I have already welcomed members and visitors to this worship service. I repeat that welcome now, and I do so acknowledging that Mother's Day is a joyful occasion for many, many people. It is a time for honoring mothers in the literal sense of the word and in its symbolic sense also—mothers and mother-like people who have been nurturing women at various stages of our life's journey. I celebrate such joy with you.
I further acknowledge that Mother's Day is a difficult day for many people, for reasons connected with the inevitable passing of time, and for reasons connected with such things as alienation, addiction, sickness, disappointment, and death. If today is difficult for you, I share your sadness, and I affirm the resilience of the human spirit. It is possible to recover from grief and other kinds of sadness and to feel again the goodness of life in all its fullness. I can testify to that.
The few verses I read from the First Epistle of John focus rather obviously on love. I read them not because this is Mother's Day, but because they are the lectionary reading for the fifth Sunday in Easter in Year B, which is where we are.
At least twice in my life, and maybe more often than that, I have had a powerful feeling that certain geography represented home to me. I take that to mean there was a certain convergence when I was in those places. The most powerful of those experiences took place in 1971 when Nancy, Jenny, and I were driving north from Dublin, in the Irish Republic, toward County Down in Northern Ireland. When I saw the Mourne Mountains sweeping down to the Irish Sea, my heart began to race and tears filled my eyes. I knew that a very personal part of me was nearing home.
I had a similar feeling the first time I read the fourth chapter of the First Epistle of John. I felt a powerful connection with what the Elder, as he is called, was saying in those verses. In musical terms the chapter is a rhapsody, or more accurately, a rhapsodic theme and variations. The theme, of course, is love as expressed in the Greek word agape: love that is more than eros, which is the wonderful love that is passionate, physical, and emotional; and more than philein, which is brotherly or sisterly affection. Agape is love that is intentional, love that is active, love that works for the well-being of the one or ones who are loved.
The section of I John from which I read a few minutes ago begins with the word of address: Beloved. What a wonderful greeting. It's the word of greeting I would like everyone to hear as she or he enters this or any other place of Christian worship: Beloved. "Beloved, we are glad you are here. Beloved, leave behind all the burdens you are carrying; we have carried them too and have learned how to lay them down. Beloved, welcome to a safe and sacred space where you can find refreshment for your soul. Beloved, welcome."
Shortly after that grace-filled greeting, there is the amazing statement that God is love. So far as I know, there are only three nouns used in the entire Bible to complete the simple sentence God is....God is spirit. God is light. and God is love.
Many of us have heard the word love used in connection with God lots of times, so it doesn't come as a surprise to hear the sentence "God is love" in this letter from the first century of the Common Era. But it would have been shocking to the Greek philosophers of the time, who thought of God as an abstraction, as power, or mind, or wisdom, or equilibrium—but not love. Not something that implies vulnerability, longing for connection, feelings of caring. But that's what the sentence says...and means. God risked the vulnerability of the Incarnation to communicate the message of His or Her love. God loves us actively, not passively, affirmatively, not judgmentally, not to manipulate us, but to awake in us a reciprocal love and a love that seeks the well-being of other people as well as of ourselves.
After his breath-taking statement that God is love, the Elder goes on to write about our "loving one another" and loving our human "brothers and sisters." He makes it clear that love for others is the essence of Christian behavior or ethics. But he doesn't hammer his readers with a lot of "ought" and "should" language. There is one "ought" and one "must" in the verses I read. The focus in not on dutifully obeying a rule or law. It is on a response to something. The Elder writes, "We love because God first loved us."
Those of you who have heard me preach regularly, know that I agree with the Elder. For me the central theme of Christian proclamation is God's love for the world. We love because God first loved us. I continue to discover how few people have ever heard the statement that God loves us unconditionally. People by the millions go through life believing that God is waiting to punish them for being less than perfect, for have human weaknesses, for making mistakes. You can find evidence for that kind of theology in the Bible. (You can find almost any theology in the Bible if you look hard enough.) But there is this central theme that shines like headlights on a dark country road, the theme of God's love, God's inclusive, affirming love.
The Elder who writes that God is love and that We love because God first loved us, also recognizes the rejection of God's love in the lovelessness that is part of the world we live in. "Those who say, 'I love God' and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen." Strong language, and it makes a point. The absence of love, or hatred, is a reality in the world we inhabit.
Yesterday there was a wedding in this sanctuary—the marriage of a man and a woman who have worshiped here a couple of times and who plan on worshiping here again. Before the rehearsal Friday night, the groom said he wanted to ask me a question while we were sitting quietly waiting for other members of the wedding party to arrive—not the bride. She was very prompt. He asked me whether I thought people were predominantly evil or predominantly good. It's not a question that's been put to me very often before wedding rehearsals.
My response was that I don't think it's either/or, one or the other. I believe there is good in the world, and I believe there is evil in the world. Most people I know, including myself, are a mixture of many things, some of it good, and some it not so good.
But beyond that, there is the existence of unexplainable evil. How else account for the cold-blooded murder of a young woman as she worked behind a counter in Middletown, Connecticut. The New York Times headline was "From Prep School and Privilege To a Killing at a University Café." How else account for Channel Seven's story Friday evening about an employer who withholds money for child support from the paycheck of an employee and keeps the money for himself, not forwarding it to the child who is waiting for the much-needed money. How else account for genocide, for hate crimes, for the malicious spread of computer viruses, and so many other things that document the existence of evil in the world.
Over against such brokenness, there is the rhapsodic theme and variations on God's unconditional love in I John. Over against the evils of addiction, greed, prejudice, dishonesty, gossip, and a host of other things, there is the love that shines through in acts of caring. I am reading a book called Acts of Faith by Eboo Patel. The author is a young man in his early thirties, a Muslim of Indian descent with a doctorate in the Sociology of Religion from Oxford University. He is the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core [sic], a Chicago-based international nonprofit dedicated to building the interfaith youth movement.
Dr. Patel writes eloquently about being taunted and tormented by his schoolmates in Chicago, all of them white except him. (Just about all Lesbian, Gay, trans-gendered and bi-sexual people can identify with that part of his story.) But he raises the question of why he didn't become a suicide-bomber or hate-spewing sociopath like some of his Muslim counterparts in this country and abroad. He says the difference is that someone got to him first with a message of respect, responsibility, and love. He discovered his personal worth in the way he was treated by his parents but more important by people in his neighborhood and place of worship. Now he is acting in love because he was first loved by others.
Reading his powerful book while reading and re-reading I John chapter 4, I resolved to be more alert to bullying on the streets and in the press, to be more proactive in working for the full equality in New York and all of our country that is now a reality in New Hampshire and Maine, and to find opportunities to use the words God and God's love whenever I can without sounding like a preacher, even though I am one. But you get the point. It's what each one of us can do and actually does that overcomes the darkness with the light of hope rooted in the knowledge of God's love.
On this Mother's Day may we find new depths of meaning to the overworked but still many-splendored word love.