September 29-30, 2007
1st Presbyterian Church of Hollidaysburg
Hollidaysburg, PA
Romans 5:6-11
There has historically been a lot of debate as to why Paul wrote the epistle to the Romans. It was his latest epistle and also his most theologically dense and comprehensive. Other epistles that he wrote such as those to the Corinthians, Colossians, and Thessalonians as well as to his protégé Timothy have very specific and clear reasons for their occasion. This epistle has a far more general character to it. What we do know is that Paul had not yet been to visit the church community in Rome and that this was a well established community where other epistles are directed to newer communities. If we can sense a particular common theme that runs through this epistle it is that the reconciliation and justification that God reveals to us through the Cross is available to all – both to the gentile and to the Jew. It is through the act of Christ on the cross that levels the playing field for who can inherit the Kingdom of God. So the epistle presents the Romans with a general theological exposition of this justification as Paul understood it later in his ministry to the gentiles as well as a letter offering general advice and direction to the community in Rome not to address specific concerns to the community, but to address concerns that any Christian community would likely have at the time.
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups… I love them! Don’t you just love the fall? I love to read on the weekends, especially when it’s raining. Gotta love football season! To love, honor, and cherish… I love her. I love him. I love that movie… How many different ways we use the word…love.
Yeats writes in Brown Penny:
I WHISPERED, "I am too young,"
And then, "I am old enough";
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
"Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair."
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.
Barry White Sings:
How can I explain all the things I feel?
You've given me so much
Girl, you're so unreal
Still I keep loving you
More and more each time
Girl, what am I gonna do
Because you blow my mind
My darling, I can't get enough of your love babe
Yeah, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know why
Can't get enough of your love babe
Shakespeare writes in a sonnet:
O know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
But what does it mean when love is spoken about in these ways? What does it mean when we say that we love someone or some thing or some idea? Cast in these different lights, love often is another term, another quality we ascribe to what we possess and experience. It is a term of endearment, a term of enjoyment, a term we use for something when we either desire something or have had and would love…to have again. But is this really love? Is that what love is? The band Foreigner in the early 1980’s was not sure of it when they sang “I want to know what love is.” But maybe they were even mislead by its source when they follow that line with, “I want you to show me”. Who is it that they are talking to? No doubt the same person as Barry White, or Yeats or Shakespeare for that matter! In these words we find that ideal person we have in our minds that we would like to spend a little time with to start, then a lot of time, and then perhaps “’Til death do us part”.
Love is also that which is less wrapped up in our own desires and finds its home in our partnerships. It is brotherhood and sisterhood. It is familial. It is a bond of blood, tradition, and legacy. In this sense it is not something that we desire on a regular basis like a romantic love, but one of obligation for us to acknowledge our roots and the literal source of our flesh and blood. For without our family we would not have this life we live even if we come from families where love as a condition of altruism does not seem to have taken root.
So what does love mean when we speak of it? It is the bonds of friendship. Joining one another in fellowship, what the early church called koinonia. Joining one another in this adventure called life. It is a shared mission, a shared higher purpose in which the sense of who we are and what we are on this earth to do becomes real and tangible.
It is also the gaze of a parent to a child. That suspension of thought when your idea of your own self is completely engaged and wrapped up in that little reflection of you that has his or her own mission and calling in life apart from you. It is that sense that this life is more than you, but belongs to someone else – that new thing for which you live and die. When someone is so dependant on receiving the love that you have to offer it seems to get at the most profound expression of it. Is there any limit of love, of self-sacrifice, of intrinsic reward than the love of a parent to a child?
Love is not a “Many splendored thing” as much as it is a many sided thing. In fact it is not even a thing at all, but a higher reason for living. It is something that calls us to be more than we currently perceive ourselves to be – at any time and space in our lives. We might even say with Paul that it is the very source of life itself for without love, where would we be…who would we be? It is not a concept, but an action. Love is something we do. In the most practical terms it is a verb, “We love”, rather than a noun, “Love is”.
But within all of these ways that we understand love, it is limited. We can only have one experience at a time in one place and at one time. Part of being human is that we are limited creatures and despite our best intentions, goals, and aspirations, we simply cannot act but within certain limits. The problem is not that we are limited creatures, that’s obvious and part of our nature. The problem occurs when we start to ascribe our limits to the unlimited power and love of God as if what we say and do according to what we think we know about God is some how equated with God himself. This is beyond just a delusion, but it is quite literally idolatry, and it is dangerous. The love of God is not something we can possess or wield or limit by our own understanding of it. It is not something that we can control or think that we can control. It is not something that we can equate with our own actions or with our own aspirations. It is not something that we can fully know or comprehend.
Paul had the right idea. He says, “Perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.” But Paul wants us to think outside the box by saying that God reveals us his love in the Cross and it is in the death of Christ that we learn what the love of God is for us. It is in the action of God in the Cross that reveals to us a new reality. The Cross is the place where the unfathomable and infinite love of God and the limited nature of what it means to be human intersect as never before and never since. In the Cross is the decisive moment that redefines who God is and what humanity is in the same moment. We therefore cannot understand God, what humanity is meant to be, the entire library of sacred scriptures and writings of theologians and scholars old and new, and the very nature of love itself without first understanding what the meaning of the Cross of Christ is and for whom it is significant.
So what does the Cross mean? It reveals to us that the love of God is a radical love. For Christ did not die for those who were of good nature and observed the law, but dies for the ungodly, the sinners and the weak. But unless we think that there were those among Jesus who were good enough not to need this kind of love, we need to think again. Everyone needed this love and reconciliation for Paul says earlier in Romans that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” So follow the logic here. All have sinned and all fall short, Christ died for the ungodly while they were still sinners. This means that Christ did not die for a few people or any particular group of people, but all people. And as the Cross is a decisive moment in history where the eternal love of God meets the fragile limits of what it means to be human, it is also the decisive moment for our history, for our moment in life right now. So why is it so radical? Why is this so hard to fully comprehend, it seems obvious enough right? Let me give you a couple of thoughts as to why this is so radical and so decisive.
First, it is radical because it completely turns upside down our ideas of love and forgiveness. Our experience of love is limited and directed towards something specific and often for a specific reason. Sometimes it is for the reason that when we give a little love, we will get something in return. Often we give out our love only when we feel like someone or something is deserving of it or if we have a sense of duty to love for a specific reason. Because of our limits and our experience of the world, we simply cannot easily comprehend what it means to love our neighbor. When Jesus talks about loving our neighbor he is not talking about the person next door, in the same community, state, country etc. He is talking about anyone and everyone. The Cross is for everyone who has ever lived and will ever lived and this reconciliation is for everyone as well. And here is the real catch – even if you do not actively accept it, God’s love on the Cross is still there. The love of God for us does not depend on whether or not we accept it. And that’s the radical nature of God’s love that we simply cannot easily grasp. The love of God is not dependent on what we do or how we respond to it, it is an action of God from God that is decisive and eternal.
Here is another way that the love of God as seen through the Cross is radical. It does not ask for anything in return, but through the Cross God seeks to transform us and so, to truly reconcile us to himself. Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you”. Finding this rest in the love of God cannot be achieved by simply saying that one accepts Jesus or by following a four or five step sequence to gain eternal life. If we respond and receive the love and forgiveness that God reveals to us through the Cross, then it is something that transforms us. It transforms us to love others in kind. It transforms us to put away our self-centered tendencies and to love our neighbor with the love of God in the Cross as that single aspiration to which we hold our own love of others relative. The Cross is the standard for how we should love others and if we truly respond to it, we cannot help but love our neighbors and put away our own self-interests to do so. If we are transformed by the love of God for us, then we are then able to love others simply for who they are independent of us, independent of our ideas, traditions, values, and assumptions.
Naturally, accepting either of these aspects of God’s radical love is not easy since it runs counter to our deep-seated tendencies. But God does not let us loose to understand this love by our own devices. God is with us in the process. We, the body of Christ, mediate the presence of God to others and God works through us to accomplish the work of this radical love. And this is the fruit of our free response to the reconciliation that God has already accomplished – to reveal it to the world so that we all may respond in kind.
To close, remember the words of Jesus when he was asked about the most important commandment in the law of God:
One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
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