A Fourth Church Sermon by Joanna M. Adams

May 11, 2003 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

What Love Demands

Joanna M. Adams
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 23
1 John 3:16–24

“We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”

1 John 3:16 (NRSV)

Fill us, O God, with holy love, and open to us the treasures of your wisdom. We have been much distracted in recent days, and so we pray that in your mercy you would turn your face directly toward us and once again show us your glory through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Today, as Fourth Presbyterian Church ordains to office new classes of Deacons, Elders, and Trustees, I thought it might be helpful to have one of the church officers rather than the preacher bring the morning message.

Now lest any of those being ordained have a nervous breakdown, thinking I am about to call on him or her, I hasten to add that the church leader I have in mind was an elder who lived 1,900 years ago in an ancient seaport city in Asia Minor. His name was John. There are three letters in the New Testament that bear his name. It is to John that one of the most frequently quoted declarations about the divine nature is attributed. It is a sentence that you surely memorized when you were a child in Sunday school: “God is love.” That is not the only bold statement that John made. He is also famous for proclaiming that “God is light, and in God there is no darkness at all.”

I was tempted to preach the sermon this Ordination Sunday on the topic of light. After all, that is a favorite theme around here. This congregation understands its mission as being “a light in the city,” but I decided that was too easy a message for today. Much more controversial, believe it or not, is the subject of the love of God. This subject, the nature of the love of God, threatened to tear apart the Christian church in its fledgling years, and John was up to his elbows in the struggle. On one side of the argument were those who maintained that God is love but that God’s love is of an ethereal nature and that God would never send a son who would become involved in the human condition, sullied by earth and flesh and death. (1) For them, the savior sent by God was a heavenly, spiritual Christ.

On the other side stood John the Elder. He was convinced that God’s love was not merely an abstract quality but was personally and fully embodied in God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who was truly human, who experienced the sufferings, the longings, and joys of actual human existence. “How can we know that God is love?” John the Elder asked. “We know love by this, that Jesus laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” Already, John has “stopped preaching and goes to meddling,” as some like to say, making the connection between theology and ethics. (2) It’s not only that God’s love is a sacrificial, self-giving kind of love but that those who follow Christ ought to love as God loves. If God sends only a spiritual son, then there is no need for those who follow him to do much of anything other than think ethereal thoughts, attend church teas, and participate in interesting intellectual discussions. But if in Jesus Christ, God became deeply involved in solidarity with the human family, then we who are baptized in his name have no choice but to do the same. God is love, but God also does love, and so should we. (3)

Are you beginning to understand why John the Elder was such a controversial figure in the early church? He wouldn’t let people get away with simply thinking elevated ideas about Christ. “Little children,” he wrote, acknowledging that those who received his message had not arrived at a fully mature understanding about what discipleship was, “let us love not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

As we ordained the Deacons a few moments ago, I remembered the day that I was ordained as a minister. After that service on a Pentecost Sunday in the late 1970s, the congregation gave a beautiful party for me and my family. There was a wonderful receiving line, a punch bowl with lime sherbet, ginger ale and cherries, as well as little sandwiches cut in triangles. I was having the most wonderful time shaking hands with the members of our nice congregation. After a while I was interrupted by an Elder named Wade Boggs. He tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me, Joanna. Those people over there, I think they need to see you.”

I looked across the church fellowship hall, and there were two of the saddest looking human beings I had ever laid eyes on. I thought, “What in the world are they doing at this nice party?” I walked over to see them. They were the first homeless people I had ever met. Both suffered from mental disability, and they had been on the streets for days. I really believe that God sent them to that party to remind a new minister that if we are called to nothing else, we are called to offer compassion to those who are in special need, who are hungry, who are friendless.

“Let us love,” John says, “not only in word or speech, but in truth and action.” It took me four hours to find them shelter for the night. I had to take the husband to the men’s shelter and the wife to the women’s shelter. They both wept because they were worried they would never see one another again. I went back and told the Elders about what an outrageous situation that was. Before too long, that church opened the first night shelter for homeless people in downtown Atlanta.

“Little children,” John said, “God is love.” As we mature, spiritually we come to understand that God not only is love, but God does love. Those who are called to be the vessels of God’s love in the world can do no less than to act in love.

This little children business does make me want to take a brief Mother’s Day excursus. The Bible speaks of God’s love in action, many times using the image of God as father, God as shepherd. The prophet Isaiah suggests God can be understood as a mother who cannot forget her nursing child. Last Mother’s Day, a friend who is also a Presbyterian pastor and mother and grandmother, sent me a tribute to mothers. I will share a few lines in honor of all those who gave us birth today. These words are in honor of mothers:

This is for young mothers stumbling
Through diaper changes and sleep deprivation.
And mature mothers who have learned,
And are still learning,
To let go.
For working mothers and stay-at-home mothers.
Single mothers and married mothers.
Grandmothers whose wisdom and love remain a constant
For their grown children
And their children’s children. . . .
This is for mothers whose children have gone astray,
And who can’t find the words to reach them.
For all the mothers who bite their lips sometimes until they bleed
When their 14-year old dies [his] hair green. . . .
This is for all mothers whose heads turn automatically
When a little voice calls “Mom?” in a crowd,
Even though they know their own offspring are at home
Or grown up. . . .
What makes a good mother anyway?
Is it patience?
Compassion?
The ability to nurse a baby,
Cook dinner,
And sew a button on a shirt,
All at the same time?
Or is it the heart?

Never forget God has a heart, a heart that does not just feel, but acts bravely, sacrificially, wisely, on behalf of all of God’s children.

Belief and love, truth and action, obedience and abiding in God—they all go together. Love is never just an emotion; it is an action verb. Love in a Christian organization is always active, channeling the divine love that flows through us, to others, then back to us, and back to God. Round and round it goes and never stops. As the psalmist said, “God’s steadfast love endures forever.”

Someone asked me an interesting question about Fourth Presbyterian Church. “What are the constants here?” he wanted to know. “What has been the rudder that has steered this congregation through the years?”

Three words came to my mind:

Hope—hope in God and a real trust that when God gives us a real challenge, God will give us the resources to meet it.

Next came faith. The taproot of this church goes deep into the heart of the gospel of Christ.

Finally, this church is about love, love of God, love of neighbor. It is a congregation that does not just “talk the talk” but walks the walk of love. I cannot imagine a more important witness to make in our day than the witness that a life lived in a self-absorbed way, without concern for others, is antithetical to the life that God would have us live. In his book The Human Option, Norman Cousins wrote, “The highest expression of civilization is not its art, but the supreme tenderness that people are strong enough to feel and show toward one another. If our civilization is breaking down as it appears to be it is not because we lack the [intellect] to meet its demands, but because our compassion is dull.”

God commanded us to act in love, perhaps because it is clear we tend toward self-absorption. John makes the glad promise that when we are brave and bold to live in love, we enter into the very presence of God.

When you obey God’s commandments to love,” God abides in you, and you abide in God.

Everyone is talking these days about gambling, about William Bennett and video poker machines, and whether or not we should build a casino in Chicago. I do not know what John the Elder would have said about either of those topics, but I do know that he was in favor of wagering everything in life on the power of love. So what if conventional wisdom says just the opposite? Love is the foundation of the universe. It is the one eternal force that will never end. When we act in love, through small acts of kindness and service, we are doing nothing less than being the revelation of the very nature of God in our time. (4)

I close with these words of challenge, directed both to the new officers and to all of us. They were written by the insightful psychiatrist Dr. Karl Menninger some years ago:

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for some underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you’ve got and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

That is exactly what God did. Gave the world God’s best, I mean.

May the power of your love work in us, O God, doing far more than we ever would ask or think, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Notes
1. David Rensberger, “God Is Love,” Weavings, January/February 1998, pp. 16–21.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.