old world a new world, for love is the only way.”
Love is the only way.
And, Curry continued, “there’s power, power in love. In any form, any shape of love. There is a certain sense in which when you are loved, you know it. And when someone cares for you, and you know it, when you love and you show it, it actually feels just right.
“There is something right about it. And there is a reason for it. The reason has to do with the source. We are made by a power of love, and our lives were meant – and are meant – to be lived in that love.”
Curry then quoted another New Testament text, 1 John chapter 4, verses 7 & 8 - “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God, and those who love are born of God and know God. Those who do not love do not know God, for God is love.”
“There is power in love. There is power in love to help and heal when nothing else can. There is power in love to lift up and liberate when nothing else will. There is power in love to show us the way to live.”
Curry continued: “Love is not selfish and self-centered. Love can be sacrificial, and in so doing becomes redemptive. And the way of unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive love, that changes lives, and it can change the world.”
And then Bishop Curry got on a roll, as only a great preacher can:
“If you don’t believe me, just stop and imagine. Think and imagine a world where love is the way.
“Imagine our homes and families where love is the way. Imagine neighborhoods and communities where love is the way.
“Imagine governments and nations where love is the way. Imagine business and commerce where love is the way.
“Imagine this tired old world where love is the way.
“When love is the way – unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive love.
“When love is the way then no child will go to bed hungry in this world ever again.
“When love is the way, we will let justice roll down that a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook.
“When love is the way, poverty becomes history. When love is the way, the earth will be a sanctuary.
“When love is the way, we will lay down our swords and shields, down by the riverside, to study war no more.
“When love is the way, there’s plenty of good room – plenty of good room – for all of God’s children.
“Because, when love is the way, we will actually treat each other, well, like we are actually family.
“When love is the way, we will know that God is the source of us all, and that we are brothers and sisters, children of God.
“My brothers and sisters, that is a new heaven, a new earth, a new world, a new human family.”
“Dr. King was right – we must discover love, the redemptive power of love. And, when we do that, we will make of this old world, a new world.”
Why did Bishop Curry’s words solicit such an amazing response from all around this planet? I think it is because we all want to believe that God loves us in this way, but we all have such a hard time believing it. We all carry around our faults, disappointments, past errors and wrongdoings and insecurities like a snail carries around its shell. And that makes God’s love for us so hard to believe, to believe that God, who knows all of this as well as we do, to believe that God, who knows all of our faults and wrong-doings, that God still loves us.
Here is the wonderful, amazing Good News – God does love us all, and God’s love is unconditional. God loves us all with a love that can change our lives, that indeed saves our lives.
God loves you and me more than we can ever imagine. Love is the way, the way to a new heaven, a new earth, a new world, a new human family. And, when we discover and believe that, we can, as Dr. King suggests, help make this old tired world a new world.
John 3:17 – “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Love is the only way.
Amen
(With thanks to the Rev. Dr. Michael Curry and the Rev. Dr. David Lose).
The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer
Senior Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sunday, May 26 & 27, 2018
