Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann
Romans 5:1-8
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Like the ancient question, “What is beauty?” people have been struggling for thousands of years over the perplexing question, “What is love?” Adolescents often exhibit a keen interest in the question, concerned that they will miss it when it happens. Philosophers debate the application and the origin of such an important but abstract idea. Social commentators will talk about the “loving thing to do” as if it was always patently obvious what that loving thing was—even though many others disagree vehemently with their conclusions. Talented performers sing about it, poets contemplate it, Hallmark makes a healthy profit helping the inarticulate to communicate it. But, what is it? Well, today, I am going to answer the question definitively. That’s right in this sermon, right now, I will fully and completely define and explain love.
It’s not as far-fetched an idea as it might initially seem. After all, I am able significantly to limit my consideration of love since I am going to confine myself to a scripturally-based, doctrinally accurate and complete answer. Grounding and forming my answer in God’s truth, I can avoid the labyrinth questions and debates that inevitably arise when the idea of love is explored by philosophers. It doesn’t take long for that sort of discussion to spin out of control and get lost in the obscure ether of largely irrelevant speculation. My goal is the opposite. I want to provide an answer that matters, one that speaks directly to the nitty-gritty realities of life as we live it.
Actually, of course, the question about love and its right expression is of some immediate importance here in the church. It has become altogether common in our world to hear people accuse the church and Christian people of a glaring lack of love. So, the question of what exactly love is, should be a priority to us as we wrestle with the possible validity of the charge that Christians and their churches are guilty of being loveless. Even Christians themselves are often heard making this charge. So, what about this accusation? Is it true that the church is woefully lacking in love? Is this a legitimate charge? Does it have any basis in actual fact? Since some of you have probably figured out by now that mercy and sensitivity are not necessarily personality traits with which I have been blessed, and so not my strong suit, you might not expect my response to the charge that the church does not display enough love. In fact, I think the charge is absolutely right. It’s true, the church is suffering from a lamentable lack of love. I agree: a failure to show love is far too often a mark of the church and her people, today.
It has been said that the church fails to demonstrate love to people by being a closed society—a happy, ingrown, clique with no room within its walls for anyone not part of the inside group. It has been charged that the church shows a shameful lack of love when it fails to take seriously the significant material needs and struggles of people—glossing over the real and immediate needs of this world by concentrating too much on some pie-in-the-sky dreams of another happier world. The church is accused of being manifestly unloving when it tells people that they are sinners and should feel guilty about their sin, and change their behavior accordingly. And, it has been asserted that the church shows no love when it becomes legalistic about doctrines and builds walls of division rather than building bridges of understanding. And so, the list of charges against the church on the indictment of lovelessness is a long one. You’ve heard the accusations. Your familiar with the rebuke. These are the standard sorts of things that people have in mind when they make the argument that the church is unloving. But, it is none of these things that are on my mind when I agree with the charge. In fact, some of the standard accusations of ways that the church is unloving, some of those that I’ve just listed are actually essential to what I believe God wants the church to be doing.
I am ready, you see, to agree that the church is often incredibly loveless, but the lack of love that troubles me shows up in rather different ways than it does in the world’s standard account of the church’s lack of love. I am concerned about the lovelessness I see when the church chooses to look the other way and ignore the sin of one of its own members. A failure to rebuke sin is nothing but a complete lack of love. I’m bothered by the lack of love demonstrated when church-goers exhibit no compulsion for the task of bringing the gospel message to non-Christian friends or neighbors or strangers. Can there be any greater lack of love than caring so little about another person that you will allow them to slide into hell rather than risk embarrassing yourself by talking with them about Jesus? And, I am confounded by the church’s lack of love when it comes to knowing and teaching doctrine. If we don’t actively teach true doctrine to our children and to one another, we pave the way for us to be misled by lies and deceived by false religions and worldviews—not the least of which is the false belief that there are many good religions and that there are multiple paths to God and truth. The false religions of tolerance, and pluralism and mutual acceptance are not loving—regardless what people may think. When the church fails to live, teach and think according to God’s will, it has failed to love. When it obscures God’s truth, it loves neither God nor people.
So, it’s true. What the church needs is more love. That means, then, that the ability accurately to understand and recognize love is essential. The fate of the church and her members hangs in the balance. The church’s witness to the world around depends absolutely on a clear understanding of love. If we don’t know what love is so that we can live it, teach it, and share it, we will remain a loveless church and the critics will be proven right. But, believe it or not, defining and recognizing love is really not that complicated. Once you let God’s Word speak with authority, the answer is clear. Love is rooted only in God, the Creator of the world. God alone is the one and only source of love. Whatever we know of love in this life, and in our human relationships, it is only a pale shadow of love as it comes to us from God. God is the origin and source of all love. Love does not ever begin with us. We don’t reach out to God with our love. Only God can seek us with his love. We can’t create a better world simply by trying to spread love around between people. Only God can redeem the world by showering his love down upon it. Love is always from God down, not the other way around. God does shower his love on the world, and he does it directly and pointedly. He extends his love to this world and to all its people through the cross of Christ. God is the only source of love in the world, and the cross is the only means by which he finally delivers that love into the world. What is love? It is the incredible self-giving of God for us displayed profoundly and dramatically on the cross.
This could well seem an odd sort of answer. With its humiliation, degradation, suffering, and death, the cross seems to display the very opposite of love. For many people, the cross is disconcerting, embarrassing, or even intimidating. A bleeding, dying man, suffering for no good reason, suffering unjustly, makes no sense to them. And when they are told that it is because of their sins, because of their own lovelessness, that Jesus was compelled to die, they are even more troubled. Guilt makes them avert their eyes and squirm with discomfort. Wouldn’t it be so much better to have a happy, upbeat image of God—one that everyone can rally around, one that makes people feel good and draws us together? How about a smiling Jesus telling us all to love each other as brothers and sisters and to accept everybody just as they are? How about a God who’s understanding and patient with all people and their personal struggles and problems and doesn’t expect too much from any of them and saves everyone just because he’s so nice? The cross shatters that happy, warm, and wrong image of a smiling God and in its place forces on us a gruesome image of a violent, lonely, death.
Indeed, the cross doesn’t look like love at all. Citizens of the first century world be dumbfounded to know that crosses are used today as decoration, jewelry, and objects of reverence. In the ancient world, one did not even dare to use the word “cross” in polite company—what happened on a cross was so horrible and so indecent, the very mention of the word was deemed coarse and obscene. The idea that anyone would wear a cross would be absurd. It would be like a person, today, wearing little, shiny, silver gallows complete with a noose or a pretty guillotine hanging around their necks from a delicate chain. The cross meant death. It still does. Even in the church, the cross means death. Remember Ash Wednesday. We all dutifully filed to the front of the church and we were each marked with a cross traced in ashes, the sign of sorrow, the sign of death. “Remember,” you were told, “remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” There’s nothing happy about that. The cross is a hard word to sinful, guilty people. But, that same cross is also the unmistakable declaration of love.
The cross proclaims the message of love because for those who know and cherish the cross and its Lord, death is not the end. For those who know the pain of the cross, but also know the promise of the cross, death does not get the last word. For those who see in the cross their sin and failure, but also see in the cross their God and savior, the death of the cross is only the beginning. For those who know and trust the cross as the place where Jesus dies for all the world, the cross is finally the message of life eternal. This is the message of the cross. This is the message you have heard faithfully declared from this pulpit for decades by men who knew its truth. The message matters. Just ask those who have preached it to you. It is not philosophical or theological speculation and theory. It is real—more real than disease, more real than sorrow and suffering, more real than cancer. Yes, suffering and death is an essential part of the cross’s message. The cross kills us. But death is not the only part, and certainly not the final part. While the cross marks us for dust and ashes and death; it also marks us for life and joy and glory. That’s the message of the cross that comes through loud and clear: it is love. It is love profound and perfect; it is love hard and piercing; it is love gentle and affirming; it is love strong and eternal. The cross is love. It is God declaring to you: “I love you this much. I love you enough to die for you.” The holy and perfect Creator dying for sinful and miserable creatures—that’s the love of the cross. It is love beyond human comprehension.
So, that’s it. That’s the definition of love. What is the one definitive and comprehensive definition of love? It is the cross. The cross is love. Even in your own life and in your relationships, the definition of love is the cross. It is the cross that kills your selfishness and raises you to a new life of selflessness. It is the cross that gives you forgiveness and grace so that you can begin again when you fail. It is the cross that gives you hope for tomorrow and for today, strength to do what needs to be done. It is the cross that shows you how to love and then empowers you to love the people in your own life. It is the cross that is the definition of love. The church does need more love—it needs more of Christ and his cross. Your own life needs more love—it needs more of Christ and his cross. And what the church needs, and what you need, God gives. He gives his love, through the cross. He gives his love to you, right here, right now. Amen.