Episcopal Church of the Incarnation
The Fifth Sunday of Easter Day (Year B)
Acts 8.26-40 Psalm
22.24-30 1 John
4.7-21 John 15.1-8
Alleluia. Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
1) We hear a lot about love
this week.
a) If you were here for the
wedding yesterday, you heard the famous “love chapter” from 1 Corinthians.
a) A chapter in which
i) In each of those phrases the
subject, love, is named, but the predicate adjective after that verb is not.
(1) “Love is patient.” With whom?
To whom?
(2) “Love is kind.” To whom?
(3) “Love is not envious or
boastful or rude.” Of whom? To whom?
(4) The list goes on.
b) The object of love is
all others; all within the Church and all outside the Church.
i) That’s the object of the
verb when we are the actors.
(1) But what about God?
2) Perhaps we get a hint in the
fact that God’s Name is itself a verb.
a) The Holy Name of God
Almighty, as revealed to Moses, is I AM.
i) The Hebrew verb perhaps
better translated as “I WAS, I AM, I WILL BE”.
(1) In other words, the source,
sustainer, summation and end of all Being.
b) And the Name Jesus is also a
verbal phrase, which means “God saves”.
3) Perhaps we get a further
hint in the nature of love itself.
a) Is love a thing? Not really, we can’t describe love except in
terms of what loves does, how love acts, who expresses love and how it is
expressed.
b) In Greek there are four
different words for love:
i) Love can be eros,
romantic or erotic love; the kind of love most people think of in this day and
age when we say someone is “in love”.
ii) Love can be philos,
brotherly love; the kind of love expressed in family ties and support.
iii) Love can be storge,
love of place or thing; the identification one expresses by identifying with a
place or thing, such as in saying and feeling “I am a Mississippian,” and
extending into the kind of identification and loyalty expressed in patriotism.
iv) And, finally, there’s agapé,
translated in the King James Bible as “charity” (which confuses people when the
KJV is used for 1 Cor. 13 at weddings).
(1) “Charity,” agapé love
expressed as selfless love, as living for the other, as treating love as a verb
the subject of with is the other, all others.
(a) And that’s the word used by
Jesus in the gospel when He gives us His new commandment, “love one another”
(John 15.12).
(i) And by
1. Agapé one another as God has “agapéd” us.
4) You see where this is
heading?
a) And Jesus makes it clear too
when He says, “Abide in me as I abide in you” (John 15.4).
5) God loves us in how He gives
of Himself. He gives in creation; He
gives in redemption.
a) And we love God and express
His love in how we give of ourselves.
i) Notice the verb again: to give.
(1) That’s the big difference
between being “in love” and being “in lust”.
(a) In love a person seeks to
give for the other, to the other.
(b) In lust a person seeks only
what the other can do for him or her; he or she seeks to receive only.
b) But the very phrase “in
love” brings us back to the issue of verbs again!
i) “In” is a function of the
verb “to be”. One is in love, a
function of being, which means that perfect love is a state of being, a
selfless giving.
(1) And that’s what abiding in
love is about, a state of being in selfless giving.
c) Now, listen to what
i) God lives: a state of being; a state of our
participating in the supreme Being I AM.
6) If this seems a little
convoluted (lots of verbs and Greek words), then consider what a mystery is.
a) A mystery is not something
hidden or secret, or unkowable.
b) A mystery is a truth which
must be experienced in order to be known.
i) A truth which must be
experienced in order to be lived.
c) And so the “mystery” of God
is made clear in how we experience His love, and in how we share this love.
d)
i) Ah. But we have!, as
(1) We have seen God in how He
gave Himself for us, hanging upon a cross.
(2) We see God when we
experience His love in the selfless giving of others.
(3) We experience God alive in
us, when His love is perfected in us in how we give of ourselves.
(4) And Jesus even tells us that
we see the very glory of God in self-giving, when He says, “My Father is
glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples” (John
15.8).
7) So much for verbs and
mystery. Let’s get practical.
a)
i) So it comes back to the
object of love; it comes back to what love does, how love acts, as described by
b) How can you give of
yourself? Another way to think of this
question is to ask, “How can I manifest God living in me?”
i) It can be in any of the ways
by which we describe the mission of the Church
(1) In service to others, in
worship, in education, evangelism or pastoral care.
ii) The point is not really how,
but who. Whom
can I serve? Whom can I give of myself
to?
(1) At a wedding we can smile or
cry when we witness the exchange of vows and hear the words which describe love
in action.
(a) We can smile or cry at the
love which is expressed in the bon of matrimony, in the self-giving of each
spouse to the other.
(2) And the reason we smile or
cry (or both) is that some part of us witnesses a little bit of God in the
self-giving we see.
(a) We experience the truth of
the mystery, and in experiencing God we are touched to the core of our being, a
being created in God’s image and likeness.
(b) We “get it,” and when we get
it we’re moved a little closer to God.
(i) We’re moved. Are you?
1. Are you moved closer to God
when you experience love?
a. Imagine how much closer
you’ll be when you give it.
Alleluia. Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed.
Alleluia.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
No one has seen God. 1 John 4.12. (“Seen” as “beheld,” theaomai [tetheatai] as in “to behold,
look upon, contemplate”.) In an icon,
one cannot depict the Father/God Almighty (exception of Trinity in Rublev.)
Love:
compare 1 John 4 and John 15.
He who has seen me has seen the Father. John 14.9.
(Horao) I have seen love.
Seeing and
experiencing. Mystery as a truth
experienced, perception of the supernatural/revelation. (John)
The non-believer does not “see”.
Mystery of God abiding in us
and we in Him. Self-giving.
I AM the Way.