Morning Prayer: Tom Lyda Choral Amen Hymn of Faith *Live in Charity* Witness of Scripture: Matthew 22: 34-40 Anthem *How Firm a Foundation* arr. Alice Parker. Chancel Choir Sermon *The Church: Living in Love* David Spain
Recorded on October 29, 2023
In 1992, author Gary Chapman wrote a book about love languages, an idea that people communicate care in a variety of ways. Chapman detailed 5 love languages—some give gifts and others give compliments; some value quality time and others offer service; still others hold hands or give hugs. The idea, especially for couples, is that it is helpful to know each other’s love language so that affection and care is shared in a way that is meaningful. It does no good to send flowers if 30 minutes of undivided time is what is valued.
With Chapman’s insights in mind, we might ponder God’s love language. Sadly, for anyone whose picture of God is more distant or judgmental, the idea of God’s love language sounds odd. However, except for several stories in Judges, a few select Psalms, and most of the book of Revelation, the balance of the Biblical story speaks of a God whose primary language is love, not limited to 5 expressions.Creation is God’s love language—its beauty and seasons, its order and intricacy. The human impulse for beauty and glory reflected in the arts and sciences is an expression of God’s generative love language. Liberation of the oppressed and care for the vulnerable is another of God’s love languages—the exodus from Egyptian slavery details that expression. The mandate for Sabbath rest and the prohibition of idolatry expresses the protective clause of God’s love language because we know failure to follow both consumes and annihilates us. When the Bible breaks into song, we hear the music of the spheres—the God who is ever mindful of all God has created so sings Psalm 8, and of the God who knows us completely beyond whose reach we can never go notes the 139th Psalm.Even the prophets, who sometimes sing in minor keys, are motivated by God’s love language, for God knows the failure to care for others eventually destroys everyone. The cries of a child in a manger, the cries of his agony for Jerusalem and from Golgotha that wondrously became the joyous cries of “he is risen” are testimony to the God whose language is love not hate, love not despair, love not vengeance. While every choice has consequences and God cannot prevent those, God’s response to whatever happens is the language of love seeking to redeem, reconcile, restore, renew.The gospel of John opens with Christ as Word, present with God as God spoke first words of creation; and then a few chapters later John writes of God’s love language with these words – “for God so loved the world…”
If we are willing to venture a little bit, we could go so far as to suggest that the church is an expression of God’s love language. Early on the church was imaged as ‘the body of Christ,’ and as we think of Jesus as God’s love in flesh and blood, so also the church in the spirit of Christ is to be God’s love language embodied for the world. We celebrate that calling especially today—Reformation Sunday—remembering 506 years ago when Martin Luther recalled the church as it was then to admit its mistakes, reform its practices, and renew its essential purposes. The clarion call for the mighty waters of justice and righteousness to roll down like an ever-flowing stream still laps at the church’s shores all these years later as we always hope it will. The church is ever and always formed and reforming, for both history and the present day reveal the church has and has not fully embodied God’s love language.
If we are willing to venture still a bit further, we know Reformation did not begin 500 years ago. We can go back another 1,500 years when before Luther, Jesus of Nazareth was stirring the waters and unmooring some of the church officials. Matthew’s gospel relays one of those moments. The story reads like a trial as Jesus is brought before the church council and given a test. It is another in a series of contentious moments Jesus faced in the days following his entry into Jerusalem. The set up is rather transparent—there are many commandments, by one counting 613 of them and perhaps even more, laws and ethical guidelines for daily living. You are a wise teacher Jesus, so boil it down for us—which is the most important one? We know this kind of set-up—a question meant to discredit Jesus because no matter how he answers someone will ask ‘why didn’t you pick this law Jesus?’Jesus the master teacher, who rarely responds to a direct question with a direct answer, comes close to doing that here by giving a response broader than the measure of the question. Jesus wants people to know that when it comes to love language, it cannot be limited; instead, it is always expansive.
Jesus’s response is brilliant—he draws from the cherished teachings of the faith they all share. Jesus emphasized love for God taught in Deuteronomy with love for neighbor taught in Leviticus. Worship and ethics are two sides of the same cloth—there is no fabric that holds together that is only one-sided. We could say that the first piece of cloth is God’s material. “God so loved the world…we love because God first loved us;” but there is no way to separate the two. The letter called I John expresses it so well—“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God…Because God loved us so much, we also are to love one another…God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”Although Jesus was not the first to pair loving God and loving neighbor as the core of faith, we remember his saying this because he both taught it and lived it. All these years later, the body of Christ called the church is to be God’s love language.
Matthew’s story reveals how Jesus interprets scripture. He said in response to the question he was asked that the law and the prophets, which is to say everything, is to be interpreted through the law of love and not love of the law. We do well to notice how Jesus interprets scripture, because we know too well that the Bible and at times certain expressions of religion are used to pummel and separate and demean and destroy. Jesus says the law of love is everything.
Love is what it means to be God’s people—the teaching is simple but we know it is not easy.
To love God may be the more difficult calling, and yet perhaps if we listen to God’s love language then we can love what and as God loves—love the creation, love the hurting, love beauty, love Sabbath.If you are an early morning walker, then you have seen before the sun comes up the sentinel planets shining in the eastern and western sky. They are magnificent—awe is an expression of God’s love language, wondering in the glory of the universe that we are part of it and it is part of us—remember we are one part star dust. This past Wednesday at Logos opening circle time, we marveled at the deep hues of colors coming from some of the trees. When a child or a teen or an adult exclaims ‘wow’ in response to life’s gifts, we celebrate God’s love language.
Admittedly, that can be easy to miss…our heads are down as we walk so we don’t trip, or our days are busy because we have much for which to care. So, maybe loving neighbor is easier… and maybe it is not because neighbors don’t always agree. Jesus is not preaching enlightened self-interest when he says love your neighbor as yourself; and he is certainly not preaching that when he says love your enemies. Instead, he is proclaiming that God’s language is love in which all the world resonates. Twentieth century theologian Karl Barth said “Whenever the Christian life in commission or omission is good before God, the good thing about it is love.”
Last week, the church newsletter printed an article by one of our high school youth, who reflecting on this year’s stewardship theme of “why, how, who,” told of being on mission trip last summer in Puerto Rico. She wrote the following…”I serve on mission trips with FCC because of people like Abdon, Magdalia, Pastora Rosa, Cortez, and Marielys. Getting to travel to what feels like another world and to be a steward to those who may not be able to fulfill their own needs is a privilege in and of itself, but the relationships built when growing in faith and serving in God’s name are truly something special.” After mentioning something about Abdon, Magdalia, Rosa, Cortez, and Marielys, she concluded, “When we are on mission trips, we all have one
thing in common which is to spread the love of God through service.”
The words of our youthful writer wise beyond her years reminds us that love always has a name attached to it—God’s name, another’s name, our name. Today, as we present our pledges for the 2024 year of ministry, we do so for all kinds of wonderful reasons. Perhaps the best reason is that, as we have ventured back today remembering the great reformation and the great commandment, so we are also called to venture forward, to add our voices to one of God’s great love languages which is the church, living in love.