Sermon: “Linked to Love”
I use Google Docs to write my sermons, and, this week, Google Docs did a funny thing…
When I cut and pasted the scripture, Google Docs added a squiggly blue line underneath several of the words in that last verse.
Word processors like Google Docs do this all the time. A squiggly blue line will appear, or a squiggly red line will appear, or sometimes it’s not squiggly, but a straight line, but it’s usually red or blue.
Some of you know what I’m talking about. Some of you see a lot more of these red and blue lines than you’d like to see.
A red line means your word is misspelled. “Misspelled” is actually a hard word to spell, and if I type it in with only one “s” or only one “l”, a red line will appear underneath it; that’s the program’s way of saying, “Um, excuse me, you might want to check the spelling on that…”
If a BLUE line appears, it means that something isn’t right in the formatting of your sentence. Maybe you’re mixing up your tenses (which I do in my sermons all the time). Maybe there’s an action without a subject. Or maybe something else missing.
Oops, there’s a blue line… Maybe something else is missing. There. That’s better.
The place where the squiggly blue line appeared when I typed in the scripture was in the last sentence, the last verse. It appeared under the words “love because.” The verse says: “We love because he first loved us,” and under the words “love because,” there was a blue line.
Now, if you hover your cursor over the blue squiggly line, the computer will give you a suggested improvement.
In this case, Google Docs suggested I change “We love because he first loved us” to “We love each other because he first loved us.”
Google Docs decided that Love was a verb that needed a subject; and Google Docs decided (I don’t know how it decided, but it decided) that the subject should be each other.
We love each other because he first loved us.
OK. Maybe, grammatically, that’s better, and it does help clarify things…
What makes this really interesting is that, in my Bible, there is a footnote in that same spot, right after the word love. And the footnote at the bottom of the page says that some ancient manuscripts have added something here, just like Google Docs wants to add something.
Some of the ancient manuscripts added the word God at this spot, and other ancient manuscripts added the word him.
So, even though they didn’t have Google Docs or Microsoft Word or the blue squiggly lines, those ancient scribes also thought something was missing here; but instead of adding the words “each other,” they added the word “God,” or the word “him…”
…So that the verse, instead of reading, “We love because he first loved us,” it would now read as, “We love God because God first loved us,” or, “We love him because he first loved us.”
So, I thought it was kinda funny, that both the ancient scribes, and Google docs, thought that something was missing here, and that both added something to improve the verse, but what they added wasn’t the same thing.
Are we supposed to love each other because God first loved us? Or, are we supposed to love God because God first loved us? … Which is it?
…Here’s an interesting thing about scripture. People often read scripture; and people often get into debates and arguments over scripture, and what it means.
Does it mean this or that?
These types of debates even appear in the stories of scripture themselves. The disciples, for example, argued whether something was this or whether it was that.
In the gospel of John, ninth chapter, Jesus was walking along, and he saw a man who had been blind his whole life. The disciples asked him: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
In the minds of the disciples, it was one or the other. It was “common knowledge” that afflictions like blindness were because of sin, and they wanted to know if it was his own sin, or the sin of his parents, that led to him being born blind.
But so often, Jesus’ answers go beyond the “either/or” option. Was it this or that? In this case, Jesus says, it was neither. Neither this man nor his parents sinned.
See, the disciples were discussing what the right answer was, but the problem was that they didn’t even have the right question. And, sometimes, right questions are more important than right answers.
In the case of our scripture today, we have the question of who are we supposed to love: each other, or God?
And in the scripture itself, starting with the very next verse, the answer seems to be: YES.
Yes! Just love!
Because there is no difference between loving God and loving each other. Why are you trying to make them into two separate things? They are the same thing!
The next verse, verse 20, says: “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.”
So, Google Docs is right in suggesting that we are to love each other; and, the ancient scribes who copied down scripture were right to suggest that we are to love God. Because loving God, and loving each other, go hand in hand.
This echoes Jesus’ emphasis on the command to love God and love your neighbor as oneself. That first command—to love God—and that second command—to love one’s neighbor—are inextricably linked. They are the two hinges that hold up the door. You can’t have just one, or the door won’t hang properly, and will fall off. You have to have both.
To say that you love God, but you don’t love your neighbor, doesn’t make sense. It’s an impossibility.
This is the scripture for the last day of camp, the day the campers go home, and it’s a good one to end the week on. Everything really is about love.
And I love that it’s not an either/or thing. So many things in faith are like that. We ask a faith question, an either/or faith question, but then we find out that it’s the wrong question, because it’s not an either/or situation.
One argument that has really divided some Christians throughout history is whether we are saved through faith or through works… as if there is any difference between how we act and what we believe!
Yet some people go to great lengths to prove that we are saved simply by believing in Jesus, and not by what we do, while others point out that, in the entire Sermon on the Mount, Jesus goes on and on about how we are to behave, but doesn’t say a single word about how we are to believe.
Yet in the Letter of James, it says “by my works, I will show you my faith.” By what I do, I will show you what I believe. The two go together. You really can’t have one without the other.
It’s not an either/or situation.
Once you realize that, the debate about whether we are saved by faith or by works really seems kind of silly.
Maybe we need to program our word processors to put a little blue line underneath the words anytime someone writes about being saved by faith, or being saved by works, with a suggested revision so that the final draft would say, “We are saved by both faith and works, since faith is shown by works…”
But if we did that, we’d need another blue line under that word saved, because the way a lot of people today use the word saved isn’t always the same way the Bible uses that word.
In scripture, and especially in the gospels, the word saved means to be made whole, or made well, or to be healed. And sometimes, that is how it appears in scripture. Sometimes Jesus, when he heals someone, says, “your faith has made you well,” and other times he says, “your faith has healed you,” and other times he says, “your faith has saved you,”... and even though they sound different, they all mean the same, and they all are ways of translating a single word in scripture, the word sozo.
And I learned from Jerry McCoy that the word shalom also relates to these various meanings of the word saved: it, too, involves healing and wholeness.
And the healing/wholeness/salvation that Jesus talks about isn’t just in the future. It’s in the present as well. It’s salvation right now. It’s healing right now. It’s finding wholeness right now. In this life… and in the life to come.
Again: it’s not an either/or thing.
But we’re so used to thinking in binary ways, that we can’t understand that not everything is defined in binary ways. It’s not always this or that.
Feel free to ponder all the implications of that…
It’s not always this or that. It’s not always a strict binary. It could be both. It could be something in between. It could be something else entirely.
—---------------------------------
There is one binary that does exist, though. Today’s scripture skips over verse 18, but verse 18 says: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”
Fear and love do not go together.
There is enough to fear in this world; but the gospel is not something that should be feared. The gospel is love, and there is no fear in love. God is love, and there is no fear with God.
If you have been taught a form of religion that makes you fear God, or that makes you fear that you may not ever experience the salvation or healing or wholeness that is meant for you, then that isn’t true religion. It isn’t true to the gospel.
The gospel is about healing and wholeness. The gospel is about love and shalom. And all that is for you. God is love, and God’s love is for you.
And in return, the gospel calls us to love God, and love each other.
Karl Barth is considered to be the greatest theologian of the twentieth century. His most famous work is called Church Dogmatics, which is a 14-volume systematic theology that is usually described with words like “colossal,” and “monumental.”
No, I haven’t read it all.
One time, after he gave a lecture, someone asked Barth if he could summarize his whole theology in a single sentence. Barth said he could, and then he offered this one-sentence summary of all his work: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
That 14-volume monumental systematic theology can be summed up by love.
Knowing that we are loved, and showing love to others, sounds simple. But nothing is more significant, or more important, or more wonderful, than God’s love for us, and our love for one another.
And with all this talk about asking the right questions, and thinking beyond the binary choices that we think are our only choices, I’m left wondering what have we overlooked when it comes to love? What ways are there that we are being called to love, that we haven’t even thought of yet? How can we be creative in showing love, loving in new ways, loving in ways that bring us and our neighbors even closer to experiencing the healing, the wholeness, the shalom, that is God’s desire for us and for all of creation?
Something to think about…
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