Sermons In Time

"LOVE IS ETERNAL"

September 3, 1972

(13th chap. First Corinthians)

A few years back there was a film, which closed with the song "What the World Needs now is Love Sweet Love". There is a phrase in the New Testament which goes like this: "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon is-" In response to that need which was expressed in that popular song, the New Testament says that God has provided that Love for us., and whether it be romantic love which makes it possible for two young lovers to come together, making it possible for creativity and beauty to be expressed; whether it be filial love which brings friendship and brotherhood and kindness one to another, or whether it be Agape, or self-giving love which makes altruism and self-sacrifice possible, they are the gift of God and today we want to look for just a moment in the context of this service at this most meaningful gift of all, the gift of Love

What can we say about it? First of all let's say that love is of God. As John says in his letter, "God is love and love is God." They are in a sense synonymous. It is the one thing which outlasts everything. Just as we think of God as the Alpha and the Omega (the beginning and the end) that one which is eternal, that one in which we have our ground of being, so also he has shown to us that the basic nature of his being is Love.

Quite often we assume today that if we can just love the right person we'll have it made. How often have you listened to KLEO or KOYY or any other of the Kansas stations which belt out from a Rock background the need that persons feel for somebody else, and the desire to be loved and to be able to love. One thing we ought to be able to understand this morning is simply that we do not have our ground of being alone in ourselves; we did not make ourselves. We are not persons of our own creation but rather we are the sheep of God's pasture We are his and we belong to him. "In him we live and move and have our being" Paul said and this is where life is. Life itself is a gift of God and the Capacity to enjoy it and express it is his gift to us. "Behold what manner of love the father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called his children;" That we should be called sons of God with the capacity to share and to love as he does. As God so loved you, so loved the world, so loved this creation, this magnificent cosmos, that he gave himself, gave his son that we should have life and that we should have it abundantly- '

We do not find our being in just another person', but rather because of God's love expressed toward us we are able to love and when one recognizes that he is loved of God; He is capable of experiencing the fullness of his own life and the fullness of another Person's life, whether it be a small child, whether it be a lover, or whether it be a person who is a stranger within the gates.

-The capacity to 1ove is a gift of God. Elton Trueblood says "marriage is God's attempt to return man and woman to the Garden of Eden where they stand naked and unashamed before each other in complete innocence and they care about each other in such v Way that they can fulfill the full Purpose of their lives. The hymn expresses it: "My God and I walk through the fields together" and in a sense Adam and Eve could not walk together unless God walked with them. The allegory, which comes out of the first chapter of Genesis, is applicable to us today. We cannot really walk together unless God walks with us and a. we ought to recognize the importance of establishing our lives., not in ourselves I and not just in the other person, for life and death and tragedy and disappointment can take persons away, but -rather in God who can share even a moment of love together with one other person and with all other persons. Love is of God.

Love is physical. How do you say it adequately? The capacity to touch another person, to a r as first of all when a baby is born,, and as that first little cry of abandonment comes after birth takes place and the child breathes its own air and lives its own life of isolation, right behind that awful cry comes that glorious moment when the little child is placed in the arms of its mother,, and there at her breast suckles its first milk and feels the warmth, the cuddling, of knowing that it is cared for because it is held. And how often we think that because we grow older we no longer need to have that kind of holding. No matter how masculine or how capable or how individualistic we become, we still need that kind of reaching out and the touching and the being e*raced and of being held by somebody who really cares about us. The touching of creation, of how God reached out and (as Michelangelo shows in his painting) reached out and touched Adam. And it was in that touch that life was breathed into his being. And literally that's what happens to all of us as we reach out and touch one another. Life in its fullest sense is breathed into our being. A young couple holding hands', squeezing each other's hands as they are walking down the street, or sitting in church. Don't let go. It's O.K. It's kind of nice in fact. Sometimes we're embarrassed in this age of expressiveness we may get a little bit overboard. We're not quite used to it but perhaps we ought not emphasize how embarrassed we get.

How appropriate it is to reach out and touch somebody else. He is not untouched by the feelings of our infirmities, the scripture says. When something happens to us, God touches our lives and that's a physical kind of thing. It's almost as if we can feel those hands and that body. You can be anthropomorphic about God just for a moment,, you can feel that presence enwrapping us. How important it is. And so the time comes when in marriage it is consumed in absorption in each other, in the beautiful experience of sexual intercourse. How two become one, not just physically) but mentally and spiritually, but they do become one physically. And that oneness is expressed not as crassness but as the very heart of the way we are here this morning. For if it were not for that kind of physical union the way God has made us, none of us would be here today. It is the product of persons coming together and touching and becoming one with each other.

We reach out and discover that as life comes into our being, as we reach out to other persons in perhaps a totally different way, the reaching out is there and the touching and the grasping and the enfolding makes it possible for life to go on among us. In the small family of husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, that kind of closeness becomes a circle of love. But is it not true that the church is that same kind of circle which reaches out and makes it possible for people to feel comfortable with one another as they hold one another's hands. Even perhaps as Aaron held Moses' in the Old Testament.

Love is physical, but love is also - how do you say it - spiritual? Is that an adequate word? Yes, it's a great word, and I think that Paul was trying to emphasize what that spirituality was in this 13th chapter of First Corinthians. I think he was not just spirit and other-worldly, but rather it is spirit, where my breathing and your breathing reach out to one another and make it possible for you to care about me and for me to care about you. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful. Love does not insist on its own way. All of these words - love has good manners, it does not pursue selfish advantage it does not compile statistics of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people,, but rather on the contrary it is glad with all good men when truth prevails. What kind of reaching out is that? Not just a physical touching but a caring kind of encompassing one's lives, and being able to take all that a person is and to trust and to care and to be with.

Someone said (I think it was Eric Berne} that loving a person was loving all about them, even their B.O. That's a little inappropriate, I suppose, at a time when TV has .more commercials on Ultra-Ban and all the rest, but you know that's really what it is. Before I brush my teeth in the morning my wife still thinks I'm O.K. to be with. And that's partly physical, but it's also spiritual. - Caring.

A woman was walking through the streets of Paris one day and she saw a little boy in the street who was dirty and crying and apparently unattended, and this woman said "Why doesn't somebody pick that child up and clean him up?" The person who was walking with her said, "Well, Maam, his mother loves the child but she doesn't mind the dirt, and the problem with you is that you don't like the dirt and you don't love the child." And all the cleansing up of dirt in the world isn't appropriate unless you love the child. This is inadequate. Mot inappropriate., but inadequate unless you love the child.

Pliny says "See how these Christians love one another., how they care for one another,, how they hurt, how they feel deeply when something happens to them." Recently, when it was mentioned that a young lad was killed last night, as I looked across this congregation I could feel a sense of shock, a sense of hurt. It isn't just in times of tragedy like this but it's all the way through that we feel deeply. There is a part in this wedding service which says that no other human ties are more tender. It's like proud flesh; that what happens to your wife or your husband, what happens to that person to whom you are married means something to YOU- You care how they act and what they say and what they do. And perhaps there is no other relationship that is as intimate as this one. Out of that intimacy comes all the other kinds of caring and concern that we have.

Finally, Love is a Prayer, It is a prayer that's like another prayer in the New Testament. If I were praying it, I would say "Lord, teach us to love." I think in that in that prayer there are words which also teach us to trust, teach us not to be afraid, teach us to be able to risk and ultimately teach us to lay down our lives for others. The interesting thing about that prayer; you'll note, is there is no "how" in it. It didn't say "Lord, teach us how to love." I think it's the same kind of reasoning that goes into the statement the disciples made to Jesus when they said "Lord teach us to pray" The didn't say "Lord, teach us how to pray." For they knew that it wasn't just a matter of method - it was a direction of the spirit. And I suppose that the whole meaning of being able to love is a growing that we're always able to say "Lord, teach us to love."

The scripture says to us who grow up in Christ Jesus "become mature men and women." When we confirm these Vows Of marriage this morning, we confirm them for every couple here. We have to pray the prayer "Lord teach them to love" and a part of that is to teach them to continue to grow up. Let them grow up to be men and women, mature persons that they'll work at until they're ninety and when they're ninety they'll still feel like they have a long way to go because the human spirit is unfathomable in its capacity to love.

Love is eternal. It's a gift of God. It's physical, it's spiritual, it's a prayer and we pray it for Jim and Suzy this morning and we pray it for every young couple who has and will, get married. AMEN.

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