Sermon # 1 in the series "The Power of Love"
Rev. Cynthia O’Brien
September 11, 2005
Proverbs 3:1-8
Matthew 22:34-40
1 John 4:7-12
PR 3:3 Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.
PR 3:4 Then you will win favor and a good name
in the sight of God and man.
PR 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
PR 3:6 in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.
MT 22:34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
MT 22:37 Jesus replied: " `Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: `Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
1JN 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
This month we are starting a series called “The Power of Love.” Along the way we will hear great stories, ponder the wisdom of the ages, discover helps for our marriages and friendships, and learn more about God’s love for us and our love for God.
We will consult the Bible and learned theologians, counselors and philosophers. We will also share our common wisdom and experience with each other. My hope is that after church, over a cup of coffee, after hearing a sermon together, we can share our thoughts with each other on the topic, and maybe tell some great stories.
I promise you in each sermon a good story about love, a verse you can hold on to during the week, and a good joke you can tell tomorrow at work.
Here’s a joke today:
Husband says to wife, “What’s the matter?”
She says, “You never tell me you love me.”
Husband says, “Come on, honey. I told you I loved you 35 years ago on the day we were married… and if anything changes, I’ll let you know.”
What does it take to have the power of love in our lives?
Today we look at one of the strongest messages of love in the Bible, in 1 John.
1JN 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.
This is where love started. We didn’t think it up; God loved us first.
9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Out of love Jesus spent time with people like Samaritans who would ruin his reputation. Out of love he welcomed children. Out of love he gave himself for us.
We love because God first loved us.
11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
How do we do that?
In preschool I learned that love meant to be friendly, share the crayons, don’t push in the snack line, and don’t call each other names.
In junior high, I learned that love meant having the right person pay attention to me.
In high school, I learned that love meant following my heart and my feelings and trying to get the object of my affection to go to the dance with me.
Since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
What kind of love is this? It’s not just affection, or acceptance, or passion.
The kind of love that God gives us for one another is the highest kind of love. The Bible calls it agape, or self-giving love, like the kind of love Christ showed for us.
9/11 Story: The Love of Father Mychal
On 9/11, the first recorded death was Father Mychal Judge. He was the Fire Department Chaplain, who was killed by debris while administering last rites to a firefighter who had been struck by a body falling from the towers. Rescue workers would not leave him there. They carried the chaplain’s body several blocks to St. Peter’s Church and placed it on the altar.
Father Mychael was dearly loved by thousands of people. He was the kind of person who made you feel like you were important to him. He "treated everyone like family."
Back in 1996, Father Judge was informed about the crash of TWA flight 800 off Long Island in which all 230 people aboard were killed. For more than two weeks straight, Father Judge drove daily from Manhattan to the Ramada Inn near J.F.K. Airport. There he spent 12 hours a day consoling friends and families who had lost loved ones.
The moment he heard about the World Trade Center, he drove straight down there with a couple of firemen, and went to work.
At his funeral, the Rev Michael Duffy said, “He was where the action was, he was praying, talking to God,helping someone. Can you honestly think of a better way to die? Three hundred firemen are still buried there. It would have been impossible for him to minister to all of them in this life. In the next life he’ll greet them with that big Irish smile and say, ‘Welcome. Let me take you to our father.”
-- from “September 11, 2001: A Record of Tragedy, Heroism and Hope
compiled by the editors of New York Magazine
These kinds of stories inspire us. Father Mike. Mother Theresa. The great people who gave so generously. Then about an hour later, we’re no longer inspired. I go home from church and yell at my kids and realize that I’m never going to be like that. Why can’t I love like they do? It’s hard enough just to love the people in your immediate space.
A man went in to see his pastor and said, “My marriage is over.” The pastor said, “The Bible says to love your wife as Christ loved the church. Can you do that?” “Oh, no, I don’t think I can do that.”
“Well, the Bible says love your neighbor as yourself. Can you love her as your neighbor?” “No, I don’t think I can do that either.”
“Fine,” said the pastor. “The Bible says you should love your enemies and pray for them. Start there.”
C. S. Lewis had the same idea when he wrote about loving your neighbor in his book, Mere Christianity:
“It would be quite wrong to think that the way to become "loving" is to sit trying to manufacture affectionate feelings. Some people are "cold" by temperament; that may be a misfortune for them, but it is no more a sin than having a bad digestion is sin; and it does not cut them off from the chance, or excuse them from the duty, of learning "love." The rule for us all is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we learn one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love them.
Whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made like us by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less.
If you want the power of love to be at work in your life, you have to love others, there’s no getting around it. But you can start small. Baby steps, as they say. Just start where you are.
I knew a woman who was depressed and lonely much of the time, and she didn’t feel like loving anyone. But there was one thing that helped her. She said, “When I find someone else who is worse off than I am, and I try to help them, that makes me feel better.”
On September 11 there was a woman who lived in Staten Island who was concerned about all the people who would be displaced by the devastation and would be coming her way. What could she do? She had three phone lines in her home, so she put the phones at tables along one wall, called the local pizza and her friends to bring over food, and went down to the ferry with a sign, telling people that they could come to her house for a shower, food and to use her telephone. She started with what she could do.
The Bible says, God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
So Dear friends, let us love one another
Let us pray.
God of love, reassure us of your love, and help us to love others. We pray in the name of Jesus, who gave himself for us. Amen.
Memory Verse
Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.
Proverbs 3:3
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