Sermon from December 16, 2007
If someone asked me, "What do you love?" and I answered truthfully, I’d have to say, “I don’t have time to tell you all I love.” And if you revise your question to say, “What do you really love?” I’d still have to say, “I don’t have time to tell you all I really love.” Isn’t your experience like that?
With variations wouldn’t you say something like this? “I love Christmas presents and Super Bowl parties, walks on the beach, a good book, dinner with friends, a warm house, a new car, a favorite chair, solving a problem, vacations, a small child, autumn colors, the smell of spring, someone to love me, security, good health, the long days of summer, laughter among friends, a bull market” – this could go on and on.
The better question would be, “What is this power within us that we call love, and does it have a proper use?”
Fly in the Ointment
There’s a fly in the ointment, of course. There always is. But it may help us answer our question. Here are two examples.
The first comes from the Bible, 2 Samuel 13. It tells the story of two half-brothers, Amnon and Absalom. King David fathered both boys by different women. Absalom had a beautiful sister named Tamar, and his half-brother, Amnon, was smitten by her beauty but in a dishonorable way. Verse two puts it this way: Amnon became frustrated to the point of illness on account of his (half)-sister Tamar, for she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible for him to do anything to her.
The next dozen verses tell the sordid story of how he and his friend devised a scheme to trap her. The outcome was that he used force to have relations with her and then treated her with contempt. Absalom had Amnon killed in an act of revenge.
For our purposes verse 15 expresses a deep truth about human emotions. Then (after he had forced Tamar to have relations with him) Amnon hated her with intense hatred. In fact, he hated her more than he had loved her.
His experience makes our original question quite pertinent. “What is this power within us that we call love, and does it have a proper use?”
It is a power that can stop working within us. Why does it stop? How can it give way to its opposite so quickly, as it did in the case of David’s son, Amnon? Does fickleness belong to its nature?
The second example comes from contemporary experience. I had a friend, whom we would all call a success. He was well-spoken, married well, had a beautiful home, a good job, and lots of money.
As he told the story, he was sailing his boat off Martha’s Vineyard one day, and the thought hit him like a ton of bricks: “Is this all there is to life?” If your dream is to have lots of money and to sail your boat off Martha’s Vineyard, the question doesn’t make sense. You would say, “If I could only have this, I’d be happy.”
Once again, my friend’s experience makes our original question quite pertinent. “What is this power within us that we call love, and does it have a proper use?”
It seems to be a power within us that can drive us to great achievements and, when we reach our goal, we can feel unsatisfied with what we achieved and want something more – even if we don’t know exactly what.
Do you remember the old pop song, “What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love?” Hal David and Burt Bacharach composed it in the mid-60s, and it was among the top five songs used in American Idol competition in 2003. I don’t think the writers had Amnon and Tamar in mind, when they wrote the song, but I wonder how would they answer our original question?
The two examples I have given point us to a good answer to the first part of our question: “What is this power within us that we call love?” It is desire or longing for something we think will make us happy. It can be more or less intense, depending on the thing we think will make us happy. Sometimes, the intensity of our longing can overwhelm us.
Unwelcome Intruder
If I have your attention now, I’d like to invite into this meditation someone you might consider an unwelcome intruder. To prepare for this intrusion I’d like you to recall something you have loved with great intensity. In particular, would you focus just on the intensity of your experience?
For example, you might recall the overwhelming desire to have the thing or person you wanted. Or you might recall the restlessness you experienced when possession of what you wanted was delayed or denied. Or you might recall the stab of joy, when you took possession of your heart’s desire.
With such intensity in mind turn in your Bibles to the fifth book of the Bible, Deuteronomy 6:4-5. These two verses are central to the faith of Jews. They call them the Shema. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Keeping in mind the intensity of your love, turn back to the third book of the Bible, Leviticus 19:18 – a book seldom read in the churches of North America and Europe, including this one. This chapter reiterates some of the Ten Commandments with which most of us are familiar, and it also adds many rules for living that we are not familiar with and some that we find incomprehensible.
Verse 18 says: Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people. That makes sense to us, even if we sometimes find it hard to do. Then, tucked away at the end of the verse, as a motive for such restraint, the verse adds this: but love your neighbor as yourself. What seems buried in a long list of rules in an obscure book of the Torah became central to human consciousness.
Now, look at Mark 12:28-31. One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, quoting the Shema, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second, quoting Leviticus 19:18, is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
I don’t know that Jesus was the first person to put those two commandments together and call them the great commandments. But, because He put them together, they were able to leave their Jewish provenance and become the heritage of the entire human family.
We call them the two Great Commandments. We call them that, because, if we love God and our neighbor, we will discover that we have fulfilled all God’s commandments. So, let’s make use of this spiritual heritage. I asked you to recall something you loved with great intensity and to focus on the intensity of your love.
The two Great Commandments say that we should love God and our neighbor with at least the same intensity. So, as you recall your passion about sports or money or children or clothing, ask yourself, “What would my life be like, if I loved God and the people I meet each day with the same passionate intensity?” Then, remember: that’s what the two Great Commandments call us to pursue. That is, in fact, the proper use of this power of our souls that we call love.
Disordered Love
But suppose we don’t love God or our neighbor with the same longing with which we love sports, money, children or clothing? I want to speak to that reality by first consulting the one biblical writer who talked about the Christian understanding of love more than any other, the Apostle John. Look at three of his statements.
1 John 3:10 says: This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.Here’s another statement. 1 John 3:14: We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.Here’s another statement. 1 John 4:8: Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. These statements can make us feel uncomfortable, because we know how passionately we love many things more than God and how cold we feel, when it comes to longing for God. Our discomfort is healthy, and it helps us to make better sense than ever out of another, unpopular, Christian idea, the idea of sin.
Most people think of sin as breaking rules, or they associate it only with sex. You can do better than that. Sin has everything to do with this majestic power within everyone of us that we call love and how we use it. Think of it this way.
I said earlier that if your dream is to have lots of money and to sail your boat off Martha’s Vineyard, you would say, “If I could only have this, I’d be happy.” The desire, the longing to have something, which is what love is, goes into action, when we spot something that we think will make us happy.
But Amnon got what he thought would make him happy, and when he got it, his love turned into hatred. My friend got all he thought would make him happy, and when he got it, even as he was enjoying it, he wanted to know, “Is this all there is to life?”
Sin is loving something other than God, as if it could make us happy. Evil, such as Amnon’s treatment of Tamar, certainly cannot make us happy. But neither can money, a boat and beautiful home. They leave us sooner or later unfulfilled, wanting something else. We’re made for something better.
As long as we seek our happiness by loving lesser things, not only will they fail to make us happy, they also take us farther away from God, who can make us eternally happy. That’s why Christians say that sin separates us from God. We use this glorious gift of love, which God put within us, to love something more than we love God; and we grow further and further apart from God, the true source of our happiness.
Jesus said it this way in John 6:27:“Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” Then, He said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” This leads to important conclusions. John is saying that if we love anything more than we love God or our neighbor, we just don’t know God.
John is saying that if we love anything more than we love God or our neighbor, it means that a kind of death at work in our souls.
John is saying that if we love anything more than we love God or our neighbor, it separates us from God. We are out of place in His family.
The Pastoral Center of Gravity
First, you might say to me, “Pastor, you said that sin is loving something other than God, as if it could make us happy. At the beginning of the sermon you said that you wouldn’t have time to tell us all you really love. How can you love so many things and not commit sin?”
It’s a good question. Some things that I love I need to forsake out of love for God. Either God forbids them, or they would supercede my love for God, if I continued having them. God does not forbid most of what I love, and most of what I love does not supercede my love for God, or not for long. My love for many things is proper, so long as I seek God alone for eternal happiness.
I feed this love for God by worshiping Him week by week with the people of God and in my daily private worship. I love God by serving the good of every person that comes across my path each day, even if it is personally inconvenient. I love God by seeking to be in private the same person people in public think I am. If anything else I love prevented me from loving God like that, then my power to love would be falling into disorder. I would need to repent and take action to restore the priorities of my love. Love God with all your heart, and a calming order asserts itself throughout all you love.
That brings me to a second conclusion. If a person persists in loving anything more than God, then I believe that person runs the risk of becoming either miserable or disillusioned.
We love something more than God, because we believe it will make us happy. When it fails to make us happy, disappointment goes to work in our souls. If we persist in loving that thing more than God, and the disappointment continues, it does something bad to our emotions. Some people become mean or even bitter.
Other people become disillusioned, depressed and refuse to dream again for fear of disappointment. Their love shrivels. C. S. Lewis captured this frame of mind in these words: “Of course, one feels like that when one’s young. But by the time you get to my age you’ve given up chasing the rainbow’s end.” (Mere Christianity, 114-115) Pity! Love God with all your heart. It’ll keep you sweet and keep you dreaming.
Finally, this sermon would be incomplete without quoting Augustine’s summary of all I’ve been saying. On the opening page of the Confessions, his spiritual autobiography, he wrote this: “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”
Is it just me, or does our American culture seem pathologically restless? Could millions of people be seeking happiness for themselves and their children in all the wrong places? How about you? We can’t destroy the power of love and longing within us, and we can’t change the fact that God made us to love Him more than anything else. Seek God with all your heart, and begin to discover what you were made for.
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, Brandywine Valley Baptist Church. All rights reserved.
