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"What's Love Got to Do with It?"
March 14, 2004
The Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson
You can go to God in prayer because He loves you. "What does love have to do with it?" Well, in the Bible, everything. Of all the religious traditions, the Judeo-Christian view of God is that God is love. It's unique--defining the God of the universe in terms of love. We see it everywhere. I could have chosen many Scriptures to read to you today. First, I'll read to you from Psalm 36-- partly because a Christian artist has made it into a song recently, and it has become one of my favorites.
Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O Lord, you preserve both man and beast. How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings.
From John 13. John is unique in telling the story of Thursday night, the night before the crucifixion. In its length, all the other gospels have the Lord's supper. But John felt like he needed to tell that story in more detail. And so, beginning at chapter 13 all the way through 17, it's about that one conversation that one night. And if you want to pick a theme of that whole bit of Scripture, it is the love of God. Let's listen to what Jesus says and what He does, particularly, to show God's love.
It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of His love. The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with a towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" Jesus replied, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand." "No," said Peter, "you shall never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me." "Then, Lord," Simon Peter replied, "not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!" Jesus answered, "A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you." For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not everyone was clean. When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked them. "You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them."
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
I don't want to sound irreverent, but only heaven knows how much pain we have brought you. Why do you tolerate us? You give us every breath we breathe, but do we thank you? You give us bodies beyond duplication, but do we praise you? Seldom. We complain about the weather [especially in Minnesota . . . ]. We bicker about our toys. We argue over who gets which continent and who has the best gender. Not a second passes when someone, somewhere doesn't use your Name to curse a hammered thumb or a bad call by an umpire (as if it were your fault). You fill the world with food, but we blame you for hunger. You keep the earth from tilting and the arctics from thawing, but we accuse you of unconcern. You give us blue skies and we demand rain. You give us rain and we demand sun (as if we knew which was best, anyway). We give more applause to a brawny ball-carrier than we do to the God who made us. We sing more songs to the moon than to the Christ who saved us. We are a gnat on the tail of one elephant in a galaxy of Africas, and yet we demand that you find us a parking place when we ask. And if you don't give us what we want, we say you don't exist (as if our opinion matters). We pollute the world you loan us. We mistreat the bodies you gave us. We ignore the world you sent us. And we kill the Son you became. We are spoiled babies who take, and kick, and pout, and blaspheme. You have every reason to abandon us. I sure would. I would wash my hands of the whole mess and start over on Mars! But do you? I see the answer in the rising sun. I hear the answer in the crashing waves. I feel the answer in the skin of a child. Father, you love never ceases. Never. Though we spurn you, ignore you, disobey you, you will not change. Our evil cannot diminish your love. Our goodness cannot increase it. Our faith does not earn it any more than our stupidity jeopardizes it. Your love does not stop if we fail. And you don't love us more if we succeed. Your love never ceases. How do we explain it?
These are the words of Max Lucado, and I felt I needed to read them because they're just so good! Why does God love us? That's a question we all need to ask. And I say that because sometimes we assume God's love, or that He ought to love us. We human beings are kind of that way, aren't we? We expect people to forgive us, to overlook our problems, and to love us. But if we're honest with ourselves, we know we don't deserve it.
Now, sure, we could say, "Well, I've never murdered anyone. I've never stolen . . . much. I've never committed adultery . . . except maybe in my mind . . . But I'm not as bad as those other people." And maybe not. But if we're honest with ourselves, we know we don't deserve it. So why does God love us? It's a question we need to ask and we need to understand, because we need to experience God's love and part of it is knowing why.
And the first answer to that question is not that hard, really. It's because God chooses to. God simply chooses to love us. After I've been around you a long while--that's what happens with preachers--we preach about forty-some-odd sermons a year. If we're the only pastor, it's 52 or 48. But you'll hear me speak a lot. And I will say a lot that I have come to believe that our culture has no idea what love really is because we have come to define love as simply a feeling, or at least mostly a feeling. And so we believe that love is some kind of power out there that we can't help. And so we speak regularly of "falling in love," as though we really can't help it. And that's not so bad. It's kind of nice to fall in love! But the bad part about it is we also speak of "falling out of love," and I don't know how many divorces have been justified by "falling out of love." You see, we can't help it, can we?
Part of our problem is we only have one word for love. Ladies, you can speak of "loving" your dog (if you have one), but you can also speak of "loving" your husband. And I hope there's some difference! There ought to be, I hope. (Maybe not . . .) There is a difference, isn't there? In the Greek, the Greeks had it easier. They had four words for love. One is storge, which is kind of the "old shoe" type of love that people have, kind of like what older couples have over time, that "chum-ness," that closeness that's there.
There's another kind of love, and we all know what it is. It's called eros, and that's the erotic love that people have, the sexual love. And that's really the kind of love that society has defined as love. "You've lost that loving feeling . . ." Or [sung] "Feelings . . ." (I'm sorry--I shouldn't get into that. I'll never make a "lounge lizard," and thank God!) There's nothing wrong with feelings at all. But there are other kinds of love.
Another kind of love in the Greek is phileo. You've all heard of "Philadelphia." And phileo is maybe almost the highest love we can have. It has to do with feelings, but it's that friendship, that closeness, that attraction that we have for another person. It can mean brotherly love, sisterly love. But it's also the kind of love we have as spouses, as well.
But the highest form of love is agape. It is the kind of "love" most used in the Bible. And it is the kind of love that has nothing to do with feelings. When it says that "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son," "For God agaped the world . . ."--it has nothing to do with feelings. It is a choice of the will.
How does that work? We all know the story of the Good Samaritan, don't we? The Samaritan loved the man who was beaten on the road. He didn't know him from Adam. And he was a Samaritan, and in those days Jews and Samaritans hated each other. Now, he didn't know he was a Jew, but he could have been. There may have been feelings there. Maybe not. It didn't matter. He picked him up, put him on his animal, took him to an inn and cared for him, and gave money to the innkeeper and said, "Take care of him until he's well."
It had nothing to do with feelings. It was an action done. It's the kind of love that God has chosen to give us, quite apart from feelings. And you know what? As a practical aside, our feelings do come and go. I'm often asked, "How does it work? What's up with 'loving your enemies'? or 'doing good to those who hurt you'?" People often say, "How can I do that? I don't have the feelings for that person." You see, that's what we're doing: we're defining it as feelings. It's doing good, and choosing.
So, here is Jesus, the night before He was betrayed, with a bunch of guys that have not "gotten it" yet. A little bit before this He said, "How long, O Lord, am I going to put up with these people?" And He knows that not only Judas is going to betray Him, but all of them. You see, they all did--all of them. Certainly Peter did with his voice, but they all cut and run when the chips were down. They all betrayed Him. He knows this. And yet, He washes their feet--something only a servant would do. The God of the universe washing the feet of people who are about to run out on Him! It's a choice.
And here's what I would say to you: That often we don't feel very loved--do we?--in our lives. Some of us don't know what love is very well. Perhaps it's because we haven't experienced it very much in our lives. But in every human heart, there is a longing to be loved. It is universal. I haven't met anyone who doesn't have that. Everybody does. And certainly our parents fail us, our children fail us, our friends fail us. And sometimes, because the world fails us, we don't know much about God's love. I will say that I'm lucky in one way--that I knew whatever my father did, he loved me. He wasn't perfect, but he loved me. I always knew that. So I really haven't got a big problem with imagining a God who loves me. I feel lucky in that. But I know a lot of people have never had that experience.
So how do we know that God loves us? Because He chose to do so. He chose to do it, and He acted on our behalf. And that's what the cross is all about. I think of all the things this movie has done, at least it has shown us in a sort of concrete way what that love looked like. And so when you're not feeling God's love, know that He loves you because of what He's done for you on the cross.
And not only on the cross--in you life. You know, sometimes when I am feeling down about my life, I just get out a list and make a list of all the things that are good that have happened to me, and there are multitudes! And suddenly the world doesn't look nearly as bad, because these are evidences of God's love, of His choosing to love Chris Carlson even though Chris Carlson doesn't deserve it, even though Chris Carlson regularly does things and thinks things he shouldn't. I know that God loves me--and loves you.
But this is not to say that God has no feelings. Love is a feeling as well, but the thing we have to remember is the feelings always follow the facts, always follow the will. The feelings come and go. (God's feelings don't, because He's God.) But still, the order is still the same. So another answer to the question of why God loves us is because you are His.
Now, those of you who are mothers, think about it for a minute. Your children, from pretty much day one of your pregnancy, caused you pain. Isn't that right? Now we guys can't experience that, but I watched it. A little bit of morning sickness. In Cindy's pregnancies (I don't think this is too personal) there was the third month and the seventh month that I did all the cooking. Every pregnancy. Then to watch these poor ladies kind of try to balance and walk, pain in the back, and all that kind of stuff. And then there's the birth-- Ow! That's got to hurt! And then after they're born, what do they want? They just want to eat. And we fathers can't do anything about it. Only you mothers can do something about that. Demanding all the time, "Feed me! Feed me! Feed me! Clean me! Clean me! Clean me! Do this! Do that!" And would you get rid of your children? Of course not! Why? Because they're yours.
The Bible says this: "For those who received Him, for those who have believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God." We are His, no matter what we do. No matter what our children do, we still love them. They may not know that, but we do. And they give us joy, and they break our hearts, but we still love them.
I love what Tony Campolo says about this. He says, "Your picture is in God's wallet." I was thinking about that. My wife will tell you I'm not very good with pictures. I'll take a camera and forget to use it. But I do have four pictures in my wallet--the four ladies that are most important to me. Why? Because they're mine. God loves us because we're His. And you're His.
And I think that it is important to think about why we don't deserve it. Dorothy Sayers, a great writer, said, "We don't really understand God's love until we realize how little we deserve it, because we take it for granted." So that part's important. It's important to understand God's action--that love rests on action. But love without feeling is empty love, as well. And God really does delight in you! It says that about us as God's people: "God takes delight in His people." I don't know why, but He does. He has your picture in His wallet.
And I think experiencing God's love comes down to those two things: Reminding ourselves of the cross--that He loved us this much, as has often been shown. Reminding us of what He's done for us in creating us, and bringing us into existence, and giving us gifts. But also, that He delights in and loves you despite yourself. And that if you draw close to Him, He has already been there and is already close to you.
As we go through this Lenten time, I would ask you to reflect on that--to reflect on God's love for you and what He's done, and what He said, and the fact that you are very special to Him, each one of you. You are His child, the one He has chosen, and the one He has brought into being. And that love will never, never, never go away.
Let's pray. Dear Father, thank you that you love us. Help us to experience that love, both in our heads and our hearts. Help us to draw closer to you. Through our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ. We pray in His name. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson Senior Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota
[Transcribed from an audiotape of the 9:00 a.m. worship service on March 14, 2004.] |
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