It's A Love Story

This is the manuscript for the sermon preached on October 22/23. The Gospel text that accompanies the sermon is Matthew 22:34-46.

I know a man who is loved by God, which is to say I know a man whom God loves. He was born into a loving family and before the man could speak a word he was brought to the baptismal font. Surrounded by his parents, family and sponsors, he was sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the Cross of Christ forever. Promises were made to walk with him in his journey of faith, and in this case, those promises were kept.

This man grew up in the church and was nurtured in his faith. As he grew older he began to explore his faith and how it worked in the wider world. He continued to go to church and through the ups and downs, the joys and the sorrows, he learned to see God in the world.

A fire was kindled in the man’s heart and a call began to take shape. His parents and family friends began to tell him that he ought to be a pastor. As time went on, more people joined the chorus, and he began to listen with growing curiosity. He liked church. He liked the support and the community. He liked what the people of the church did for the wider community. He loved his God. He began to listen to the call.

This man went off to college and continued his education. He dated and learned of broken hearts. He began to see more clearly the scars in the world, the broken people and the broken places and the broken systems that he passed every day. It broke his heart, still does. He knew that God loves all peoples, he knew that God loves the world, but sometimes it seemed that people didn’t love God or each other.

He graduated from college and set off to seminary to follow his call to become a pastor. He took on his classes with excitement, but the more he learned, the more his faith was challenged. The deeper he dug into scripture, the harder the questions became, but he still loved God. And through all the questions and midnight doubts he knew that God still loved him, that God would always love him. He got married while in seminary and began to explore the depths of love that God can create between two people. Through the hardships and joys, the love still remains, and grows because it is nurtured by God. I know a man with whom God is in love. I know this man because well, because he is me.

It’s a love story that is being written. It’s a love story that was initiated by God with the spirit’s movement over the waters at creation. The whole of scripture points to this truth without a doubt. There are countless volumes of theological writings, theological meaning simply “God talk,” that point us to the love of God. We have generations upon generations of stories and witnesses, saints and sinners all of them, who have gone before us boldly proclaiming the love God has for the world. What we have in our relationship with God is perhaps the greatest love story that has ever been told. We write new chapters to this love story every day.

This love story is centered in one word, love. It seems like too simple of a statement because I think that over the years we have lost some of what it means to love. Hollywood and pop culture have taken from us the meaning of love and wrapped it in hot pink and fireworks and sex. Love is easy, love is quick, love is something we can find, throw away and find again within a 90 script. The love I am talking about goes much deeper, pulling on heart strings that we may not even remember. The love I am talking about is what the Greeks called, agape.

Agape is not just a word, it’s way of living. It literally means “a relatively high level of interest in the well-being of another.” Agape is not just about feelings, it’s about taking interest in the life of another person, the wholeness of another person, the completeness of another person. Happiness, comfort, security, good, welfare, safety, and health are all aspects of well being. They’re all synonyms, they’re all interchangeable, and they’re all part of another’s well being. You cannot take interest in someone’s well being and leave out their safety or health. I guess you could, but you would be missing part of their being. You would be forgetting a part of who they are and what makes them human. You would be missing part of agape.

This idea of agape is found twice in our Gospel text today. The Pharisees have grown weary in their attempts to trap Jesus in his own words and find a way to arrest him. They will waste no more time. They send out their best, a lawyer Matthew tells us. Now this man is not a lawyer in the modern sense, he’s not bound by a legal constitution. This man is Biblical professor of high degree, a man who has spent nearly his whole life studying the Law of Moses. If he can get Jesus to contradict the law, the Pharisees will get their arrest of Jesus on account of false teachings.

This lawyer steps forward and asks Jesus a simple question, “Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” Out of 613 laws in the books of Moses, which one is the most important? The lawyer is playing a trump card, thinking he trap Jesus over one of 612 laws he did not chose. The second question will come with no mercy and attempt to catch Jesus in his own words.

But Jesus doesn’t miss a beat, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first. And the second is like it; you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” The entire law hangs on two statements; “Love God. Love God’s people.”

At the center of these two statements is the word love, agape. At the heart of the Law of Moses, the Law handed down by God, is love, which is the practice of agape. Yes our God is agape. God took the highest interest in our well being, giving us the Law and sending Jesus Christ into our world. Through his life, death and resurrection Jesus Christ lived out the heart of agape. Jesus Christ took a high level of interest in the well being of humanity and took it all the way to the cross. Agape in its truest practice is cross-shaped. Agape is a way of living, leaning always towards and into the life of another in service and sacrifice.

Without the love of God, without God’s agape, today’s command from Jesus would make no sense. How could we possibly love God and love God’s people without first being loved ourselves? We can do nothing apart from the God who loves us.

But because God loves us, because God has taken a high level of interest in our well being, we can have life and turn to another with a life of love. Because God loves us we are driven to love others. We are driven to reach out to others. We are driven to serve others. The love of God works on our hearts to reach out and touch the lives of others with the same love that gives us life.

I see agape when I see this community open the doors of its building to events like “Zumba” and “Family Promise.” I see agape when this community of faith gives out of its resources and collects food, clothing, and other items to support Our Daily Bread and the One Stop Center. It’s a love story that is being written and it’s all about the love of God through Jesus Christ. I remember being taught this as a little boy, it was a simple rhyme. I’m sure you remember it, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Just as I know that my life is part of God’s great love story, I can see chapters of that story being written in the lives of the people in this place.

Because we’re all part of God’s love story. Every day we walk through this world writing new chapters to the story that was begun at creation. We are part of something much bigger than ourselves and our call is to, “Love God, Love God’s people.” So go out and live your lives with agape. Go out and take a high level of interest in the well being of the people you encounter as you walk through this world. Go out and write the next chapter to the greatest love story that is still being written.