Sermons are now being posted here. To access the sermons from August 2009 to May 2011, please go to the St. James the Assiniboine website. The link is in the column to the right.

To add your own comment, click on the '# Comments' phrase at the bottom of each post: it will take you to the composing window.


Sunday, October 23, 2011

Pentecost 19: You Shall Love

By now, most of you have heard the news...Muammar Gaddafi is dead. He is the dictator that ruled over Libya with an iron fist approach.

The last few days there has been no end to the discussion on the opinions of this man... his supporters claimed he was committed to his friends and rewarded them lavishly when they supported him...not so when you didn’t. Gaddafi was brutal in his approach to his enemies. Over the years, many leaders on the political stage have had to clench their teeth and find ways to work around him. This man has been a part of the world stage certainly in all of my growing up days. I even watched a TV sitcom from the 1980s yesterday and Gaddafi’s name was mentioned.

This death is a part of a growing movement it seems on the part of ordinary, every day folk to get out from under the thumb of dictators. In many cases, when these dictators are brought down, others are raised up to take their place.

As I said, like the man or not, the way he treated the people of Libya, he did have his supporters. We’ll never know if those people supported the dictator simply out of fear or whether it was genuine. What it does say is that there is light in every human being. Every human being is created in the very image of God and when God created His world He said it was good.

At the time of Confirmation, we are sometimes asked, “What is the chief purpose of mankind or humanity?” The answer: “To glorify or bring glory to God.” What do I mean by glory? Two things. First, there is the glory in God himself as we read in Acts 7. In his speech to the Sanhedrin, Stephen says this. “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran.” Second, there is the glory we give to God as described in 1 Chronicles 69, “Give unto God the glory due His name,” and 1 Cor. 6:20 which says, “Glorify God in your body and your spirit.” In other words, lifting God’s name up in the world and magnifying Him to others.

It’s tough for anyone to even remotely suggest Gaddafi glorified God, but certainly, to his supporters, to those whom he did assist, something of the nature of our God was seen. Herein lies the challenge to the Church, to glorify our God in a world that so desperately needs to know Him. So, how do we do this?

We begin with obedience, and when I say this I do not mean we are to act like we are under the thumb of a dictator, simply doing what we are told. The very word, “obedience” has two roots—“to listen” and “to act.” In our Old Testament lesson today, we heard of the very last days of Moses, the servant of God, who glorified God in his obedience and God was with him in his journey, particularly as Moses challenged the pharaoh and the Israelites as they grumbled in the wilderness some 4o years.

Moses never did get to see the Promised Land God would give. He could look out on it, a land flowing with milk and honey. Yet, he would not live long enough. Before his death, though, Moses prepares the people of Israel for their entry to the Promised Land. Moses was 120 years old when he died and the reins of leadership were handed over to Joshua, as scripture says, “Joshua, son of Nun, was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him; and the Israelites obeyed him, doing as the Lord had commanded Moses.” There’s that word—obey. Just as Moses obeyed by listening to God and then acting, so now Joshua would do the same.

We obey to give glory to God and we give glory to God because all of what He ahs done for us. In John 3:16, we are told that God so loved the world, so loved you and so loved me, that He gave His only begotten Son, to the end that all who believe in Him would not perish in sin but have eternal life. Jesus, by dying a cruel death on the cross, has carried out the plan of salvation. He has saved us from sin for a reason—that we might tell others of God’s unconditional love so that others would seize the opportunity for life eternal.

Obedience, then, is an act of love. We are told in scripture that we love because we were first loved by our God. God knows each and every one of us personally and has a plan for each of our lives. Whether we follow that plan or not is up to us. The plan of God, the plan of salvation, is for us. John reminds us of that in his first letter. “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4)

Sometimes, the message of love is rejected, especially if it means changing one’s evil ways, or challenges others to repent. This is what was happening with the religious leaders of Jesus’ day as we heard in today’s Gospel. The Sadducees, a sect that did not believe in resurrection, were arguing with Jesus. The Pharisees wanted to capitalize and embarrass Jesus, by asking, “Which of the commandments is greatest?” The 10 commandments set out laws to live by and the religious leaders themselves had stretched that to over 600. Here was a way to trap Jesus and to put a wedge between his followers.

The answer was clear. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Then, He said. “This is the greatest and first commandment. The second is like it. ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Jesus was setting out the way of life for all of us. Love. What does this mean? To willingly give yourself, a self-giving, an act of the will. That’s a great line in a song from Steve Bell... “Love is not a feeling, it’s an act of the will.”

To love is to give freely, first to our God with the whole of our being—mind, body and soul. Then, the second part of loving involves our reaching out...to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. Perhaps this is where Gaddafi and others like him went wrong. The human nature, left to itself, will rebel against God, will want its own way, will want total control. When temptation comes, that is when we will choose the wrong ways...sometimes it may be greed or envy or pride that lead us to a fall, that take us away from our God of love. It may take us instead in the direction of power, lust, or control over others. When challenged, this can still be dangerous as we read and hear about daily.

And so, in the second lesson today Paul writes to the Thessalonians to remind them of the nature of their ministry. “As you know and as God as our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But, we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”

In these very words of Paul, we see the response of love that comes out of obedience to our God. We love, because we remember we were first loved by God. Others, as we give unselfishly, become dear to us, as dear as our own earthly brothers and sisters.

Now, let us remember, that just as an earthly family will struggle from time to time, the family can still unite, can still bond, can still function in love. This earthly model is a pale comparison with the love our God has, but it is reflective of the opportunity for that love to come into the lives of all whom we meet. As Timothy has said, if we cannot love our brothers whom we have seen, how can we love God whom we have not seen? As well, it is hard to love if we do not first love ourselves. At times, we may not be proud of the way we have treated others or we just do not have a good image of ourselves. When we feel this way toward ourselves, it is difficult to respond to others in love.

Thanks be to God, though, who has forgiven us all our sins and given us new life in Him. The first thing we need to do at times is to forgive ourselves, from the heart. When you truly know forgiveness, it is then easier to pass that to others and this is primarily what we are doing at the Peace...passing the love and the peace and the joy in our hearts from ourselves to others.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us continue to break bread with each other, to receive with joy the sacrament which is a weekly reminder or remembrance for us of all that God has done for us. May that fellowship with our God bring us healing, wholeness and joy and may that joy spread to others. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

No comments:

Post a Comment