Sermons

On this All Saints’ Sunday, I feel that tension. Without love, there is no grief, says Amy Hollywood, or maybe she says, without grief, there is no love. Amy Hollywood’s great-grandmother died of what they called at the time “acute melancholia”—she died of a broken heart after her husband, brother, and more than one of her children died in quick succession. And so Amy Hollywood wonders what would have made it otherwise? She says that for her, the ones we refuse to lose enable us to live. In other words as we hold dear those we have lost, they help us live again. Is that true for you? The ones we have lost enable us, in their own way, to live? Weeks, months, years, decades later, the grief is somehow raw and whole again, and yet they are the ones who carry us through. Maybe grief is so meandering and serpentine because love is so deeply embedded within us.
All those translations get the point across, but they’re all negatives. They only tell us what Love is NOT. Let’s turn that negative into a positive: “Love is selfless,” or “Love is generous.” Paul doesn’t quite say this, but almost: it is impossible to be self-centered and loving at the same time. A loving person never celebrates a pinched and mean sufficiency, but always a lavish, overflowing extravagance.
Sometimes I tell my brides and grooms that “Love is not an emotion; it’s a policy.” You see what I mean, right? Emotions come and go, flash and fade, ebb and flow. Emotions are not reliable. But a policy is forever. A policy is an incorruptible promise. A policy is an infrangible covenant.
Love is joy. Love is a finding seeking kind of joy. Love does not find joy in iniquity. Love does not find joy in injustice. Love does not find joy in wrongdoing. When someone trips up, makes a mistake, love cannot rejoice. Love only rejoices in the truth. Jesus recognizes this kind of love in Nathaniel. He calls Nathaniel “the one in whom there is no guile.” Maybe it’s more like this: If the gospel of John were a movie, it would begin like a Star Wars film, Christmas Eve’s familiar words scrolling to set the scene…in the beginning was the word…. The theme music would follow cascading camera angles and you’d see a man out by a river inviting others into the river with him for some kind of sacred ritual. Maybe you’d be led to believe this was the main character.
https://subsplash.com/kenilworthunionchurch/media/mi/+x8ptmyk This fall we're preaching a sermon series called The Greatest of These about Paul's multi-faceted description of love in 1 Corinthians 13: If I speak in the tongues of…
I wanted to repeat what Oliver Cromwell wrote to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1650: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you might be mistaken.” Your wife might ask you a perfectly reasonable question, and you might answer with an attitude that suggests she really ought to know the answer without asking. “Who is Travis Kelce?” she might ask. “Only the most famous football player in America,” you might answer. In a million years, you would never condescend like that with anyone else in your life, but you are so secure in that relationship that you forget your manners.
Paul doesn’t quite say this, but almost: it is impossible to be loving and envious at the same time. If you love someone, you will never resent—or even want—their success or happiness. It’s often pointed out that Envy is the only deadly sin that’s no fun. The other deadly sins have some kind of reward. With Glut-tony and Lust, there’s a pleasant dopamine kick. If you have Pride, you feel good about yourself. With Greed, you get lots of stuff. If you’re slothful, you get to sleep till noon. Even Anger can be satisfying, but Envy is never any fun.
Do you know someone who is unfailingly friendly, kind, solicitous, and deferential to his clients and colleagues; but rude, short, harsh, and indifferent to his own kids? Don’t answer that. Justice is for the human family. Kindness is for our own family. St. Paul doesn’t quite say this, but almost: it is impossible to be loving and unkind at the same time.
That’s what Paul does in First Corinthians 13 with the simple, common concept of love, breaks it up into its constituent elements and the first rainbow color of love is Patience. If we love someone, we will be patient with his foibles and failures. If we love everyone, we will be patient with their foibles and failures. BECAUSE—now, listen to me; this is very important—BECAUSE, as someone put it, BECAUSE “we must display to others the same patience God has shown to us in our creation and reconciliation. How could we offer to our fellow creatures less than what we ourselves have received: ungrudging pa-tience continually renewed?” Yes?
The leaders of last week’s anniversary event called it “a continuation, not a commemoration,” stressing that the American dream of equality and God’s dream of justice for all are still works in progress. One of you said to me recently, “TV news makes me sad.” I agree. The endless list of intractable problems foments despair. But there are research backed practices for nurturing the hope necessary for living faithfully in a troubled world. According to the Science of Happiness Podcast, commemoration is key to the continuation of positive action. It's a two-step process. First write about something important that you hope for. The poet on the podcast wrote about climate change. He hopes that the ice can return and for the native flora and fauna to thrive again. He hopes for protected places and for nations and people to make needed change.”

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