Living In Love
Living In Love by Rev. L. John Gable
October 17, 2021
Psalm 25:4-12 I John 4:7-21
I have been wracking my brain all week to try to come up with some complex concept that I could explain to you in very simple terms, but I have come up empty. I agree with Dick Halverson when he said, “I have learned that only simple things are profound. Complicated things are just complicated” and there are lots of complicated things that I simply do not understand.
My pondering reminded of a conversation I had with a fellow in our first church in Mansfield, Ohio. Tom was a math professor at the OSU campus there and one of the kindest, gentlest, most brilliant people I have ever met. He told me he was going to take a six month sabbatical, so I asked him what he would be doing. He answered, simply, “I’m going to cogitate.” “And what will you be cogitating on?” I asked him. “On Lie’s Theorem” and it was at about that point in the conversation that he lost me as he tried to explain to me what Lie’s theorem is. I Googled it this week to see if I could give you some simple explanation, but I couldn’t even understand the way Wikipedia described it.
As it turns out, Tom was one of less than a dozen mathematicians world-wide who were working intensely on this algebraic theory. That is what he was going to cogitate on for six months. He finally totally lost me when I asked, “So, does that mean, if you cogitate on an idea that works in the theorem, that you will have thought a thought that no one has ever thought before?” He smiled and said, “Yes.” Only simple things are profound. Complicated things are just complicated.
This, I believe, is the challenge John faced in our Scripture lesson this morning. He set out to describe the nature of God in understandable terms, which kind of makes Lie’s theorem sound like child’s play. How does one describe the complexity of God in a way that people, the likes of you and me, can understand? We could adopt the definition we were given in my college philosophy class, God is “that being above which no greater being can be imagined”, but that is hardly satisfying, or default to the French saying, that “God defined is God finished”. John ventured to undertake a seemingly impossible task and he did so in a very particular way. He describes the abstract/complex nature of God by simply saying, “God is love”; admittedly another abstract concept; yet this is the basic premise of all Christian thought and theology. While most think of I Corinthians 13 as being the exemplary description of love, “love is patient, love is kind” and so on, this passage from I John surpasses all as it describes both the nature of God and our intended response to it. Simply, yet profoundly, put: God is love.
And how do we know that? John’s answer then moves from the abstract to the practical when he writes, “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His only Son in to the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” This is core Christianity. God has shown the sacrificial nature of His love by sending His Son to die for our sins in order to restore us back in to a right relationship with Him and one another. We know that God is love because we know what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. John’s description makes the complex nature of God profoundly simple and simply profound.
But then, not satisfied to leave his answer there, he takes the next step to translate that complex, theological concept into simple, practical and practicable ways when he writes, “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” Just as it was not enough for God’s love to be described in abstract, sentimentalized terms, neither is it enough for our love. Just as God’s love became tangible and practical, so must ours.
Perhaps you’ve heard the story about the professor who overheard his neighbor disciplining his young son, and reprimanded him, saying “You should not punish him, you should love him.” Not long after he saw the young neighbor boy romping merrily through the fresh cement he had just poured on his driveway. He rushed out and grabbed child and just as he was about to give him a good swat, the boy’s father called out, “Remember, professor, don’t punish him; love him”, to which he responded, “I do love him; in the abstract, but not in the concrete.”
Such an answer does not suffice once we come to know the love of God. Love is not an emotion, a sentiment, an abstraction; it is an action which must be put in to practice in very practical, tangible ways. So John writes, “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God….No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is perfected in us.” What does that mean? How can God’s love be “perfected” in anything we could do? Some translations read “completed” which may make better sense. God’s love, directed toward us, is not intended to remain with us; rather it is intended to be shared with others through us and so return to God. This is the essential character of love, God’s love in particular; it is self-giving. It is intended to be received and then passed on to others. Think of the Dead Sea. Why is it dead, it receives fresh water from the Jordan River? It is dead because it receives but it doesn’t release. Water flows into it but it doesn’t flow out of it. To be a recipient of love without being a sharer of it is self-destructive. So those who know God’s love must also show God’s love and in this way we “perfect”, “make complete” God’s love.
And if we do not; it means we haven’t yet understood His love or what He has done for us in Jesus Christ. John goes so far as to say, “We love because God first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The command we have from Him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” And that friends, moves love from being an abstract, sentimentalized emotion, or even a complex theological concept, into being a very tangible, practical and practicable action, just as God’s love is for us.
So, what does such love look like? Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr writes, “The insistence of the Christian faith that the love of Christ is the final norm of human existence must express itself socially in the unwillingness of the whole human community to stop short of expressing our sense of moral responsibility for the life and welfare of others.” God’s love for us must be shown in our loving care and concern for the welfare and well-being of those around us. That is why followers of Jesus, from our founding on, have cared for the “least, the lost and the lonely” around them, and we continue to do the same today. One of the three pillars of our Vision Renewal statement is “a stronger community” which calls us to work, and serve and advocate for the well-being of our neighbors, as we have done in this community for a century now. When the decision was made in 1966 to remain here at the corner of 34th and Central it was made primarily with the needs of our neighbors in mind. Our desire then, as it is now, is to be “a light for Christ in this metropolitan area”. They knew then, and we know now, that being here and doing the ministry we do here, is one of the ways we demonstrate God’s love we’ve been shown in Jesus Christ. Were we to be located elsewhere we would need to find other ways to show His love, but these are the ministry opportunities God has given us.
There are countless examples I could give you of the ways in which we see God’s love made practical every day, but this past Sunday I was visiting with one of our elders, Jennifer Matthews, who told me about several incidents she had witnessed recently while serving in the Open Door. She told of the day we were distributing socks to our neighbors when they came to get a meal, socks are a treasured commodity among those in need. She had run through her supply for the day when a man came forward asking for a pair. As she began to apologize another neighbor stepped forward and offered the pair he had received that day. Other time, they were distributing gloves and the only pair left wouldn’t fit the young man who was in need of them. Overhearing their conversation yet another neighbor offered him the pair she had received saying, “The ones I got will fit you better than they do me, and you’re outside working. You need them more than I do.” Still another story she told was about the man who came late to the Open Door after we had distributed all of the food. As apologetic as Jennifer was the man began irate and angry. He finally turned and saw another neighbor sitting near-by who had two bags. With voice raised, he said, “Why does he get two bags and I don’t get any?” Before Jennifer had a chance to answer, the neighbor stood up and very calmly said, “I’ll be very happy to share one of my bags with you as soon as you settle down.” And he did.
So, who was doing ministry that day at the Open Door? Who was showing the love of God? Of course we were in our caring for the needs of our neighbors, but so were our neighbors in their caring for one another. It reminds me of the time Mother Theresa heard about a desperate family in Calcutta, so she gathered five bags of rice to take to them. As she visited, the woman of the house began dividing the bags, saying, “The family next door is hungry too.” How can we say we love God who we have not seen if we do not love/care for our neighbors who we have seen?
“What does love look like?” Listen to the way St. Augustine answers, “It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has the eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of others. That is what love looks like.”
The poet Blake writes, “We must love in minute particulars”. Last Sunday morning love was experienced in a particularly minute way which Eric Guion shared with me. Immediately following worship a woman he did not know handed him a piece of paper with a drawing on it which her young son had made. They were visiting with us that morning, so I tell you this story with their permission but without using their names.
The picture the young child had drawn was on one side of the paper and on the other his mother had written this note from her son to Eric: “I see you are sitting alone. I wanted to make you a picture and share that we prayed for you and God loves you. Love,” signed with the boy’s name…4 years old.
How do we know God is love? He has shown us in the minute particular of His giving His Son for us and our salvation. And what are we to do with God’s love? We are to share it in minute particulars with others: a pair of socks, a pair of gloves, a hot meal, a picture and a note.
“I have learned” writes Dick Halverson, “that only simple things are profound. Complicated things are just complicated.” Friends, we need not make love complicated at all. So cogitate on this: “The commandment we have from Him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” Amen.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN