Psalm 66:1-11
Acts 8:26-40
I John 3:14-24
John 14:15-21
CHILDREN'S SERMON:
God really likes it when we remember to love one another doesn't he?
Who are some of the people that love you?
Who are some of the people that you love?
Who else loves you? Jesus loves you doesn't he?
Jesus is like a super wonderful big brother who loves us and protects us. He laughs with us when we are happy, and he helps us feel better when we have a hurt or we're felling sad.
There is a song about that.. Who knows what it is? "Jesus Loves Me"
How about if we sing that song - would it be okay to let the grown ups sing along too?
Jesus loves me! This I know for the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to him belong, They are weak, but he is strong
Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.
Jesus loves me! This I know, as he loved so long ago,
Taking children on his knee, Saying "let them come tome."
Refrain
Jesus loves me still today, walking with me on my way,
Wanting as a friend to give, Light and love to all who live.
Refrain
"LOVE" - In our culture, there are probably more movies, books and poems written about "love" than just about anything else. We ache to experience this great mystery called "Love."
We agonize over whether or not someone loves us. We do all kinds of things to show others that we love them. We want our children to know that we love them. We want that one special person in our lives to know how much we love them. And we want to be reassured that they love us.
Most of you know that I am a psychologist - and some of you know that I specialize in working with people who have been severely traumatized. Every day I listen to heart-wrenching stories of pain and loss. There is a single thread which weaves through every story. The one thing they always want most - is to know that they are loved - that someone, somewhere cares about them.
To one degree or another, we've all experienced the absence of love in our lives.
Yet in spite of all this, God still loves us. God's love for us is as unwavering and responsive as a parent's love for their child. It's a love that is intimate, tender, and vulnerable. Our sins don't destroy God's love and yearning for us. To God we are always lovable and valuable, however unlovable and worthless we may seem to ourselves and others.
Abba Mius was an early church monastic. A soldier once asked him if God really loves us and forgives us. After the old man had taught him many things he said, "Tell me, my dear, if your cloak is torn, do you throw it away?" The soldier replied, "No, I mend it and use it again." The old man said to him, "If you're so careful about your cloak, will not God be at least equally careful about God's own child?
God's love is always with us - whether we respond to God or not, it's still here. God's love doesn't depend on our "being good." It's a gift - free of charge, free of expectation, free of obligation. So if God's gift of love is really free of obligation, then why are there all these references in today's readings about needing to obey the commandments..so that God will love us?
For example, in one passage, Jesus says "Those who keep my commandments are those who love me. Those who love me will be loved by my Father.." It certainly sounds conditional - and I think the Church has often read these kinds of passages as conditions for being loved by God - that if we don't keep the commandments, God won't love us. On the surface that does seem to be what Jesus is saying.
A minute ago I quoted Abba Mius. There were many such people in the early church - men and women who devoted their lives to discovering what Jesus really wanted us to understand. They left a remarkable foundation of wisdom. A fundamental truth that they never seemed to lose sight of is that we are all created in the image of God. Out of the tender, passionate and unconditional love God has for us, each of us has been given God's own image that can never be completely lost.
According to our Christian ancestors, no matter how far we stray from God and how hopelessly broken the human condition seems to be, God's image remains within us. Because of that persistent presence of the image of God, there is a fundamental goodness in every human being that always connects us to God and to each other.
It is this fundamental goodness, this spark of God's self within each of us that seeks to heal the brokenness that results from the absence of love in our lives. It is this fundamental goodness which draws us back to God and to a yearning desire to follow that great commandment - to love our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might, and to love our neighbor as our self. Growth in the love of God has to include love of those images of God with whom we share our world.
So following the commandments isn't about, "you better be good or God won't love you." It's the other way around.
When we remember that the image of God resides within everyone, and when we allow that spark of God's self to begin to grow within us, we just naturally find ourselves drawn to the commandment to love God and one another. And in doing so, we discover that the free gift of God's love becomes more and more present in our lives - and as it does, our hurts begin to heal, our bitterness recedes, we are released from our addictions, and gradually the things which have almost covered up that image of God within us melt away and love shines through.
AMEN.
Insights from the early church monastics which are expressed in this sermon were inspired by Roberta C. Bondi, To Pray and To Love, 1991.