Readings: 1 John 4:11-21, John 15:1-8
Let us pray: O God, may your word challenge us and your
challenges move us to live more deeply and prayerfully as your love in this
world. Amen.
I remember someone saying to me once that
all this talk about ‘God is love’ is simply encouraging a wishy washy
understanding of God, all sweet and light, warm fuzzies and benign
leadership. And I agree, if that is what
we understand the definition of the word love to be. Many do – and I have to wonder how we have
gotten to that - a sense of love being perfect only in a sparkling pristine
fair-weather kind of way – no edges or depth to it. It immediately reminded me of the period of
child rearing that Mike and I were part of as parents – where some of the
current wisdom suggested that you didn’t lay any boundaries on a baby because
love meant letting them tell you what they wanted, when they wanted fed or to
go to sleep, love meant never you dictating routine to them. Fortunately we were older and wiser - or
possibly some of our own parenting rubbed off on us!
Love is way more than a general sense of
bliss and benevolence, or an avoidance of conflict, whether it be in family, in
friendship, in marriage or in faith.
It’s way more than the absence of hate or exploitation or
suffering. Our readings today suggest
that love has serious impact and I suspect we all know that - we know that love
hurts as well as heals, love disciplines as well as delighting, love shakes us
to the core and delivers the most wonderful gift to all whom it touches.
Maybe some of our confusions comes from not
always recognising that Love is a doing word not a noun. Christ didn’t invite us to look on him and
know love – he drew us instead into his acts of love and asks us to live out
love in action. It is not so much about
recognising that we mustn’t hurt people so much as showing how much we love
them.
I was sent this week a quote from GK
Chesterton[1]
that, for me anyway, spoke of how the love we find in Christ should be known –
found in his essay ‘A piece of Chalk’.
He had set out on a beautiful summer’s day
with brown paper and a variety of chalks to draw, to sketch whatever he might
see. But he found, of all the chalks he
had taken with him – he had forgotten the most important one – the white chalk
- to draw with:
"Now, those who are acquainted with all
the philosophy (nay, religion) which is typified in the art of drawing on brown
paper, know that white is positive and essential. I cannot avoid remarking here
upon a moral significance. One of the wise and awful truths which this
brown-paper art reveals, is this, that white is a colour. It is not a
mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red,
as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws
roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. “
And he goes on to talk about how virtue is
not the absence of vices but a vivid and separate thing, identifiable in its
own right – just as we can see love as a burning passionate white-hot act of
living, not just the absence of all that prevents it.
Is this not a way of understanding Christian
love – not just a desire to take away the bad, the evil things in life but to
instil a passion for love in us all, one that sees past the unlovely and the
conditional and the selective to a way of living that sweeps all that is
divisive and unjust and cruel before it.
It doesn’t mean an absence of pain – all here would know this – but it does
suggest that love sees us through when we are at our lowest and transforms us
and the world at its most generous.
And we as Christians believe this sustenance,
this transformation is possible is because we abide in God and God abides in
us. Or as the NIV translation says ‘that
we live in God and God lives in us’.
This is a core message from the readings – that the love of God is made
visible in us and through us into the world because we abide in God’s love for
us. For anyone who is looking for the reality
of God in this world – look for acts of love and there you will find God. This is what takes our understanding of love
out of the somewhat dispassionate place that is the absence of evil and into
the white-hot burning passionate way of living.
And here’s a thing – in this world that seems
so flawed, so hope-less, we are told by the author of 1 John, that this love,
when known, is perfect. That is some
claim – we all know that nothing is perfect, well apart from fleeting moments
in time – and what is more this is not some eschatological perfection –
something to come in the end days – but it is a hope, a possibility, a reality
in fact for today, here and now. Perfect
love is ours to give not because we feel we should but because it simply is who
we are in Christ. Now there is a
challenge – we certainly don’t always get it right, we do begrudge,
detour, avoid, with-hold love – so how
can it be perfect?
Maybe because love is given perfectly to us,
as in given unconditionally, freely, forever – and when we touch that love we
are in God and God in us. Even though we
make choices that sometimes withhold that love, we can be confident that every
moment when love is present, so is the kingdom of heaven perfectly made known
here on earth.
The power of that love is strong enough to
drive out fear says the author of 1 John.
I am sure that we have all heard stories of, if not experienced it
ourselves, when love overcomes fear – and that doesn’t mean it ignores or deletes
fear but rather that it encompasses it with a greater power – the power to
love. One of the many stories – a family
in Morrinsville – who have given up health, income and any hope of a ‘normal
life’, whatever that might be, to care for their third child – a boy with Down
Syndrome who is also profoundly autistic.
His destructive behaviour has driven the family to the very edges of
despair – but their love for their son is a powerful force that holds the
family together and helps them plan for a future that is not going to be ever
easy. Love drives out fear.
And for a last thought – we hear that love
drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. We love because God first of all loved us,
not because we fear punishment, or reward for that matter. So how did we get to put so many buffers, so
many fears of punishment, between us and God, to believe that we needed someone
to pay all our debts, that we are not good enough for the church, for God, that
we have to be a baptised saved Christian to receive God’s love, that it is all
about eternal life somewhere in the future and the now is something to be
endured, that hell and eternal damnation is the lot of the perpetual sinner –
God will indeed be lonely in heaven.
So no, the love of God made known in Jesus
Christ is not wishy washy benevolence, it is not simply the absence of evil, it
is a powerful, perfect and fearless, white-hot passion it is the piece of white
chalk, the part of life and faith that we cannot do without – for we abide in
God and God is love and abides in us.
Thanks be to God who loves us forever and always. Amen
Margaret Garland
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