Not Just About Me

 Not Just About Me

1 Corinthans 8:1-13[1]

Most of us have lived our entire lives during great upheaval. That turmoil began with the sweeping social and political changes in the 1960’s and 70’s. In those days people began questioning everything from morality to economics to religion to government. To be sure, there had been those who marched to a different drum beat before that time. But in those days it seemed like everyone was willing to cross all the formerly recognized boundaries in their quest for personal “freedom.” Scandals like the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate burglary only added fuel to the fires that were already burning. To those who were committed to traditional values, it was a time when the accepted standards began to break down. To those who saw the status quo as unjust, hypocritical, and biased to benefit the powerful few, it was a time of righting social wrongs. In a very real sense, our society has been wrestling with this fundamental divide ever since.

One of the questions that is at the heart of this struggle has to do with morality. It’s the question of how you know what’s right from what’s wrong. There have always been those who advocated certain absolute rules that represented lines that were never to be crossed. And I think most people would agree that there are some things that are never right under any circumstances. It’s never right to harm someone who is weaker than yourself simply because you have the power to do so. It’s never right to enrich yourself by taking unfair advantage of others, especially those who are most vulnerable in our society. But, as the scandals of our era have sadly demonstrated, many of those who are the most vocal supporters of traditional values don’t practice what they preach.

Because the voices that supported traditional values so blatantly ignored them in their own lives, many have simply decided that there is no absolute right or wrong. If it seems right to you, then it is, regardless of what anyone else may say. In my day, the way people put it was “if it feels good, do it.” But of course, the real point was “if it feels good to me.” Again, I think it’s clear that we as a people have made progress over the last several decades toward recognizing the rights of those who had long been denied justice. But in the process, morality became personal and private, which didn’t actually make things any more just or fair. It merely opened a pandora’s box of self-indulgence. In the name of “rights” we as a people have claimed that we can do whatever we please. And the result has been lives broken by moral license, selfishness that approaches narcissism, epidemic levels of substance abuse, and greed for ever more power and wealth. And all of this without any concern for how our actions affect anyone else.

Of course, there are many who continue to make a sincere effort to try to do what’s truly right. But it gets complicated. Take, for example, the commandment “You shall not kill.” That seems pretty straightforward. It seems like an absolute boundary that no one should ever cross. I would say we could all agree that it’s absolutely wrong to murder someone in cold blood. But it’s not so clear when a person kills someone in self-defense or in the course of saving the life of another. It’s still a “violation” of the commandment, but as a society, we consider it to be “justified.” I’ve never been there myself, but I would say that anyone who has ever had to take a life in the line of duty, whether soldiers at war or officers keeping the peace, would agree it affected them profoundly, even though it was the right thing to do in that situation.

All of this is a way of getting into the lesson from 1 Corinthians for today. The first Christians lived in a world of competing moral standards, no less that we do. And it wasn’t always clear to them what the right thing to do was in every situation. St. Paul addresses one of those situations. Because the believers in Corinth lived in a world that was dominated by the worship of pagan idols, the question of how to remain true to God and avoid idolatry, which was another of the Ten Commandments, wasn’t always clear in that setting. The Hebrew Bible goes to great lengths to argue that idols are nothing but “smoke and hot air” (Isa 41:29, MSG). As a result, some of the believers at Corinth had decided that there was nothing wrong with taking part in a meal held in honor of a pagan god, where the main course was meat that had been offered as a sacrifice to that god. After all, as Paul himself could say, “we all know that an idol is not really a god and that there is only one God” (1 Cor 8:4, NLT). If that’s the case, then it’s just another meal.

But the problem was that those who were confident in this “knowledge” weren’t thinking about other believers who weren’t so confident. Many of the Christians in Corinth had lived their whole lives believing that the pagan gods were indeed real, and that the sacrifices made to them were a way of acknowledging their influence. For them, a meal held in honor of a pagan god was a violation of the commandment to avoid idolatry. But if they saw other believers partaking in those meals, they may have become confused and decided to partake in an idol feast themselves. But because of their upbringing, they would likely feel convicted that they had sinned by breaking the commandment by being unfaithful to God. In St. Paul’s words, by exercising their freedom, those who were confident that idols weren’t real were causing the others to stumble in their faith. So he concludes, “if what I eat causes another believer to sin,” at least in their own minds, “I will never eat meat again as long as I live—for I don’t want to cause another believer to stumble” (1 Cor 8:13, NLT).

In a world with a confusing array of competing moral standards, St. Paul argued that one principle for deciding what was right from what was wrong was the question of how an action would affect others. As he said elsewhere, “live in such a way that you will not cause another believer to stumble and fall” (Rom 14:13, NLT). And the way to do that was to make love the deciding factor. In this situation, Paul himself acknowledged that idols were not real, and that there was nothing wrong with eating meat that had been sacrificed to a pagan god. But he also recognized that there was more at stake in his actions than just his own welfare. He had to consider the welfare of those who would be influenced by his actions. That’s what it means to live in the community of faith with other believers: to live in a way that benefits others, not just yourself.

There was a cost to this course of action, and I think Paul knew it. The worship of pagan gods was such a common part of everyday life that it was hard to avoid these feasts. It would be like avoiding going to a football game in our culture! To avoid those feasts would be to risk more than just a loss of social standing in the community. It would and did mean the loss of livelihood, the loss of community, and even the loss of family. Paul knew the sacrifices following Jesus involved. But despite the sacrifices, I’d say Paul thought it was worth it to safeguard the welfare of fellow believers. For him, living in a community of faith meant sacrificing your “rights” for the sake of the good of the whole community. We used to believe in that. These days, our “rights” are almost our “idols,” and we will do anything to safeguard our “right” to do whatever we please. But Paul advocates a different way. Considering how his actions affected others was a central factor in his decisions when it came to moral questions that were not straightforward or clear-cut. 

I’d like to be able to tell you that the principle of considering how your actions will affect others will make your moral choices clear and straightforward. But in the context of social turmoil in which we live, I’m not sure it’s ever possible to be completely certain of our actions. For most of us, whatever we choose to do is going to offend someone somewhere. Whether it’s what we eat or drink or what we watch or read, someone somewhere is going to think it’s wrong. To avoid offending anyone in any way, we would have to withdraw from life altogether! I think what we’re left with is doing the best we can to live our lives in a way that brings honor to Christ, not dishonor. I think what we’re left with is doing the best we can to follow his example in all our actions. I think what we’re left with is recognizing that for all of us, our decisions are “not just about me.” Knowing that, we can do our best, in so far as it’s humanly possible, to act in ways that will help others, and not harm them.

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[1] ©2024 Alan Brehm.  A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 1/28/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Compelling

 Compelling

Mark 1:14-20[1]

There are some people we encounter who are unique. They have a quality about them that draws us to them. It may be their ability to make us feel at ease. Or it may be the fact that they seem to be able to make friends with anyone. Or it may be their gift of making conversation with just about anyone on just about any topic. I could go on and on. We’re drawn to people like this for reasons as varied as their individual personalities. There was a time when we called this quality “charisma.” That’s a good word for it, but it doesn’t make it any easier to define. Suffice it to say that these people tend to be the ones toward whom we are naturally drawn, and they wind up being the center of attention, or the “life of the party,” wherever they go. They also tend to be the ones who wind up in leadership positions simply because they have a gift for it, whether they’re aware of it or not.

As we’re looking at the witness of Mark’s Gospel to Jesus as the “Son of God,” I think there was a compelling quality about him that drew others. He had this same quality that we find so hard to put into words today. In Mark’s Gospel, it’s called “authority.” I don’t think that was referring to any formal authority, but rather the fact that his words, his actions, his very person had the power to influence the people around him. In fact, the word in the original Greek text can also be translated “power.” Again, I don’t believe that was referring to any kind of force that Jesus wielded like a club. Rather, his words, his actions, his very person had the power to influence the people around him. People were drawn to him. They responded to him. Although he rarely sought the center of attention, he often wound up there, at times surrounded by a crowd of thousands. They came to him because he had a compelling quality that drew them to him.

I think we see this reflected in our Gospel lesson for today. It’s the story of Jesus meeting four fishermen and inviting them to follow him. We know the outcome because we’ve heard it before so many times: they left their boats and their nets and their families and they followed Jesus. But if we think about this episode as if we were hearing it for the first time, I would say it’s reasonable to ask why they made such a radical change in their lives just because he asked them to. The Revised Common Lectionary organizes our Gospel readings this year in a way that’s intended to make us think this wasn’t their first encounter with Jesus. Last week we heard about John the Baptist pointing out Jesus to Andrew and Simon Peter in John’s Gospel. But Mark’s Gospel doesn’t tell us that story. In Mark’s Gospel, they “immediately” leave everything behind to follow him, and we’re left to simply wonder why they would do that.

They aren’t the only ones who responded to Jesus in that way. To be sure, not everyone who met Jesus was drawn to him. There were many who saw him as a threat and a danger. But there were many others who were drawn to Jesus just as the four fisherman in our lesson for today. Mark tells us that on one evening in Capernaum the people brought all who were suffering to him so that “the whole city” was gathered (Mk. 1:33)! Historians estimate the population of Capernaum at that time to have been around 1500 people. Mark also tells about a time when he was teaching beside the sea of Galilee, and such a large crowd had gathered that Jesus had to get in a boat and push out from shore to be able to address them all. At one point, when Jesus and his disciples were trying to get some time away from the crowds, Mark tells us that over 5000 people met him when he came ashore, and after teaching them he fed the whole group with five loaves and two fish.

Again, I think it’s a fair question to ask what drew all these people to Jesus. One part of the answer is that his “fame” was spreading throughout Galilee (Mk 1:28). But I don’t think that was all there was to it. People don’t stay in a deserted place without food and shelter just because they’ve heard about someone famous and they want to get a glimpse for themselves. His “fame” may have brought them to Jesus, but there was something more that kept them there. Especially in a deserted place where there wasn’t enough food for them all! If it had been nothing more than curiosity, they wouldn’t have stayed too long to get back to food and lodging. Certainly not families with children! His message about God’s love for them and God’s promise to set things right was something many of them longed to hear. Again, I would say that it was Jesus’ words, his deeds, and more than that his very person that compelled them to stay.

In one sense, the whole New Testament was written to try to define this compelling quality the first Christians encountered in Jesus. They used terms like “Messiah,” “Son of God,” and “Savior” to try to express who Jesus was. But there are many, many other ways they tried to define this “quality” he had. One interesting episode is when Peter was preaching to Gentiles for the first time in the book of Acts, in the household of the Roman Centurion Cornelius. I think it’s interesting because up to that point, they were speaking to Jewish crowds, and they used Jewish concepts. But when he tried to explain who Jesus was to Gentiles for the first time, Peter said that Jesus was the one whom God had “anointed” with “the Holy Spirit and power,” and that he “went about doing good” and healing all who were suffering (Acts 10:38). And he explained this not only by the power with which God had “anointed” Jesus. He also explained it by insisting that “God was with him.”

I think that’s a pretty good way of explaining this mysterious quality about Jesus that was so hard for people to define: when people met Jesus they sensed that God was with him. But there’s another interesting episode where the disciples described this quality of Jesus in a different way. In Luke’s story about the disciples who met the risen Jesus as they were on the road to Emmaus, after Jesus revealed himself to them—that is, after their “eyes were opened” and they were able to recognize him—they said, “were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?” (Lk 24:32). I’ve always liked that way of describing the impact of Jesus. When we have eyes to see the truth and ears to hear what Jesus is saying to us, our hearts burn within us. St. Paul describes this experience as the Spirit of God in our hearts crying out “Abba, Father!” (Gal 4:6; cf. Rom 8:15-16). In other words, we recognize in our own hearts that we are encountering God when we encounter Jesus.

I mention these last examples because there may be a tendency among us today to think that we don’t have the same direct access to this compelling quality of Jesus that the people of ancient times had. They had their encounters with Jesus firsthand, like the fishermen in our lesson today; we only have their stories, and the stories of those who have gone before us. But that doesn’t mean that our faith in Jesus is only “secondhand.” Jesus’ words and the stories about his deeds still cause our hearts to “burn” within us with the conviction that there’s something there that’s life-changing for us as well. And we have the Spirit of God in our hearts no less than they did, so that we too can recognize that when we encounter Jesus, we’re encountering God, and our hearts cry out, “Abba, Father!” No less than the first disciples, Jesus’ words, his actions, his very person still have the power to influence us today. We only need the eyes to see and the ears to hear that Jesus is among us still, calling us to follow him.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 1/21/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Confirmed

Confirmed

John 1:29-49[1]

These days the question of whom you believe can be a controversial one. People line up behind certain news outlets, for example, and draw a line in the sand to separate themselves from those “on the other side.” There are a lot of reasons offered up for why we as a people have become so “polarized” around this question. Some say it’s the influence of social media. And it’s true to some extent that we may be too quick to believe something we read on Facebook or someone we hear on YouTube without really checking the facts. Some say our problems are the result of fundamental differences among us regarding our attitudes toward education, patriotism, and the very nature of truth itself. Others trace the problem back to different groupings or “tribes” among us going back to the very beginnings of our country.

I’m not sure about all of that. Some of it seems like it’s “above my pay grade.” What I think is that the human family has always had a tendency to believe whatever confirms what they already suspect to be true. The phrase “that sounds about right to me” is one that we use to confirm what we hear. In many ways, that can be just an idiom. But behind that, there may be something more. For example, the spread of rumor and gossip is nothing new. It’s been around as long as there have been groups of people. It’s not a new phenomenon that we’re drawn to those who share our opinions, and we’re suspicious of anyone who dares to voice something “different.” If anything, I would say that the technology behind email and the internet and social media has only made rumor and gossip much more powerful. And it’s made it much harder for us to sort out fact from fiction. After all, the real question isn’t whether something “sounds about right to me.” The real question is whether something is true.

That’s a much harder question to answer. Especially when the truth is inconvenient, or challenges our long-held beliefs, or we simply don’t like it. Some of us use facts to try to answer the question of truth. What’s true is what is backed up by facts, by hard data. That sounds reasonable, but as many of us have learned the hard way, people can “spin” the facts to prove whatever point they want you to believe. Others rely on common sense. They trust what makes sense based on their life experience. Again, that sounds reasonable, but the problem is that our life experience is limited. That’s true for all of us. Nobody can know the lived experience of every member of the human family. Others rely on “gut instinct.” Basically, they go with what “feels right.” Again, that can work sometimes, but we all know that our feelings can lead us astray.

This problem with discerning truth in our daily lives also applies to our faith. When you look at the spectrum of churches out there and the different ways they approach faith, you may wonder why that’s the case. It has to do with how they answer the question of what is true. For many, the basis for truth is an authoritative book, the Bible. You might think that’s obvious for all Christians. But the problem is that the Bible can be difficult to read, and harder to understand. Between the Bible and every truth claim based on a Scripture text is the interpretation of the person reading it. And we’re all flawed and fallible Bible readers. I’m sure we’ve all heard of cult leaders who twisted the Bible to get people to carry out their bidding. But a more common problem is how to sort out all the different ways people can “spin” the Bible.

This issue with interpreting the Bible has been around from the beginning. That’s why many Christians believe that the basis for the truth of their faith is an authoritative church. Because we are all fallible Bible readers, they believe it takes the guidance of the “right” church and its leaders to know what’s true. Usually, the “right” church is their church, and other churches are judged to be right or wrong based on how they line up with their church’s teachings. But the problem is that every church that has ever been is a human organization, made up of flawed and fallible people. More than that, because every church is made up of fallible people, the more attention, the more power, the more influence someone has in a church organization, the more they are subject to the temptations of their own self-will. As one famous observer noted, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”[2] He was talking about the church!

In the face of the fallible interpretations of the Bible by fallible church leaders, some Christians believe that the basis for the truth of their faith is an authoritative experience. They claim that in order to truly have faith a person has to have a dramatic spiritual experience, much like that of the Apostle Paul on the Damascus Road. Once again, however, whether or not one’s spiritual experience is “real,” and therefore a sufficient basis for faith, depends on how well it conforms to their experience. Those who insist on a particular spiritual experience tend to make themselves the yardstick by which they measure the faith of everyone else. And if it doesn’t match up closely enough with their experience, then it’s not “true” Christian faith.

If we can’t rely absolutely on an authoritative book, or an authoritative church, or an authoritative experience, some might be tempted to think that there’s no way to know whether our faith is true or not. In fact, I think there are many these days who harbor that thought. But I wouldn’t say we have to just throw up our hands and give up. As with many things in life, I would say that the answer lies in finding balance. We rely on the witness of the Bible as the foundation for our faith, and rightly so. But we also rely on the tradition of interpreting the Bible that has been handed down to us by the Church. And our own spiritual experiences serve to reinforce our personal faith convictions. I think that, at the end of the day, what all of this means is that it’s more honest to say “I believe” with much of our faith rather than “I know.” It’s not a matter of uncertainty, but humility, and I believe there is wisdom in that.

You may be wondering what all of this has to do with the Scripture readings for today. In John’s Gospel, those who met Jesus expressed their faith that he was the “lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” the “Messiah … about whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote,” and the “Son of God.” We might wonder what basis they had for making those claims. I would say it was based on their first-hand experience of Jesus, which they understood in light of the Bible, as they interpreted it through the faith they had been taught. I think the same is true for us today. We can affirm our faith in Jesus based on our spiritual experiences, which we understand in light of the Bible, as we interpret it through what we have been taught by the Church.

That way of putting it may sound rather ordinary compared to the way other people talk about their faith. It lacks the appeal of a dramatic spiritual experience. It lacks the certainty of those who are supremely confident that their understanding of the Bible is undisputable. It lacks the assurance of those who are convinced that their church is the “true” one. But as it has long been observed, it takes at least three legs to make a sturdy stool. Affirming that our faith is based on our spiritual experiences, which we understand in light of the Bible, as we interpret it through what we have been taught by the Church provides us with a solid foundation for faith. It doesn’t give us absolute certainty. We can’t look down our noses at those who believe differently as if we “know” the truth and they don’t. What we can do is humbly affirm our faith as one that is confirmed not only by our own experience, but also by the Bible, and by the teaching of the church. At the end of the day, I think that’s a faith that can withstand the challenges of life. And after all, that’s what faith is about.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 1/14/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Lord John Dahlberg-Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887.

Unprecedented

Unprecedented

Mark 1:1-11[1]

This is the time of year when people think about what will be “new” about the “New Year.” But for those of us who have made more than a few trips around the sun, turning over the calendar may just mark another day. We may find ourselves thinking along with the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes that “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl 1:9). Or to put it in a more familiar way, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” It’s the moral of the story of Sisyphus, the mythological Greek figure who thought he could outsmart the gods and even cheat death. As a result, he was sentenced to push a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down again, over and over and over. In both cases, the idea is that all our efforts are in vain.

This sentiment has been around for a long time—for millennia in fact! The myth of Sisyphus goes back to ancient Greece, and Ecclesiastes may be one of the older books in the Hebrew Bible. And yet, there are genuinely “new” things that happen for some of us. Students graduate from High School and move on to the next level. Or they complete their studies and start a career. Couples get married and start their lives together. Or they have children, which changes everything! Those are exciting times for all who are involved. But after a while, even a “new” career falls into a routine. Couples and even families can deal with the same thing. As the years continue to roll around, they may start to feel like every year turns into a repeat of the last one. Monotony sets in, and that leads to boredom. Our flourishing entertainment industry gives ample evidence of the fact that many of us, despite whatever “new” things come our way, feel like our lives are just an endless loop of the same old thing, day by day, month by month, and year after year.

To some extent, that’s a normal part of our human experience. Seasons come and seasons go. We rely on that. Our days and nights and weeks and months and years tend to follow a pattern. That’s not all bad. It’s comforting to know, for example, that the sun will actually come up tomorrow. Having a “normal” life gives us a sense of stability. But when stability turns into monotony, and boredom sets in, we can find ourselves struggling with the idea that none of it really matters. And that leads to despair, a state of mind and heart and soul that results from losing hope that anything we do or say makes any difference at all. More than that, despair cancels out any kind of faith: in God, in life, in the future, in anything. When we lose hope, and we lose faith, we also lose the heart and the will to truly live and love and find joy in doing so.

The message of the Bible, despite the pessimistic declaration of the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes, is a very different one. As the prophet Isaiah declares in the name of the Lord, “I am about to do a new thing” (Isa 43:19). In fact, the new thing that God promised to do would change everything. As the prophet said in the name of the Lord, “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind” (Isa 65:17). In that setting, the prophet was primarily talking about what God was going to do to set his people free from their captivity in Babylon. The promise was that God was going to change everything; in fact, God’s work was going to change even the heavens and the earth! As we’ve discussed, when the people returned from exile, the reality they faced wasn’t as “new” and as all-encompassing as they expected. There was a lot that stayed the same.

Some might think that God didn’t fulfill his promise after all. But the reason why things didn’t turn out quite the way they expected was because God wasn’t finished fulfilling his promise. The “good news” that the prophet Isaiah proclaimed almost three thousand years ago was a sweeping vision that included all God has in store for his precious creation. And, of course, the essential piece of that “good news” had to do with the birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and reign of Jesus Christ as Lord! We get a glimpse of that “good news” in our Gospel lesson for today. Not only does Mark tell us that the events surrounding Jesus’ birth were part of the fulfillment of God’s promises through the prophet Isaiah. He also demonstrates in several ways that the story of Jesus is the “good news” about the “Son of God.” Now there had been others before Jesus who were called “sons” of God, but Jesus fulfilled that role uniquely.

That’s the point of the affirmation that the Gospel of Mark opens with: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk 1:1). One of the ironies about Mark’s Gospel is that the only person who truly recognizes Jesus as the “Son of God” is the Roman Centurion who witnessed his death on the cross. Nobody else truly recognizes Jesus as the “Son of God” in Mark’s Gospel. I think the reason for this is that Mark believed people could only truly understand what it meant that Jesus was the “Son of God” in light of the fact that he suffered and died on the cross. In that day, “Sons of God” were supposed to do miraculous deeds, draw huge crowds of followers, enjoy tremendous success, and be recognized by one and all! “Sons of God” in the ancient world were the “stuff of legend,” the focus of mythical stories. But Jesus demonstrated that he was the true “Son of God” by following through with God’s purpose: he took all the suffering of the world onto himself by dying on the cross.

As important as it is that Jesus was born as “God-who-is-with-us,” as important as it is that Jesus died as “God-who-is-for-us,” as important as it is that Jesus was raised to new life and ascended to the right hand of God to reign over all things, as Mark reminds us, this is the “beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The change that God made in Jesus was only the beginning. The work of fulfilling the promise of making a whole new heaven and a whole earth would continue through the first Christians, as the New Testament tells us. Through those who were bold enough to declare the news that in Jesus Christ God had begun working to change the whole world, the “good news” continued to be fulfilled in the lives of all who heard the message and took it to heart.

I think what I want to emphasize today is that the “good news” is that God isn’t finished with his work even now. The “good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” is still in the process of being fulfilled. And God will not stop working to make all things new until he has changed everything and everyone by the power of his unfailing love. To those who say, “there is nothing new under the sun,” I say that through Jesus Christ God is continually doing something new among us, even now. To those who say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” I say that it’s time to open your eyes to see the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ that is still shining on us all to this day. To those who say that the promises of the Bible are just a lot of wishful thinking because life doesn’t ever really change, I say that it’s time to break the chains of hopelessness and despair. It’s time to open our hearts to the faith that the God who loves us will not stop changing everything until his work is finished, and it’s time to celebrate with joy the signs of God’s work that are all around us. In Jesus, God did something truly new and unprecedented. And he continues to do so among us and through us to this day.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 1/7/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Unfailing Love

 Unfailing Love

Psalm 89; Luke 1:26-38[1]

I think there’s a lot of confusion out there about love these days. We say, “I love you,” but what we really mean is “I’m lonely and I want you to comfort me.” Or “I think you’re incredibly attractive and desirable.” Or “Will you please just do what I want?” Or “I’m really excited to have such a great looking guy/girl with me; my friends are going to think I’m important.” Love is about wanting, desiring, or having. I think part of the reason for this is that we associate “love” so completely with romance. As a result, love has everything to do with feelings of infatuation or attraction or desire. That approach to love has many people spending their lives running around looking for their own personal holy grail of “love.” But when we do that, we tend to lose sight of any aspect of love as a choice, love as a gift you give to another person.

I think part of this confusion comes from the various “myths” about love that are out there. For example, there are many who live their whole lives looking for “the one.” You know, the single solitary individual out of the population of the world, which consists of enough people to fill roughly a thousand cities the size of the Chicago metro area! Another “myth” about love is “happily ever after.” It’s the fairy-tale ideal that when you find “the one” you’ll spend your lifetime in honeymoon bliss. I do think that people can live happily ever after, but it doesn’t look like “honeymoon bliss.” One of the silliest love-related myths I’ve ever heard comes from the tagline to the 1970 film “Love Story”: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” What in the world does that even mean? If you’re human, you’ll always be in a position of needing to say you’re sorry. If anything, love means you continually say you’re sorry, and you keep coming back and saying you’re sorry no matter what!

The Bible teaches us about love in many ways— through its practical teachings, through the stories of God’s love for a wayward people, and most importantly through the life of Jesus, who gave himself completely for the sake of us all. Our lesson from the Psalms for today begins with a celebration of God’s love: “Your unfailing love will last forever. Your faithfulness is as enduring as the heavens” (Ps 89:2, NLT). As we’ve seen over the past weeks, affirmations like this in the Psalms are often set in the context of the disappointments, the hardships, and the afflictions the people of Israel suffered. Their faith enabled them to confess that God’s unfailing love lasts forever specifically in those times when their circumstances could have led them to conclude that God had “forgotten” them. But the truth of who God is in the story of the people of Israel is that God never forgot them. His love for them never failed, even though their love for God failed time and time again!

The clearest demonstration of God’s love for us all in the Bible is found in Jesus: his birth, his life, and his death for us all. As you may know, there is some serious theology behind this statement. Theology that took centuries to formulate, and to some extent is still being shaped to this day. We call it the incarnation, the belief that in Jesus, God somehow came to share the fullness of our experience with life, including its joys and sorrows. Just the fact of Jesus’ birth as the Son of God demonstrates God’s love for us, because God chose to enter this world as one of us. But there’s more to it than that. Because the idea is that everything Jesus did was a reflection of who God is. And that includes dying on the cross. If the one who died on the cross is God incarnate, then that means God took into himself everything that prevents us from being the people he created us to be. That kind of love as expressed in the fundamental affirmation of our faith that God demonstrates his love for us in the birth of Jesus may be hard for us to grasp.

Our faith in Jesus as God incarnate is an important basis for understanding God’s love for us. But I doubt seriously that most of us come to the place where we truly believe that God accepts as we are through learning about theology. I think most of us learn about God’s love for us because somebody at some point in our lives showed us that kind of love. That’s where the Bible’s practical teachings about love come in. One of the clearest practical statements about love comes from the Apostle Paul: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful” (1 Cor 13:4-5). I know, we use this Scripture primarily at weddings. But Paul’s not talking about love only in the context of marriage. He’s talking about love as a way of life, love as a basic attitude toward other people, love as a commitment to following Jesus’ example.[2]

That’s easy to say, but as we know, it’s incredibly difficult to practice consistently. How do we follow Jesus’ example by loving each other the way he loved us? How do we give our lives away for the sake of the kingdom of God and for the sake of others without losing ourselves entirely? I think at least part of the answer is that we can only give ourselves away in love when our lives are grounded in God’s unfailing love. We can only practice this kind of love for others when we know that God loves us unconditionally and irrevocably, always has and always will. Even with that foundation for our love, I think we have to admit that loving others in this way doesn’t come easily for us. To be sure, we can love our families this way, but I think we also must admit that we all have to learn to love other people the way Jesus did.

If we pay attention to the way Jesus’ first disciples learned to love, I think we will discover that the way we learn to love like Jesus did is by coming together as a fellowship of people who are trying to learn how to follow Jesus’ example.[3] Whether it’s feeding the hungry, or clothing the poor, or comforting the sick and dying, or just listening to someone enough to really hear him or her, to love as Jesus did means to give of yourself without thinking about “what am I going to get out of this?” 500 years ago, the translators commissioned by King James translated the Greek word for love, agape, with the word “charity.” They were following the lead of ancient scholars who translated the Bible into Latin, and who used the word caritas. While “charity” has implications in our day that may be misleading, the basic idea is one of relating to other people with genuine, heartfelt care and compassion.

As with the other lessons of Advent, we may look at our world today and wonder where that kind of love can be found. It’s there in many ways, but the disturbing truth is that the way we humans treat one another all too often has very little to do with love. The promise of Advent is that God came into this world in the birth of Jesus to show us how much he loves us, and that he always has and always will love us in that way. If it sounds impossible that God could come into the world in the birth of Jesus, I’ll remind you what the angel said to Mary: “nothing will be impossible with God”! The fact that God would go to such lengths to show us that we are all loved, that we always have been and always will be, is the definitive demonstration of God’s unfailing love in the midst of a long and wonderful history of God showing us that God’s love for us never fails. And it’s that love that God shows us, throughout history, in the life of Jesus, and in the lives of our friends and family, that teaches us how to follow Jesus’ example of love. That unconditional and irrevocable love, that assurance that God always has and always will love us in this way sets us free to share love with others.

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[1] ©2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 12/24/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] I like Jürgen Moltmann’s definition of love in The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, 255: Love means combining “respect for the other person’s freedom” to be an individual “with deep affection for him or her as a person.”

[3] Cf. Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, 232. He says that the actions that define love “are learned patterns of behavior that must be cultivated over time in the context of a community that models and supports such behavior.”