God’s Valentine, a sermon preached by the Rev. Robert Lee Nichols, Jr. at the Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church on February 24, 2008.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.
I John 4:7-11
Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I want to talk to you about a Valentine. God’s Valentine. I know it’s a little late. The big day was more than a week ago. But it’s not unusual for me to be late with such things. Yet God’s love is never late. It’s always right on time. I want to warn you, God’s Valentine is a big, mushy, tri-fold Valentine having to do with:
I John begins the first part of the Valentine:
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves
is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love
Love is not all that God is. There is more. Yet, this is God’s essential nature. And we know that the love of God creates us, sustains us every day of our lives, unites us, frees us, comforts and assures us, energizes and empowers us. It is in God’s love that we live. We can never overstate its importance, its primacy for the Christian life. It rules our hearts. It governs our actions. It is the ground of our being. It is the foundation of our life together. It’s what matters most.
The Bible says, God is love. There is so much that we do not know about God. God is beyond our knowledge, our understanding. We don’t have words to describe God’s awesome majesty and mystery and power. We cannot begin to capture in our language who the Almighty is. How could we? How could our sinful and mortal natures know the one who set the stars in their courses and guides the planets, the one who has a plan for us and for all creation and is actively bringing that plan to its completion. How could we possibly know this God? What pride that would involve.
And yet we do know this, for sure, that love is at the heart of God. For, God is love.
We may not know the awesomeness of the transcendent God. But at least to some degree all of us know about human love. We know about love’s beauty, its power and goodness, its claim upon our lives, its pull upon our hearts. We may experience it in different ways and to greater or lesser degrees, but we all know about love and therefore we all can begin to understand tiny the very nature of God’s Being, the most important part, the loving part. For God is love.
What is the love of God like? It burns with a passion. It’s not cold and lifeless like the moon. The love of God is more like the sun, roaring, burning and fueling creation.
Throughout the course of our life from beginning to end, forever and always, the love of God reaches out to find us, to embrace us. Even when we reject it, God’s love is there seeking us and searching for us and calling us home. God’s love waits patiently. It can wait forever. It’s like the father staying up well after curfew hour, waiting for the Prodigal Son to come home. We can be sure about this. There is much that we are not sure of, but this we know with absolute certainty, that God loves us. God’s love never gives up on us. God is the lover who never stops loving. Our loves falter and fail, but God’s love is always there. It is the bedrock, the foundation.
That’s the first part of the Valentine, and here’s the second.
God’s love was revealed among us in this way: that God sent His only Son
into the world.
John Calvin said, Jesus Christ is the heart of God poured out in love. So, the essential nature of God, the primary ingredient of God’s very Being, bursts upon this world with the Incarnation. What is the motivation for this love? And how does it show itself?
John 3:16: God loved the world so much that He gave his only Son. Love is the motivator and love is the instrument.
Do we deserve such a love? Have we earned it by our faith or good works? Nope. Romans 5:8: God proves His love for us that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.
Is there anything that can ever get in the way of God’s love? Is there anything that can stop it? Romans 8:38: Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So, Jesus Christ is the heart of God poured out in love and this is the 2nd part of the Valentine. The third part is this: Love one another. Because love is of God.
After Christ’s earthly ministry the church becomes the receptacle for the love of God.
The church is the dwelling place for this special gift, the container, the vessel. It’s our job to increase love in our own hearts and in our own church and throughout the world.
The great model we have is Jesus Christ. He shows us how to love God and each another. And so our job is to take this love and make it real within our own hearts and within our church and then take it out from here to our homes and schools and workplaces and neighborhoods. To spread it all over.
It begins in our homes. Not too long ago I was having dinner with a family. There were lots of kids in that household and as we got to the table, that odd silence enveloped us just before the “dig in” time. Now, in my family, we all held our breath at this point. Because we knew sooner or later, inevitably, someone would spill a glass of milk.
And, sure enough, a loose elbow caused the disaster. But a remarkable thing then happened. The one who spilled the milk didn’t make a move, they just sat there. Not feeling shame or guilt, just waiting while all the others in the family reached for the paper towels and refilled the milk glass and did all the necessary cleanup involved with a messy mess like this.
After the blessing, I asked, “What just happened?” It was explained to me by one of the other children that their family had one rule when it came to spilled milk – that the one who spilled it was not allowed to clean it up.
Wow! You see, love is embedded in this family and pervades its everyday life. Forgiveness, caring, understanding are acted out in such a small yet remarkable way. That’s our job, to take the love of Christ which we learn in the church into our families so we can all grow in that love and be nurtured by it as we live together.
And then we take it out into the world. One of our good members was in Giant Eagle some time ago and as she made her way through the store she kept passing in the aisles a woman and her infant daughter. The child was upset to begin with but as time went on she became more upset and loud. And the mother was getting more and more impatient and upset and loud. It was getting ugly. The Mom was reacting in a way guaranteed to escalate everyone’s unhappiness.
Half way through our good member was wondering if she should attempt an intervention. She decided not to. But when they arrived at the check-out counter and events had taken their normal course my friend had the perfect word to say. Now I could have thought for a thousand years and not come up with something so perfect. Here’s what she said,
Excuse me. I couldn’t help but notice how much your daughter looks like you and how beautiful she is. You must love her very much.
You see, that’s what we do when we are being the church. We take the good news to the Giant Eagle. We proclaim the fact that we are made in the image of God and that we are loved by someone, something much bigger than us.
It is in the church that we learn these things. Here we learn the plans God has for us. We learn how to open our hearts to God’s love and to share that same affection with others.
We learn both the requirements and the blessings of love. Here we come to know God’s love and learn how to love in return. We learn that in the church and we take it out into the world spreading grace around like fairy dust.
Not in the world do we learn how to love, but in the Body of Christ. One of the jobs we have is to tell the truth about love – to counteract the myths the world teaches about love. And there are many. The world believes it’s not okay to be single. The truth is we don’t need another person to be fulfilled or to live a great life in God’s eyes.
The world teaches there’s a soul mate out there waiting for you to find. And that’s the true task of love. The truth is it’s not about finding the right person, it’s about being the right person.
The world teaches love is about your feelings and your happiness and your needs. The truth is it’s about sacrifice not fulfillment.
We learn these important lessons in the church, so that we can be someone else’s Valentine. A woman by the name of Jennifer Holberg put it this way. I’m paraphrasing,
Here we cultivate a spirit of thankfulness, to continually remind ourselves
dependence on God. So we can focus on the real work of all of our lives: to love our friends and family extravagantly, to serve God faithfully, and to live out our salvation joyfully.
May it be so.
Amen.