Love Is...Fierce (Sermon)

“Love Is…Fierce”

Psalm 131 and 1Corinthians 13:1-13

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/5/23

 

Lord, my heart isn’t proud;
        my eyes aren’t conceited.
    I don’t get involved with things too great or wonderful for me.
² No. But I have calmed and quieted myself
    like a weaned child on its mother;
    I’m like the weaned child that is with me.

³ Israel, wait for the Lord—
    from now until forever from now! (CEB)

 

If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.³ If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs;⁶ it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. ⁷ It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹ For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, ¹⁰ but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

¹² For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³ And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love. (NRSV)

 

 

         Sometimes I stop, stand outside myself, and like the psalmist, ‘I look at the heavens…the moon and the stars…[and] human beings.” (Psalm 8) In that moment, I get a little overwhelmed by the very fact of existence. What are the chances of oceans and amoeba, consciousness and creativity, ecstasy and agony? What are the chances of tulips, toucans, Tolstoy, and time itself?

While I cannot prove anything, neither can I accept chance as our origin, and oblivion as our destiny. So, I receive wonder as a gift of grace, as the Creator’s own joyous love within me. And wonder takes me back to the origins.

         “When God began to create the heavens and the earth,” says Genesis 1. “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,” says Genesis 2. The two versions of creation in Genesis do not speak in unison, but they do sing in harmony. And while they are not history, they are magnificent, poetic affirmations of faith in a Presence that precedes, gives birth to, and infuses the Creation with Itself. The ancient storytellers call this generative, outpouring Presence God. So does John. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through” this Word.

         Whatever God is (Light, Energy, Grace), and whatever God is not (a huge white guy with a long beard and anger issues), by faith, I am helpless to do anything but affirm that, because the Creation exists, God exists. And the very essence of God is love.

“Love is patient…kind…” generous, humble, mature, compassionate, level-headed. Love seeks justice and truth.

When we consider what Christian theology calls the communion of the saints, I cannot help considering every human being past and present. I say that because I trust that Love knows no bounds. Only the most un-loving side of me casts anyone out, and I have to fend off that guy constantly. I trust that, ultimately, ALL that God has made and loves, no matter how broken in God’s eyes nor infuriating in ours, returns to God.

Today we observe All Saints Day. We stop to remember those whom we have loved and who have loved us and for whom this life has ended. And in that remembrance, we give thanks to God for everything about those people that revealed love to us. For whenever and however any of us reveals patient, kind, generous, humble, mature, compassionate, level-headed, justice-seeking, truth-telling love, we reveal something of God. And whenever and however any of us do not embody love, we obscure God. And exactly none of us love faithfully all the time.

         Now, let’s acknowledge that the word love often becomes so trivialized that it actually avoids the love which Jesus embodies and about which Paul teaches. One’s “love” for a favorite celebrity or pair of shoes is emphatically not the same as the love with which God loves us and the love to which God calls us. Love is for-the-sake-of-others action. It’s a way of embracing and inhabiting the world that sets one who loves over against all the selfishness, resentment, and anything else that allows anyone or any group to ignore, persecute, or exploit another person or group.

This makes me remember two people who are now among the timeless communion of the saints. During his declining years, my dad kept going by talking about what he called “practical thanksgiving.” Briefly, practical thanksgiving involves choosing to be grateful for that person before you at any given moment. It means recognizing them, regardless of background or worldview, as one whom God loves. It means asking ourselves, What is the good and right thing to do with and for this person right now? How can we live as mutual blessings to each other and to our community?

         Practical thanksgiving requires a fierce love. I say fierce because that love includes speaking the truth graciously and without fear of rejection or persecution. That’s how Jesus loved the Pharisees, the Sadducees, Herod, and how he loved his own often-less-than-loving disciples.

         Into the institutionalized terror of apartheid, Desmond Tutu loved fiercely. “I wish I could shut up,” he said, “but I can’t, and I won’t.” That angered the minority white establishment. Then, when apartheid ended, he loved even more fiercely, saying to the black majority, who had been tortured, murdered, and exploited, “Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.”

I remember these two saints this morning, and as we gather at the table, I trust that they are with us. “When we gather at the Lord’s table,” says our Book of Order, “the Spirit draws us into Christ’s presence and unites us with the Church in every time and place. We join with all the faithful in heaven and on earth in offering thanksgiving to the triune God.” (PC(USA) Book of Order, W-3.0409)

In the end, as in the beginning, God’s fierce love, which surpasses all understanding, prevails. Because of that, I step out in faith and hope to say that I trust that all who have gone before us, those whom we knew and miss, those whom we knew and do not miss, and those whom we never knew, gather with us at this table. For again, in the end, God’s creative and redeeming love makes all things new and all things one.