Sermon for September 26th (Faith and Love)

How many people have you told, “I love you.”? What did you mean by it? How old were you? Do you still love them? Today’s message is about love and it scares me to death. Not because I think that I am going to say something wrong, or controversial or something like that. But because it’s just too darn easy for this message to fall flat like a day old Pepsi can sitting out in the sun. I believe that love means a lot more than what we’ve accepted it to mean and the reason that I believe this is because of what I read in the Bible about love. We’ve made love into chicken broth when I believe it is something more like Kim Chi.

Has anyone here ever eaten Kim Chi? I have. Only once. Kim Chi is a staple of the Korean diet and is extremely important for that culture. It is made by fermenting vegetables, like cabbage, for a long time. The taste is unparalleled by anything else I have ever tasted. It is spicy, yes, but terrifically pungent and hits you like a ton of bricks. Some people love it (like I said, it is a staple of the Korean diet) but for many Americans (myself included) it is just too much for my nose and tastebuds to handle.

I believe that love, according to the Bible, is much more like Kim Chi than chicken broth. While chicken soup can be comforting when you are sick, Kim Chi is considered one of the most healthy foods you can eat, especially when you are sick (that is, if you can stomach it). In the same way, love, the way it is sold to us as Americans, is all about chocolate hearts at Valentines Day and snuggly teddy bears. But love in the Bible, is presented as something that isn’t always very snuggly and delicious.

There are two statements and two stories that I’d like to present to you that have convinced me that love is much more radical than we make it out to be. The first is this: God is love. Now that sounds nice and all, but have you ever thought about how different you and I are from God? “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Says the Lord. And yet, when we hear that “God is love” we somehow think that Valentine’s Day comes close to what “love” means.

If God’s thoughts are so different than ours. If God’s ways are so different than ours. Than why do we assume that our concept of love is so similar to God’s? Maybe hugs, and kisses, and tolerance, and smiles, and nice words, and doing a few good things for people barely touch the surface of what real love is in God’s eyes. In fact, I think we have definitely underestimated what love is according to a second statement, again from today’s reading: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Hands nailed into rough cut pieces of wood, having your face spit on, a crown of thorns, abandonment, sacrifice, forgiveness . . . that’s what love looks like. A crucified Jesus is the face of love. Have you ever come close to that kind of love on Valentine’s Day? Have we ever come close to that kind of love as a church?

Let’s come clean this morning and admit that we haven’t a clue what love means, at least not the kind of love that “God is” and the kind of love that Jesus had for us in order to die on the cross for us. Why is this so important? Because we have to start over. We have to chuck out our old concepts of love and get a new one—albeit a more radical one, if we are ever to understand how to truly love one another.

You’ve heard the two scripture passages, but now I have two stories of love. The first one is actually the beginning of a rather long story about a Father’s love for his children. “The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. The Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” Some of you might know this story. You might know that, as the story goes on, the man did eventually eat from that tree with the help of his partner. And that Father, the Lord God, cursed that man, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

So what does this loving Father do with his cursed children? This is where the real love shows I believe, “The Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.” Now, does that seem like love to you? Not in most people’s definition of love.

What are the words that you hear when we talk of love in the church? Acceptance. Compassion. Tolerance. So, if “God is love” how is it that He can cast his children out of their garden so that they can’t live forever? What’s so wrong with living forever? When I brought this question up at seminary one time, my professor answered in this way. “If Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of life, they would have lived forever in death . . . as cursed people . . . they would have lived forever in their sin.” The most loving thing for God to do was to make sure they would die so that, one day, in Jesus Christ, their death might be destroyed. So that one day Christ would become a curse to free Adam, Eve and every one of us, from the curses we are under. A loving God does not accept or tolerate sin—he sacrifices himself to free you from sin. “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” This love does not smell like chicken soup . . . it smells like Kim Chi!

But it is more than our definition of love that is so different than God’s. It’s how God DOES love that is so different and how he uses that love to do amazing things in His world. Why is love so important? Because people come to know God through our love for them. No kidding. “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” THEY WILL KNOW we are Christians BY OUR LOVE. And if they know chicken soup love, that what they’ll think God’s love is all about. The kind of love that is nice to visitors, tolerant of newcomers, compassionate for victims. And if they know Kim Chi love, that’s what they’ll think God’s love is all about. The kind of love that is more than a feeling, but willing to sacrifice something important for the sake of a stranger. A kind of love that is passionate for those who are the hurting and the lost. The kind of love that doesn’t just accept someone, but is willing to forgive unconditionally. The most radical kind of love is forgiveness.

Another story, “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’” What did he say? Did he argue for her civil rights? Did he say that they were wrong to judge her? Did he try to get her off the hook? No, he said this, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” They all left.

But the story continues and Jesus’ love becomes much more radical than letting a guilty woman go free. “Jesus straightened up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ ‘No one, sir,’ she said. “then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.’” Jesus forgave her, he did not condemn her. But just as His Father did in the garden of Eden, he did not want her to live forever in her life of sin, “Go now, and leave your life of sin.” He said. What if our church didn’t just love people, or tolerate people, but when we saw someone struggling with a sin, what if we loved people so dearly that we could tell them the truth about it, and never leave their side until their heard and believed that that sin was forgiven.

Maybe you’d like to see more of this kind of love in the church, but how do you get it? “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he is God.” If you want to love as God loves, you must have faith in God, because “God is love”. “We know God through love and rely on God for our love. If you start trying to love on your own you will fail. If God loves through you, He will succeed every time.

If you want to see this kind of love in the church, in your friendship, in your marriage and in your life, there is only one way to get it and it’s not by trying to do it better. You don’t love better just because you are told to (out of fear of punishment if you fail). Remember that there is no fear in love. We love because of faith.

Today, you have another opportunity to put your trust in God, perhaps for the first time and perhaps for the 100th time. Faith isn’t something that you store up over the years, it comes new every morning and every day. If you’d like to know what true love is, pray with me today and risk believing that Jesus Christ truly is the Son of God; that he died on the cross as a sacrifice for your sins; that every wrong thing you have done has been forgiven once and forever. And when the prayer is over, don’t ever start trying to love someone simply on your own—but when you go out this morning—have faith that God is loving through you. “We love because God first loved us.” Amen.