Contemporary Service
Christian Perfection Series
Perfect in Love
Sunday, January 21, 2007

Scripture: Matthew 22:34-40
(NRSV)

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Sermon: 

So, here we are on our third week of perfection. I figured that I was already perfect, so I could skip the first two weeks! No, really, it is good to be back ~ and to be accepted and welcomed ~ in spite of all my imperfections. And it is good to be part of community that knows it’s not perfect, right?

We may not be perfect ~ yet anyway~ but, as Pastor Mark pointed out, as Methodists we do believe we are going on to perfection. This isn’t a perfection that we can earn or achieve (not a perfection in the ‘perfectionist’ sense), but a perfection that happens only through God’s grace. We are all travelers on the road to perfection.

So today we get to talk about being perfected in love. I would say that love is pretty central to the Christian faith, right? I am reminded of one of my favorite camp songs, “And They’ll Know we are Christians by our Love.” Loving is pretty much what it is all about. Love is what it all boils down to…. I think even Jesus would agree. When the lawyer asked him, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'” It’s all about the love.

So if love is so vital, so central to the Christian faith, what is it? What is love? Let’s try to define love.  Love is kind of a tricky thing to define. Is love a feeling? Is love an action? Is love a state of mind? Even with all the poems and popular songs about love, it is still hard to say exactly what love is. The Beatles suggested, “All we need is Love.” And apparently Ashlee Simpson has a song out called, “Love Makes the World Go Round.” Everyone seems to agree on its importance, but what is love?

Not to lump him in with the Beatles and Ashlee Simpson, but the Apostle Paul has a pretty good answer that we tend to turn to from time to time. It is probably the most popular Scripture at weddings and we read it today in our gathering. How does it go? Let’s start from “Love is patient” and read it again, all together….. Paul shows us how to recognize genuine love by what it is and what it isn’t.

Another way to look at this question of “What is Love?” is to ask, How do you recognize love in another? Have you ever had the overwhelming feeling that you were loved ~ either by a friend or spouse or partner or parent, even a pet? How did you know that you were loved?

It seems to me that love is most clearly expressed in those actions we take for those we love. The love that both Jesus and Paul speak about is something we decide to do. It is not something we think about and ponder on while gazing at the clouds, but it is something that spurs us to action ~ to do something. In fact, in Jesus and Paul’s day, love was not associated with romantic feelings and Hallmark cards like it is today. Rather, love was understood as a pattern of actions. By loving others as yourself, you would treat those around you as you would your own flesh and blood. 

This, though, did not mean that love was always easy, is always easy. Have you ever met anyone that was incredibly difficult to love? We’ve probably all encountered one or two people like that, right? Let’s take a few minutes and turn to a neighbor and talk about these two questions: When has loving come easy? When have you had trouble loving?

I was struck this week by a quote from William Sloane Coffin. He says, “The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.” When we actively practice love (and by practice I don’t just mean do, but repeat it over and over ~ in the practice piano sense ~ until we somehow ‘get it right’) When we actively practice love we allow ourselves, in some sense, to be the gift of love.

This love helps us to open ourselves and see the world in a new way, through God’s eyes. As Mark talked about last week, we can wonder at all the beauty of the earth, but never come closer to God. The same goes for love. We can love our spouse passionately, but never come close to God unless we recognize that our spouse is a gift from God, and loved by God in his or her own right. When we open ourselves us to love our neighbor, we are loving what God already passionately loves…. and we, I believe, become part of that love.

So, fellow travelers, while I recognize that perfection is not something we achieve on our own, I believe we do have a responsibility to challenge and push ourselves in our faith life to grow. On pastor said that, “Spirituality is about gardening: attending to the plant, the soil and the setting to enable the fruit to be born.” That said, there is a question I would like to leave you with this week. Ponder it. Pray on it. How can you grow in love? Are there ways that your actions don’t reveal your feelings? Areas where you let envy or resentment build? And, believe me, I need to ask myself these question too. How can I grow in love? “The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.”