Nancy Ferree-Clark - "Love In Action" (May 14, 2000)
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| - | When it comes time to show our love to someone, | 0:12 |
| we often find ourselves searching | 0:16 | |
| for just the right words to convey what we feel. | 0:17 | |
| Most of us believe that words, | 0:21 | |
| even someone else's words, | 0:24 | |
| can help us express our deepest affections. | 0:26 | |
| And so on days such as Mother's Day, | 0:30 | |
| we choose very carefully the kind of message | 0:33 | |
| we want to send. | 0:35 | |
| Thank goodness for companies like Hallmark, | 0:37 | |
| who are committed to making it as easy as possible | 0:40 | |
| for us to express that perfect thought for the occasion | 0:43 | |
| with their amazing array of greeting cards. | 0:46 | |
| Their premise as Mother's Day approaches each year | 0:50 | |
| is that with just a little effort, | 0:54 | |
| you're bound to find a message suitable for any mother, | 0:56 | |
| any age, with any kind of personality. | 0:59 | |
| If you don't have time to shop | 1:03 | |
| for the perfect card at the mall, | 1:05 | |
| I just learned that Hallmark has now | 1:07 | |
| produced software which will enable you | 1:08 | |
| to print one up on your own computer. | 1:10 | |
| Or if that takes too much effort, | 1:13 | |
| I heard this week about getacard.com, | 1:15 | |
| that allows you to personalize, order, and send | 1:18 | |
| an actual paper Mother's Day card | 1:21 | |
| without leaving your desk chair. | 1:24 | |
| Now if you missed out on even that convenient option | 1:27 | |
| and you still need a way to tell Mom that you love her, | 1:30 | |
| hopefully your mother is online | 1:34 | |
| and you can send her an electronic card | 1:36 | |
| before the day is over. | 1:38 | |
| It may seem a little last-minute, but, oh well, | 1:40 | |
| it's the thought that counts. | 1:44 | |
| Thanks to the Internet, | 1:48 | |
| it's easier than ever to tell someone we love them. | 1:49 | |
| If it's simply a matter of getting the word out, | 1:53 | |
| we're learning to do that faster | 1:55 | |
| and more efficiently than ever before. | 1:56 | |
| But we've also learned through the internet | 1:59 | |
| that words without a face or a body attached to them | 2:02 | |
| can be a little misleading. | 2:06 | |
| Do you know anyone who got hit | 2:08 | |
| by the I love you virus last week, | 2:10 | |
| the one that affected millions of computers around the world | 2:13 | |
| and rang up a bill estimated to run as high | 2:16 | |
| as $10 billion dollars in lost work hours? | 2:18 | |
| Thousands of people were just sitting down | 2:22 | |
| to open their email messages one morning | 2:24 | |
| when they noticed the subject heading, I love you, | 2:26 | |
| which they couldn't resist opening. | 2:30 | |
| But it wasn't long until they discovered | 2:33 | |
| that this enticing message | 2:35 | |
| harbored a potent virus with the ability | 2:38 | |
| to destroy multiple files which also spread its deadly venom | 2:40 | |
| to all the addresses in their address books. | 2:44 | |
| What seemed so innocent proved to be deadly in reality. | 2:48 | |
| Some of us had to learn the hard way | 2:52 | |
| that what looks good in print or on your computer screen | 2:54 | |
| isn't always what it seems to be. | 2:58 | |
| Don't ever trust the words, I love you, | 3:01 | |
| when they are disconnected from a real person | 3:04 | |
| that you can see and know. | 3:06 | |
| The thought that counts may not be so good | 3:09 | |
| for the person who receives it. | 3:12 | |
| I'm intrigued that so many people | 3:15 | |
| fell for this particular virus. | 3:17 | |
| Somehow the words I love you, more than most, | 3:19 | |
| are words we want to hear and we want to believe, | 3:23 | |
| no matter what the source. | 3:26 | |
| But as the the author of our epistle lesson | 3:28 | |
| from 1st John points out, | 3:30 | |
| words on their own can never be the proof of love. | 3:33 | |
| "Little children, let us love not in word or speech, | 3:38 | |
| "but in truth and action," he writes. | 3:42 | |
| Words can manipulate and speeches can be misleading. | 3:46 | |
| We all know how speech writers work for politicians, | 3:50 | |
| and they get paid huge sums of money | 3:53 | |
| to put just the right spin on the things | 3:55 | |
| they seem to be saying but don't really mean to say. | 3:58 | |
| Or if you've ever fallen for a phony love letter, | 4:02 | |
| you know the difference between flowery words | 4:05 | |
| and loving actions. | 4:08 | |
| It is possible not to say we love | 4:11 | |
| and still express our love through actions, | 4:13 | |
| but it isn't possible to say we do love | 4:17 | |
| and not confirm it then with our deeds. | 4:20 | |
| This exposition in John on the nature of love | 4:24 | |
| takes place as part of a larger discussion in that epistle | 4:28 | |
| about the importance of genuine love among Christians. | 4:31 | |
| After a split in the Johannine community, | 4:35 | |
| the author of this epistle is focusing | 4:38 | |
| on how its members are to follow Christ, | 4:41 | |
| or more specifically, how to love. | 4:44 | |
| He beckons his readers to remember the message | 4:48 | |
| they have heard from the beginning, | 4:50 | |
| that they should love one another, | 4:53 | |
| and then act accordingly. | 4:55 | |
| Their model should be Christ himself | 4:57 | |
| who laid down his life for others. | 4:59 | |
| Likewise, they are to lay down their lives | 5:03 | |
| for one another. | 5:06 | |
| To make his point clearer, | 5:09 | |
| John presents us with a contrast, | 5:11 | |
| as he often does in his writings, | 5:13 | |
| using examples such as light versus darkness | 5:16 | |
| and life versus death. | 5:19 | |
| And so to clarify what love looks like, | 5:21 | |
| he spent several verses in this same chapter | 5:25 | |
| describing what hate looks like. | 5:28 | |
| And as his example, he chooses Cain, | 5:31 | |
| son of Adam and Eve, who murdered his brother, Abel. | 5:34 | |
| You may recall from Genesis 4 | 5:38 | |
| that each brother presents an offering to God. | 5:40 | |
| But for some reason God considered Abel's offering | 5:44 | |
| to be acceptable, while Cain's was not. | 5:47 | |
| Out of jealousy, Cain murders his own brother. | 5:51 | |
| Now I ask you, out of all the murderers in the world, | 5:55 | |
| why would John pick out Cain as his example? | 5:59 | |
| I think the reason is that Cain's behavior | 6:04 | |
| is a prototype of all that has | 6:06 | |
| unfolded in human history after him. | 6:08 | |
| Though it was his parents who ate the forbidden fruit | 6:12 | |
| and were expelled from the Garden of Eden, | 6:15 | |
| it was Cain who first experienced the pangs of jealousy. | 6:18 | |
| He was the first to know the meaning | 6:22 | |
| of such intense hatred toward his own brother | 6:24 | |
| that he could kill him. | 6:28 | |
| And every person born since then | 6:29 | |
| has faced a similar temptation. | 6:31 | |
| If not the temptation to murder, | 6:34 | |
| then at least the barrage of feelings | 6:36 | |
| like jealousy, anger, self-centeredness, | 6:39 | |
| that can lead to hate rather than love. | 6:42 | |
| John sees a very strong connection between such feelings | 6:46 | |
| and even murder when he writes, | 6:50 | |
| "All who hate a brother or sister are murderers." | 6:52 | |
| In other words, wherever hate is, | 6:56 | |
| murder is always the possibility. | 6:59 | |
| And in the eyes of God, even turning down that path | 7:01 | |
| is the same thing as picking up the ax like Cain | 7:05 | |
| and bludgeoning your brother to death. | 7:08 | |
| This is what Jesus was trying to tell us | 7:11 | |
| in the Sermon on the Mount when he said, | 7:13 | |
| "You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, | 7:16 | |
| "You shall not murder, and whoever murders | 7:19 | |
| "shall be liable to judgment. | 7:21 | |
| "But I say to you that if you are angry | 7:23 | |
| "with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment. | 7:26 | |
| "And if you insult a brother or sister, | 7:29 | |
| "you will be liable to the council. | 7:31 | |
| "And if you say, 'you fool,' | 7:33 | |
| "you will be liable to the hell of fire." | 7:35 | |
| And so I ask you this morning, | 7:39 | |
| is there anyone here who is without sin? | 7:41 | |
| This weekend a good deal of attention is being focused | 7:46 | |
| on the topic of murder as thousands of people gather | 7:49 | |
| in Washington, D.C. for the Million Mom March. | 7:53 | |
| The idea for this march came about last August | 7:57 | |
| when a woman named Donna Dees-Thomases was watching | 8:01 | |
| frightened nursery school children on television. | 8:05 | |
| She watched them holding hands | 8:09 | |
| as they were being led away in a line | 8:11 | |
| from a shooting spree | 8:13 | |
| at the North Valley Jewish Community Center. | 8:15 | |
| As a mother of young children herself, | 8:18 | |
| Dees-Thomases felt she could not remain silent any longer | 8:20 | |
| about the 5,000 children who die each year | 8:24 | |
| as a result of gunfire in this country. | 8:28 | |
| Within a week of the tragedy at the Jewish Community Center, | 8:31 | |
| Dees-Thomases had reserved the mall in Washington | 8:34 | |
| for Mother's Day 2000 and started calling people. | 8:37 | |
| And she found that many, many others | 8:41 | |
| were equally concerned. | 8:43 | |
| As the organizers of the Million Mom March got going, | 8:46 | |
| they developed a website which has become the repository | 8:49 | |
| for hundreds of stories about first-hand experiences | 8:52 | |
| with gun violence. | 8:56 | |
| When you have the time and the energy | 8:58 | |
| to cry your way through some of these accounts, | 9:01 | |
| I recommend you take a look at www.millionmommarch.org | 9:03 | |
| and click on Tapestry. | 9:08 | |
| You'll read there about toddlers being caught in crossfire, | 9:11 | |
| six-year-olds gunned down at school, | 9:14 | |
| teenagers shot while shopping at the mall | 9:17 | |
| or standing on the street corners, | 9:21 | |
| grandmothers murdered on vacation. | 9:23 | |
| The stories go on and on and on. | 9:26 | |
| Once I started crying as I was reading these stories, | 9:30 | |
| I could hardly stop, so heartbreaking they were. | 9:32 | |
| I couldn't help thinking that for each death or injury | 9:37 | |
| there was some parent, some spouse, some child, | 9:39 | |
| some sibling, friend, or neighbor, | 9:43 | |
| left standing by the graveside | 9:46 | |
| to deal with the anguish of their loss. | 9:47 | |
| It was amazing to me to read these stories | 9:50 | |
| and to think how a single bullet just keeps on killing. | 9:52 | |
| And so thousands of people, | 9:57 | |
| including several hundred from the Triangle area, | 9:59 | |
| are converging on Washington at this very hour. | 10:02 | |
| They will protest the murdering, | 10:05 | |
| the hatred, the violence, | 10:07 | |
| the callousness of the NRA, | 10:10 | |
| and the indifference of the rest of us | 10:12 | |
| to what has become standard fare on the evening news. | 10:14 | |
| As we reflect on John's words to us, | 10:19 | |
| we recognize just how far removed we are | 10:21 | |
| from Jesus' commandment to love. | 10:25 | |
| Though there isn't a thing that you or I | 10:27 | |
| can do to bring back those who have been murdered, | 10:29 | |
| we can protest the lovelessness of our society | 10:32 | |
| and all that it stands for. | 10:36 | |
| If we persist in glorifying self, wealth, | 10:38 | |
| power, and status at the expense | 10:42 | |
| of learning to give ourselves for others, | 10:45 | |
| very little will change to improve | 10:47 | |
| this grim situation. | 10:49 | |
| When we cave in ourselves to jealousy or rage, | 10:51 | |
| spitefulness, or malicious gossip, | 10:54 | |
| it ends in murder. | 10:57 | |
| If not physical, then emotional. | 10:59 | |
| It becomes a kind of character assassination, | 11:02 | |
| where we wish the person wasn't around any longer, | 11:05 | |
| and we can undermine his character | 11:07 | |
| and denigrate her worth. | 11:09 | |
| Thus, we all understand too well | 11:12 | |
| the dynamics of murder and the attitudes | 11:14 | |
| that Jesus has described which accompany it. | 11:17 | |
| The story of Cain murdering his own brother | 11:20 | |
| may be ancient, but it remains chillingly relevant | 11:23 | |
| to our own community in our own time. | 11:27 | |
| The contrast of all this with Christian love, | 11:31 | |
| as described in today's lesson, | 11:34 | |
| couldn't be clearer. | 11:36 | |
| Jesus, as the prime example of this type of love, | 11:38 | |
| laid down his life for us. | 11:42 | |
| That's how we know what love is. | 11:45 | |
| Cain showed us that the nature of hate | 11:47 | |
| is to take life. | 11:50 | |
| Jesus showed us that the nature of love | 11:52 | |
| is to surrender life, even when the recipient | 11:55 | |
| of that love isn't particularly deserving. | 11:58 | |
| It wasn't that God was somehow responding | 12:02 | |
| to our love for him when Christ died for us on the cross. | 12:05 | |
| Far from it. | 12:09 | |
| Rather than loving Jesus, most who met him | 12:10 | |
| were totally opposed to him. | 12:12 | |
| So much so that there were only a handful of people | 12:14 | |
| who accepted him for who he was. | 12:17 | |
| The rest rejected him. | 12:19 | |
| Even when he did the amazing things he did, | 12:22 | |
| like performing miracles. | 12:24 | |
| Even when he fed and healed them and resurrected them | 12:26 | |
| from the dead, all the rest could do | 12:29 | |
| was to demand his execution. | 12:31 | |
| And yet, Jesus submitted willingly to his death, | 12:34 | |
| so those very people could be forgiven. | 12:37 | |
| This is the good shepherd, who lays down his life | 12:40 | |
| for his flock, as our gospel lesson describes him. | 12:44 | |
| This is the love that is spelled out in action. | 12:48 | |
| It forgives over and over and over, without retaliation. | 12:51 | |
| And when we recognize that this is the type of love | 12:57 | |
| God has for us and allowed it to transform us | 13:00 | |
| deep within, all we can do in response | 13:03 | |
| is to open ourselves to loving others in the same way. | 13:06 | |
| So what does this love look like in practical terms? | 13:11 | |
| To say we ought to lay down our lives | 13:16 | |
| for one another doesn't mean lying down | 13:18 | |
| on the nearest train track just to prove | 13:20 | |
| how much we love each other. | 13:22 | |
| When John gets very specific about this | 13:24 | |
| in verses 17 and 18 of chapter three, | 13:27 | |
| he asks, "How does God's love abide | 13:30 | |
| "in anyone who has the world's goods | 13:33 | |
| "and sees a brother or sister in need | 13:36 | |
| "and yet refuses help? | 13:38 | |
| "Little children let us love, | 13:41 | |
| "not in word or speech, but in truth and action." | 13:43 | |
| In other words, an expression of sympathy | 13:47 | |
| for a hungry man is not love, | 13:50 | |
| but giving him something to eat is. | 13:53 | |
| Getting a spiffy Mother's Day card | 13:56 | |
| to your mother on time isn't love. | 13:58 | |
| But sitting down with her to find out | 14:01 | |
| what she needs and then responding to them | 14:03 | |
| by giving her needs priorities over your own is love. | 14:06 | |
| In order to love, we share our resources. | 14:11 | |
| We share our time and our energy. | 14:14 | |
| We make a decision about how we should act, | 14:17 | |
| rather than waiting to see how we feel. | 14:20 | |
| We are willing to set aside | 14:24 | |
| our carefully laid plans to reach out to another person. | 14:25 | |
| Perhaps you've been scheduled to take an airplane flight | 14:29 | |
| that was fully booked but then got canceled, | 14:32 | |
| and you were told that less than half the people | 14:35 | |
| holding reservations would be able to get flights | 14:37 | |
| out on that same day. | 14:40 | |
| Did you step aside to give someone else the option | 14:42 | |
| of getting a seat, or were you among the ones | 14:45 | |
| racing to the next gate to make sure | 14:47 | |
| you were not inconvenienced by the delay? | 14:49 | |
| It's happened to me before. | 14:52 | |
| And I'm not going to tell you how I responded. | 14:55 | |
| Maybe for some of us, learning to lay down our lives | 14:59 | |
| for another starts with laying down our calendars, | 15:02 | |
| so we can actually make room | 15:05 | |
| for other people and their needs, | 15:07 | |
| which don't always present themselves | 15:09 | |
| on schedule, after all. | 15:10 | |
| Think of the good Samaritan, who unexpectedly encounters | 15:13 | |
| the Jewish man in the ditch, but then went out of his way | 15:16 | |
| to bandage up his wounds and deliver him to a safe place, | 15:20 | |
| not only leaving money for the inn keeper | 15:23 | |
| to cover his expenses, but promising also | 15:25 | |
| to pay whatever else was needed when he came back. | 15:29 | |
| Based on the history of the Jews and the Samaritans, | 15:33 | |
| the expected outcome for this story | 15:37 | |
| would have been for the Samaritan | 15:39 | |
| to finish off the job which the robbers | 15:40 | |
| had already started. | 15:42 | |
| But instead, without saying so much as a word | 15:44 | |
| about loving the man, the Samaritan showed his love | 15:48 | |
| for his neighbor through his actions. | 15:51 | |
| One of the difficulties we have in thinking about love | 15:57 | |
| is that the very concept of love | 16:00 | |
| has been hijacked by popular culture. | 16:01 | |
| We turn to places like Hollywood | 16:04 | |
| or the Backstreet Boys to tell us | 16:06 | |
| what love should look like. | 16:08 | |
| We imagine that it always involves | 16:11 | |
| chocolates and flowers, or at least | 16:12 | |
| flowery words of endearment, | 16:15 | |
| resulting in some kind of heightened emotional state | 16:17 | |
| that lasts forever. | 16:20 | |
| But this is the kind of love that | 16:22 | |
| is often grounded in self-enhancement | 16:23 | |
| and self-centeredness. | 16:26 | |
| "These are my needs and I expect you to meet them," | 16:28 | |
| is often the motivation for such love. | 16:31 | |
| And as we learned from so-called crimes of passion, | 16:34 | |
| when those needs aren't being met, | 16:37 | |
| the feeling soon turns to violence and hate, | 16:39 | |
| which is really only a hair's breadth away from love, | 16:43 | |
| because hate wants to take life | 16:46 | |
| and love wants to surrender it. | 16:48 | |
| The kind of love that calls us | 16:52 | |
| to surrender ourselves is much more down to earth | 16:54 | |
| than what Hollywood is telling us about. | 16:57 | |
| Anyone who has ever raised a child | 17:00 | |
| or nursed a sick friend or relative | 17:03 | |
| or lived in a marriage for more | 17:06 | |
| than even a few weeks knows about this kind of love. | 17:08 | |
| Love involves giving ourselves in practical ways. | 17:12 | |
| Ways that respond to the needs and desires | 17:16 | |
| of the recipient more than the giver. | 17:18 | |
| Remember John's words? | 17:21 | |
| "Let us love, not in word or speech, | 17:22 | |
| "but in truth and action." | 17:25 | |
| In truth, because such love doesn't pretend. | 17:27 | |
| It gets to the bottom of a problem and fixes it. | 17:31 | |
| And in action, because that's the way | 17:35 | |
| we give ourselves away to the ones we love. | 17:37 | |
| I wonder if this is the point | 17:42 | |
| where I should ask how you're feeling? | 17:44 | |
| My guess is that quite a few of you are feeling guilty, | 17:47 | |
| because we know we haven't been doing | 17:50 | |
| any of this very well. | 17:52 | |
| And quite a few more of us are feeling pressured, | 17:54 | |
| because it sounds so difficult. | 17:56 | |
| Try and remember that God's love is good news. | 17:59 | |
| It's about grace, the love that God gave to us first | 18:03 | |
| and not about our own guilt and pressure. | 18:07 | |
| Even Cain received a mark on his forehead | 18:10 | |
| as a sign of God's ongoing care and protection | 18:13 | |
| after he murdered his brother. | 18:17 | |
| As John writes in his letter, | 18:21 | |
| "By this we will know that we are from the truth | 18:23 | |
| "and will reassure our hearts before him | 18:26 | |
| "whenever our hearts condemn us." | 18:28 | |
| In other words, just as we start feeling like failures, | 18:31 | |
| because no one has the energy or the resources | 18:35 | |
| to always love the way we should, | 18:38 | |
| God gives us the reassurance we need. | 18:41 | |
| "God is greater than our hearts," John writes, | 18:44 | |
| "and he knows everything. | 18:47 | |
| "We receive from him whatever we ask, | 18:49 | |
| "because we obey his commandments | 18:51 | |
| "and do what pleases him. | 18:53 | |
| "This is the work of the Holy Spirit, | 18:55 | |
| "the guide and the advocate Jesus promised to send | 18:57 | |
| "to be with us after his ascension into heaven. | 19:01 | |
| "The spirit, you see, empowers us to do | 19:04 | |
| "what God commands and reassures us | 19:07 | |
| "that God is with us when we do it, | 19:10 | |
| "as as sign of God's faithfulness to us." | 19:12 | |
| Friends, we testify to the world | 19:17 | |
| that we are Jesus' disciples by how we love one another. | 19:19 | |
| If we indulge in hate, disobedience, | 19:23 | |
| mere profession of love in words | 19:27 | |
| without deeds to support them, | 19:30 | |
| then we are the hypocrites that the world | 19:32 | |
| is so quick to accuse us of being. | 19:34 | |
| It isn't the thought that counts, | 19:37 | |
| but the way we live our lives. | 19:40 | |
| The test of the sincerity of our faith | 19:43 | |
| is to walk in the footsteps of Christ, | 19:45 | |
| who gave up his life for us, | 19:48 | |
| that we might receive the gift of eternal life with him. | 19:51 |