Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Discovering Love Again for the First Time (Sermon)

Discovering Love Again for the First Time
Text: John 13:31-35
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
May 2, 2010

Love. Love is probably one of the most used words in the Dictionary. It refers to everyone from people, to vacation spots, to food, and to favorite horses in the Derby.

Love is the topic of most movies, most novels, most songs, and most greeting cards. We read such things as:

Love is the irresistible desire to be desired irresistibly.
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
Love is the unity of two hearts beating together as one.
Love is not finding a perfect person, it is seeing an imperfect person perfectly.

And they’re all fine and nice. For greeting cards. But there always seems to be something missing, something more.

Jesus, toward the end of the Gospel of John, speaks a great deal to the apostles about what is going to happen next and what his hopes, dreams, and aspirations for them are. He summarizes everything he has to say quickly:

4I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

But here it is. If you’re like me, you like to know the definition.

Sometimes people say, “I had a really good time,” and I’ll wonder, how they define a really good times.

Or people say some place is a great restaurant and I want to know why and how they define a great restaurant.

Or, preaching sermons. “That was a great sermon!” I like people to define what they mean by a great sermon.

So Jesus tells them to love one another. It makes me want to ask one question. How does Jesus define love?

Jesus’ definition of love has one overwhelming requirement. Sacrifice.

Jesus states this bluntly in Chapter 15 when he says: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13

Of one mother’s profound sacrificial love, the preacher Michael Milton from Chattanooga, Tennessee shared very profoundly.

A young mother had to give up her daughter to be raised by the mother’s sister. The child’s mother had been burned horribly in a fire and despite many, many operations, never really recovered and was placed in a nursing home.

The little girl grew up but never met her mother. She lived in another part of the country, but her aunt showed her pictures of her mother and spoke often of the girl’s mother.

When the girl had grown up and was a young woman she made the journey across the country to visit the nursing home where her mother lived. She was taken to her mother’s room, with her heart beating with excitement and anticipation. When she walked into the room and saw her mother, she screamed. Her mother was dreadfully and horribly disfigured and nothing at all like the pictures of the beautiful woman the girl had seen as a child. The young woman went screaming from the room and was sobbing uncontrollably.

A nurse followed the girl and sat her down. Then the nurse told the young woman the story of how she, as an infant, was trapped in her bedroom by a fire that was sweeping rapidly through her home. But her mother had risked her own live and had run through the flames and the smoke to rescue the baby. She did, indeed rescue the baby, but was horribly burned, disfigured that she would never be able to function in society again. The nurse said, “The wounds are wounds of love for you.”

The mother had sacrificed it all for her child.

We use the word sacrifice all the time. Ever ask yourself the question, “What would I die for?” Friends, family, country, God? All good questions.

I have been watching The Pacific on HBO. It’s about the Marines fighting the Japanese in World War II. It is very realistic, based on real people, and shows us what it was really like. I hate it. It is almost unwatchable to see what really happened; it was dreadful. But I keep watching it because there were young men who were willing to die for their country and sacrificed so much to do what they did.

Jesus defines love as sacrifice.

In the early Christian Church people confronted sacrifice on a daily basis. It was illegal to be a Christian. If you were caught worshiping God, professing faith in Jesus Christ, you were put to death, often brutally.

Every day people flock to the city of Rome and tour the Coliseum. It was a massive stadium and the winners of the games lived and the losers of the games died. So many of those who lost were placed, unarmed in the center of the Coliseum, and slaughtered while people cheered on the animals or the humans who were putting them to death.

We come to Worship every Sunday and see the cross in the Sanctuary and I wear one around my neck. In the early Christian Church so many people lost their lives, they sacrificed their lives for Christ.

In 2010, within Christianity, we are not in danger by coming to Worship on Sunday morning. Which is good. But we’ve also lost the concept of sacrifice.

One of the barometers of congregational health is by the percentage of a church’s membership in church on Sunday morning. If a church averages at least 40% of its members, it’s health and good. That is four out of ten people. Which means if the majority of people miss Worship most Sundays, the church is healthy. Sacrifice is not important.

The Biblical joy of giving is tithing, which means people give 10% of their income to charity, often the church being the largest recipient. Most churches are ecstatic if people give 3% of their income to charity and/or the church. Sacrifice is not important.

The last time the United States was fighting a war in two fronts, like we are now in the War on Terror, was World War II. Men were drafted into service. Items were rationed at home to support the war effort. Taxes went up and war bonds were sold to fund the war. Everyone spoke of sacrifice.

We are now fighting a war on two fronts. We are not encouraged to sacrifice. Taxes have been cut, there are no war bonds, there is no draft, and we are encouraged to consume items. In fact, the government gives rebates on certain items for us to purchase.

The cost of the war? We’ve put it on VISA. It’s someone else’s problem for another day. Sacrifice is not important. At least to us, here and now.

Oh, and before anyone says I’m sounding political, I’m really not. There is no politician of any political party, in 2010 who will ever utter that horrible word ‘sacrifice,’ unto the American people. So many of our political leaders are so willing to profess their faith in Jesus Christ, but not one person will ever speak of sacrifice.

And sacrifice is the center of Jesus’ definition of love.

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

If we want to truly speak of love in the name of Jesus Christ, we need to ask ourselves questions:

Who or what are we willing to die for?

Who or what are we willing to sacrifice our time for?

Who or what are we willing to make financial sacrifices for?

If we want to love, we need to learn to sacrifice because “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

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